The Missing Step
Cognition alone does not yet produce claims.
A semiotic field may sustain distinctions — this / not-this, stable / unstable, relevant / irrelevant — without anything being said. Differentiation can operate silently, procedurally, infrastructurally.
Propositions emerge when differentiation crosses a threshold: when a distinction becomes sayable.
This post examines that threshold.
What a Proposition Is (and Is Not)
A proposition is often treated as:
an act of assertion
an expression of belief
a commitment to truth
None of these are structurally necessary.
A proposition, in this ontology, is a stabilised configuration of distinctions that can be taken up as true or false — whether or not anyone asserts it, believes it, or endorses it.
Sayability precedes assertion.
Sayability as Structural Property
Something is sayable when:
distinctions have been stabilised
relations among them are sufficiently constrained
re-entry is possible without collapse
Sayability is not a speech act. It is a property of the field.
A formula written on a page is sayable even if never spoken. A theorem is propositional even if no one currently understands it. A warning sign remains a proposition long after its author is gone.
Propositions persist independently of intention.
From Pattern to Form
The transition from cognition to proposition is not temporal but structural.
Cognitive differentiation becomes propositional when:
distinctions are frozen into a configuration
relations are fixed tightly enough to constrain interpretation
alternative construals are narrowed but not eliminated
This is not yet truth.
It is form.
A proposition is a shaped possibility, not a commitment.
Why Assertion Is Secondary
Assertion adds force, but not structure.
An asserted proposition and an unasserted one share the same epistemic form. What differs is their uptake — not their propositionality.
This is why propositions can:
outlive their authors
circulate without endorsement
function within systems that no individual controls
Assertion is an overlay, not a foundation.
Propositions Without Subjects
Once propositions are treated as field-stabilised forms:
no subject is required to generate them
no belief is required to sustain them
no intention is required for their persistence
Subjects may take up propositions, but they do not ground them.
The epistemic field does.
Why This Matters
Detaching propositions from assertion allows us to:
analyse knowledge without psychologising
distinguish epistemic failure from moral fault
understand saturation as propositional overload, not confusion
prepare for modalisation
Propositions are the carriers of epistemic possibility.
But they do not yet organise that possibility.
What Comes Next
Propositions alone are flat. They do not yet distinguish necessity, possibility, likelihood, or constraint.
That work is done by modalisation.
The next post turns to this explicitly:
Modalisation and Epistemic Space
How propositions acquire structure, force, and constraint
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