Revisiting Non-Symbolic Coordination
Not all systems rely on meaning to operate. Biological, ecological, and technical coordination systems function through constraints, feedback loops, and local interactions. These systems generate outcomes that are coherent, stable, and adaptive — without symbolic representation.
Value arises naturally in these systems, but it is not symbolic. It is functional, relational, and non-semiotic. Cells respond to gradients, organisms adjust to environmental pressures, machines react to sensors — all according to conditions, not interpretation.
Distinguishing Value from Meaning
Meaning is symbolic, relational, and interpretive. Value, in this context, is practical, systemically enforced, and non-symbolic. Conflating the two is a common mistake that leads to overinterpretation, anthropomorphisation, or moral projection onto systems that do not possess symbolic awareness.
Understanding the distinction is critical. When meaning is projected onto value-driven coordination, systems are judged for qualities they cannot possess. Conversely, the ethical or semiotic work of humans can be misread as functional necessity.
The Ethical Temptation of Conflation
Humans tend to anthropomorphise or moralise systems. This is understandable: we are conditioned to see intention and reason in behaviour. But doing so can obscure the real work of coordination and the real responsibilities of attention and care.
The temptation is to think that because a system produces an outcome, it also intends it or meaningfully achieves it. This is the precise error semiotic awareness must resist.
Coordination and Disruption
Where value operates without meaning, systems are efficient and robust. Where meaning enters, friction occurs. Semiotic excess challenges predictable outcomes. The non-symbolic system does not accommodate interpretive surplus; it tolerates it only with cost.
Understanding value without conflating it with meaning prepares us to observe semiotic excess — to see how meaning destabilises coordination, and why that destabilisation, though costly, is both necessary and desirable.
Implication
This episode sets the stage for the next: exploring meaning without coordination. It establishes that non-symbolic value systems are not deficient in significance; they operate in a different register. This recognition allows us to explore the deliberate choices of practices that prioritise symbolic meaning, art, myth, and play over system efficiency.
Meaning is not required for coordination. But when it arrives, it must be protected — even if it destabilises the systems it encounters.
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