Epistemological implications

Memorialization and recollection as conditions for knowing

Introduction

To know: be 'familiar' implies a lineage—a history accumulated in prior knowing: 'action to know'. Knowledge is the 'manner of knowing' in which we come to be familiar.^[1]

The Vital domain establishes referential limogenesis as the capacity to consult a compressed record of past conferences of difference to generate, maintain, and repair a physical boundary e.g. cell membrane. Knowing: the 'action to know' is the same capacity applied to the epistemic boundary: the horizon between familiar and unfamiliar, known and not-yet-known. Just as a cell adjusts its membrane by referring to its genome, so does knowing adjust the boundary of what we know by referring to memorialized records of past conferences of difference. Knowledge: the 'manner of knowing' is the compressed pattern that enables future knowing to operate with less friction.

Knowing is re-conferring that includes memorialization and recollection—the capacities to create and retrieve records of past conferences of difference.^[2] As established in the mathematical foundations of Appendix A, (Equations A.6–A.7), every difference is itself a conference of differences—a fractal hierarchy of self-similar process. Re-conferring is the process that makes memorialization and recollection possible, bearing together its own past conferences of differences with those in the perceived 'now'. The knower and known emerge as temporary stabilizations within this re-conferring process, not as pre-existing relata.^[3] This section explores the epistemological implications of the CoD: what it means for the nature, limits, and methods of knowledge when knowing is understood as 'action to know' and knowledge as the 'manner of knowing'.

The necessary conditions for knowing

In order for a being to know, it must have the capacity for re-conferencing: the bearing together of past conferences of difference with that of the present such that the past informs the present. Re-conferencing involves two sub-processes:

• memorialization is the 'process of making memory' i.e. sensing, encoding, and maintaining memory of significant conferences of difference. This provides a record of the past needed to inform response to the present.
• recollection is the 'process of gathering back' i.e. referring: 'bearing back' that which has been memorialized into the conference of difference of the 'present'. This makes the past available to the present conference of difference.

Re-conferencing (memorialization and recollection) informs knowing: the 'action to know' i.e. that applies recollected memorializations to reduce uncertainty in being: 'action to be'.^[4]

A being that cannot memorialize cannot create the record. A being that cannot recollect cannot retrieve the record. Without both capacities, there is nothing to inform knowing—only mechanical response or raw conference without self-informing memory. A conference of difference that lacks memorialization and recollection is self-blind—it cannot mean: 'intend' anything across time, cannot re-confer upon its own prior experience. It exists, but it cannot sense: 'transduce' its existence or carry meaning: 'intending' towards its own future.

The subject-object problem resolved

Western epistemology has long been haunted by the subject-object distinction. How can a knowing subject have access to a world of objects outside itself? Descartes' cogito made the subject primary and the external world problematic. Kant reversed this: the world is constituted by the categories of understanding, so we can never know things-in-themselves. Both traditions struggle with the gap between knower and known.

The CoD dissolves this problem by re-grounding knowing in re-conferencing. Knowing is not a conferring between pre-existing knower and known. It is the re-conferencing of difference that produces both as temporary stabilizations within its own process. There is no gap to bridge because subject and object are not separate substances awaiting connection. They arise together, neither primary, within the referential conference of difference.

Consider perception—seeing a tree. This is not a subject representing an object. It is a re-conferencing of sensory differences (light, color, edge) with memorialized differences (past encounters with trees, expectations, attention). The perceiver and the perceived stabilize within this process. The same holds for scientific knowledge: the scientist-as-knower and phenomena-as-known emerge through the ongoing re-conferencing of questions, experiments, data, and interpretation. Knowledge, as the 'manner of knowing', is the compressed 'how' of this process—the practices and protocols that carry the genealogy of prior inquiries into future ones.

The CoD thus offers a third way beyond realism (the world exists independently and we can know it as it is) and constructivism (we construct what we call knowledge). Realism is right that the world confers differences independently of us; constructivism is right that knowing is active, not passive. The CoD synthesizes both: knowing is the achievement of re-conferencing, within which both the conferring world and the conferring knower arise. Neither pre-exists. The subject-object problem, framed this way, simply dissolves.

Objectivity as diversity of power

Koan 50.5 states:

Only a diversity of power: 'ability' can approach objectivity in knowing and thus consciousness: a 'measure of knowing together'.

This is a radical reframing of objectivity. That which is objective: 'tending to lie against' derives its power from being placed against other perspectives, data, or observers. It is not achieved by the detached, dispassionate observer—the view from nowhere—but by integrating diverse perspectives. Subjectivity, by contrast, is 'tending to lie under' i.e. knowledge that rests beneath a singular source (the subject's own perspective, a single authority, a single method) without being placed against others. The objective conference of difference does not eliminate subjectivity; it holds multiple subjectivities against one another, allowing their differences to confer. Objectivity increases as more differences are included: different methods, different cultural perspectives, different sensory modalities, different theoretical frameworks.

This has profound implications for scientific practice. The CoD framework suggests that:

• Interdisciplinarity is not a luxury but an epistemic necessity. A phenomenon can only be known objectively when it is conferenced from multiple disciplinary perspectives.^[5]
• Diverse research teams produce more objective knowledge. Diversity of background, culture, gender, and cognitive style brings more differences into the conference, enabling more robust bearing-together.^[6]
• Methodological pluralism is superior to methodological monism. No single method captures all relevant differences; objectivity requires multiple methods conferring.
• Indigenous and local knowledge are not alternatives to science but essential participants. Traditional ecological knowledge, for example, brings differences (temporal depth, relational orientation, place-specificity) that science alone cannot provide.^[7]

Objectivity, in the CoD framework, is not a property of individual knowers or even individual propositions; it is a property of communities (conferences) of knowing.^[8] A knowledge claim is objective to the degree that it has emerged from a diverse, reciprocal, well-contained conference of inquirers and phenomena.

Coherence, responsibility, and the pathology of knowing

The preceding sections established that knowing is re-conferring: the bearing of memorialized past conferences of difference together with the immediate conference, performing a fit-analysis that determines how prior knowing informs current knowing. This section addresses a question the preceding analysis leaves open: When does re-conferring produce generative rather than degenerative familiarity?

A conference of difference, by definition, is the bearing together of that which bears apart. The question is not whether differences are present—they always are—but whether the system has the capacity to respond to them generatively. That capacity is responsibility: the 'ability to respond' by re-conferring memorialized patterns with those sensed as the present moment.

The system of memorialization (whether a brain, a scientific community, or an artificial network) constantly strives to maintain coherence—not as an end in itself, but because decoherence degenerates power: 'ability'. Yet coherence itself is not a sufficient measure of epistemic health. A knowing system can, under certain conditions, achieve what we term hypercoherence: a state in which the network of memorialized CoDs becomes so tightly coupled that new differences are blocked or absorbed without genuine conferring.^[9]

In limogenetic terms, hypercoherence corresponds to boundary ossification—the epistemic membrane maintains integrity but loses the ability to respond generatively to new differences. It preserves existing knowledge: 'manner of knowing' at the expense of that which is new. A cult is not impermeable; it is irresponsible — it has templates, but those templates block or misframe differences rather than enabling genuine conferring.

Between the extremes of hypercoherence (rigid irresponsibility) and fragmentation (chaotic irresponsibility) lies what we propose as responsibility: the 'ability to respond' to difference through memorialized templates that enable recognition, conferring, and reconfiguration. A responsible conference of difference is not one that 'admits' differences (all conferences of difference do) but one that can confer with them generatively—recognizing relevant differences, bearing them together with existing knowledge, and reconfiguring when fit demands it.^[10]

A responsible knowing system is neither rigid (unable to respond to new differences) nor chaotic (lacking stable templates to respond at all). It has the capacity to respond to differences generatively—to recognize which differences it can respond to, to bear them together with existing memorialized conferences of differences, and to reconfigure its network when responsibility demands it. Whether and how such a regime is achieved and maintained across different knowing systems (neural, social, artificial) is a central question for further research.

Generative knowing is, under this framework, responsible knowing. It is not rigidly coherent (hypercoherence—irresponsibility through blocking) nor chaotically incoherent (fragmentation—irresponsibility through no stable response). It is the capacity to respond generatively to differences as they encountered.^[11]

The transition from hypercoherence to responsibility is not achieved, on the present account, by actively destroying old connections. Rather, the system builds new memorial pathways through additive conferring with novel differences. As these new pathways prove more generative—enabling the bearing of more differences together with less friction—they are preferentially reinforced through use. Old hypercoherent pathways, receiving less reinforcement, enter a state of passive decay and dormancy.^[12] The old rope bridge is not burnt; it simply falls into disuse as the community grows to prefer the new wooden or concrete bridge. Therapeutic transformation is thus, in this framework, a matter of competitive reinforcement, not targeted destruction.

Not all decoherence is pathological. Local, passive decoherence—the natural decay of pathways that are no longer reinforced—is proposed here as the mechanism by which hypercoherent systems become responsible: their rigid templates weaken, allowing new responses to form.

A difference that reveals a genuine incoherence between a memorialized CoD and a present conference of difference propagates through a responsible system—the system has the ability to respond to it, not block or absorb it without conferring. This propagation is experienced as doubt, surprise, or cognitive friction.^[13] The generative system does not eliminate doubt but follows it—allowing the difference to reconfigure the network toward better fit.

Dormant pathways remain available for recognition (negative knowledge) without dominating current knowing. This explains, within the framework, how a person can leave a cult without forgetting its dynamics: the cult's cognitive patterns become dormant, not destroyed. They can be recognized if encountered again, but they no longer shape action. Dormancy is, on this account, the epistemic value of preservation without dominance.^[14]

Degenerative knowing, by contrast, immunizes against difference. Yet this very immunity confers real power: 'ability' in specific domains. Hypercoherence provides belonging—a clear boundary between in-group and out-group, reducing existential isolation. It provides a pre-defined map of being—answers to questions of purpose, morality, and mortality that would otherwise require ongoing negotiation. It enables decisive, rapid action without the paralysis of doubt. For these reasons, hypercoherence is not merely a cognitive defect but a functional adaptation to particular needs—especially the need to escape the anxiety of uncertain being.^[15]

A faith network that absorbs the incoherence of creatio ex nihilo by compartmentalizing 'faith' from 'reason' is hypercoherent. It maintains overall coherence, but at the cost of fidelity to the conference (see next section). The system has traded long-term generative capacity (the ability to learn from new differences) for short-term stability and the psychological benefits of certainty, belonging, and existential security.^[16]

This framework reveals that the earlier emphasis on diversity of power: 'ability' (Koan 50.5) is necessary but not sufficient. Diversity without responsibility—without the ability to respond to differences through appropriate memorialized templates—does not achieve objectivity. A conference may be diverse, but if it lacks the capacity to confer with those differences generatively (if it blocks, absorbs, or fragments under them), then objectivity—knowledge that tends to lie against multiple sources—is not achieved. True objectivity requires not only diverse participants but a responsible conference in which differences can be held against one another through genuine conferring, and where no single perspective can block or absorb differences without response.^[17]

Epistemology, under this reframing, becomes the study of how knowing systems maintain responsibility across changing conferences of difference. The normative standard is not truth as static correspondence nor coherence as logical consistency, but generative capacity: the system's ability to enter into new conferences of difference without losing the ability to act.^[18]

Truth as fidelity to conference

What becomes of truth? Traditional theories of truth—correspondence, coherence, pragmatic—each capture something essential but remain partial. The CoD suggests that truth is fidelity to the conference of difference.

• Correspondence captures the moment when the knower's manner successfully bears together with the phenomenon—when the differences align.
• Coherence captures the internal consistency of a knowledge system—the bearing together of differences within the knower's own conferring.
• Pragmatic captures the generative power of knowledge—true knowledge enables further conferring, while false knowledge forecloses it.

Truth, from the CoD perspective, is not a static property of propositions but a dynamic achievement of ongoing conferring of differences. A proposition is true not because it corresponds to a static reality but because it enables successful conference between knower and known, between different knowers, and across time. Truth is what works to keep the conference of difference of knowing generative.

Implications for epistemic authority and pluralism

The CoD framework has significant implications for how we understand epistemic authority. If objectivity requires diversity of knowledge, then no single perspective—however expert—can claim final authority. Epistemic authority is distributed across different manners of knowing in the conference of difference.

This does not imply relativism (all perspectives are equally valid) nor does it imply that expertise is irrelevant. Expertise is the capacity to conference differences effectively within a domain; it is a form of compressed knowing that enables efficient navigation of complex phenomena. But expertise must be open to re-conferencing with other manners of knowing. The expert must be accountable to the phenomena and to the broader community of inquirers and stakeholders.

The CoD framework thus supports a pluralist epistemology without sliding into relativism. There are better and worse ways to conference difference; some conferences of difference are more generative, more inclusive, more responsible than others. The standard is not a single method or viewpoint but the health of the conference of difference itself.

Conclusion: knowing as responsible participation

The CoD reframes epistemology from the study of justified true belief to the study of generative conferring. Disciplined knowing is not a state but an action—a disciplined 'process of acts' as a conference of difference between knower and known, among knowers, and across multiple conferences of difference. But this action is always embedded in a network of memorialized past conferences—a network that strives for coherence but can degenerate into hypercoherent rigidity or decoherent fragmentation.

Under this reframing, to know: be 'familiar' is the trace of successful responsible conferring; knowing is the action that produces that trace; knowledge is the 'manner of knowing' that emerges from—and enables—responsible dynamics. Epistemology thus becomes the study of how lineages of conferring maintain the delicate balance between coherence and response, and how that balance compresses into power: 'ability'.

This reframing has implications for how we educate, how we conduct research, and how we understand the relationship between science and society. Education becomes not the transmission of information but the cultivation of epistemic responsibility—the ability to respond generatively to new differences, to recognize which differences matter, and to reconfigure one's memorialized templates when fit demands it. Research becomes not the production of facts but the design of responsible conferences—conferences in which differences can propagate and be held against each other, where no single perspective can block or absorb differences without genuine conferring. The relationship between science and society becomes not the application of expert knowledge to passive populations but the ongoing responsible conference between diverse manners of knowing—a conference that must remain capable of being responsive if it is to remain generative.

The Gospel of Being

by John Mackay

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