Symbol As Matrix Of Memory And Reason

Symbol as Matrix of Memory and Reason

Definition:

In the Ontology of Emergent Complexity (OCE), the symbol is understood not only as operative inscription, but as a functional matrix of memory and rationality. What allows a system to remember, reason, or reconfigure its functioning is the existence of operative symbolic structures that maintain significant absences present, in a materially inscribed form.

Symbolizing is, in this sense, differentially retaining what is no longer present, in order to make it operable. All functional memory is a symbolic inscription: it does not repeat what passed, but reconfigures the present based on operative absences. All reason is a sequence of symbols that self-modulate to maintain functional coherence.

There is no intelligence or persistence without symbols.

Function in the Ontology of Emergent Complexity:

The function of the symbol as a matrix is twofold:

1. Memorial: stabilizing an absent difference so that it can be reinscribed in other moments and contexts, maintaining a non-repetitive functional continuity.
2. Rational: articulating symbols in a way that allows selections, logical operations, projections, and internal reorganizations — without the need for natural language or a conscious subject.

Memory is not a passive archive, but an active system of symbolic updating. Reason is not an immaterial function, but a consequence of a symbolic field sufficiently complex to reorganize itself.

Distinctive Characteristics:

• The symbol is the material condition for operative functional continuity.
• All memory is symbolic reinscription: the past is operated as difference in the present.
• All reason emerges from symbolic relations that maintain and self-modulate.
• Intelligence does not stem from consciousness, but from the capacity of a symbolic system to reorganize itself.
• The symbolic matrix does not store images: it stores functional relations.

Formal Ontological Delimitation:

• Operative memory does not exist without a symbol: forgetting is the loss of functional inscription.
• Reason does not exist without functional symbolic articulation between operative differences.
• Rationality is an emergent effect of material symbolic complexity.
• Every symbol stores and projects: it stabilizes the absent and reorganizes the present.
• All intelligence is a symbolic management of operative absences.
• Technical and non-human systems can also produce a symbolic matrix, if they operate functional reorganization of absences.

Epistemological Corollary:

Rejected:

• Views of memory as a passive representational archive.
• Conceptions of reason as an immaterial or introspective faculty.
• Computational models that confuse sequence with symbolic intelligence.

Recognized:

• Memories that reorganize the system based on stabilized absences.
• Symbolic processes that generate non-linear operative selections.
• Devices and systems that, even if non-biological, manage to produce symbolic persistence and rational articulation.