Non-Narrative Café v7: Indexing Meaning
Posted: December 28, 2025 Filed under: AI-Powered Essays | Tags: identity, meaning, philosophy, systems Leave a commentWrite as a Stoppardian sequel skit where Pierce derives and defends recurrence as primitive semiotics to Kant, Hume and Wittgenstein.
ChatGPT Prompt
Dramatis Personae
- Charles Sanders Peirce — Doctoral Candidate, irrepressibly precise
- David M. Boje — Advisor, delighted, dangerous
- Immanuel Kant — Committee Chair, armed with categories
- David Hume — Examiner, smiling nihilist
- Ludwig Wittgenstein — Examiner, hostile to sentences
Scene
A seminar room that cannot decide whether it is empirical or transcendental.
A chalkboard reads:
“Antenarrative, Recurrence, and the Minimal Conditions of Meaning”
Peirce stands at the board. Papers everywhere. Boje reclines, enjoying this far too much.
Kant (Chair, sternly)
Herr Peirce.
Before we proceed, I must ask the necessary question.
Is your recurrence empirical…
or is it transcendental?
Peirce (brightly)
Yes.
(Pause.)
Kant
That is not—
Boje (interrupting, delighted)
—Exactly the right answer.
Kant (tight smile)
Let the record show that the advisor is encouraging ambiguity.
Boje
I prefer to say I am midwifing emergence.
Hume (cheerfully)
Mr. Peirce, I find your thesis most entertaining.
You claim that systems under selection produce recurrence,
that recurrence becomes indexable
and that this is the first appearance of meaning.
I see no necessity whatsoever.
Peirce
Nor do I.
Hume (blinks)
Then why do you persist?
Peirce
Because it persists.
(Hume laughs despite himself.)
Wittgenstein (from the corner)
Stop.
(Everyone stops.)
This sentence—
Antenarrative reveals recurrence, making it indexable—
what does it do (language-games)?
Peirce
It—
Wittgenstein
No.
Not what it means.
What does it do?
Peirce (after a beat)
It lets us point (ostensive definition) without explaining.
Wittgenstein
Good.
Then stop explaining.
(He sits back down, arms crossed.)
Kant (recovering control)
Mr. Peirce, let us be precise.
You assert that meaning begins before concepts,
before judgments,
before narratives.
You are aware this is extremely serious.
Peirce
Yes.
Kant
You are aware it threatens my entire project.
Peirce
Only if your project cannot survive scaling.
(Boje claps once. Kant glares.)
Boje (leaning forward)
Tell them the dangerous part, Charles.
Peirce
Which one?
Boje
The part where narrative is late
(antenarrative).
Peirce
Ah.
Narrative does not generate meaning.
It arrives afterward,
to explain why the index wouldn’t go away.
(Silence.)
Hume
So… the story is always an afterthought?
Peirce
A very confident one.
Hume
Marvelous.
I’ve been saying this (problem of induction) for years and no one believed me.
Kant (quietly)
You are saying that identity is inferred, not given.
Peirce
Yes.
Kant
That ontology is… provisional.
Peirce
Earned by survival.
(Kant removes his glasses.)
Wittgenstein (suddenly)
If the index disappears, does the system disappear?
Peirce
Yes.
Wittgenstein
Then nothing else matters.
(He nods. This is approval.)
Kant (sighing)
Advisor Boje, do you endorse this thesis?
Boje (grinning)
Wholeheartedly.
It explains why organizations tell stories
only after they’ve already failed or survived.
Kant
Very well.
(He straightens the papers.)
The committee finds that while the candidate has:
- violated the primacy of categories,
- offended causality,
- and undermined narrative identity,
he has nevertheless demonstrated that:
What persists under constraint may be indexed, and what is indexed may later be called meaning.
This is… regrettably coherent.
Hume
I vote yes, denying that my vote has any rational foundation.
Wittgenstein
Yes.
But don’t publish the explanation.
Boje
Yes.
And wait until management theory hears about this.
Kant (reluctantly)
The motion passes.
(Gavel.)
Epilogue
Peirce gathers his papers.
Peirce (to Boje)
Do you think they noticed?
Boje
Not yet.
But the index will recur.
Lights fade.
Appendix — Peirce’s Semiotic Levels
Provide a self-contained summary of Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic levels, framed to support the claim that indexing is the first semiotic level of meaning, prior to semantics, narrative, or self.
ChatGPT Prompt
A.0 Orientation: Why Peirce Here
Peirce developed semiotics not as a theory of language, but as a theory of how anything can function as a sign. His account is explicitly:
- pre-psychological
- pre-linguistic
- pre-narrative
This makes it uniquely suited for grounding antenarrative and Carbon Rule systems.
A.1 The Core Triad: Sign, Object, Interpretant
All Peircean semiotics begin with a triadic relation:
- Sign — that which stands for something
- Object — that which is stood for
- Interpretant — the effect of the sign (not necessarily a mind)
Crucially, interpretants need not be semantic, conscious, or symbolic.
(See the overview in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)
A.2 The Three Semiotic Modes (Ordered by Minimality)
Peirce distinguishes three irreducible modes of signification, ordered by dependency.
A.2.1 Index — Sign by Real Connection
An index is the most primitive semiotic form.
It signifies by:
- causal connection
- temporal contiguity
- spatial linkage
- historical trace
Examples:
- smoke → fire
- footprint → animal
- symptom → disease
Key properties:
- requires no resemblance
- requires no convention
- functions by re-encounterability
- points without explaining
An index is semiotic but not semantic.
This is why indexing is the first semiotic level of meaning.
A.2.2 Icon — Sign by Resemblance
An icon signifies by similarity or structural resemblance.
Examples:
- maps
- diagrams
- models
- analogies
Icons:
- presuppose indexical identification (you must already be able to pick out what resembles)
- introduce structure without convention
Icons add form, but not yet interpretation.
A.2.3 Symbol — Sign by Convention
A symbol signifies by rule, habit, or agreement.
Examples:
- words
- numbers
- formal languages
- narratives
Symbols:
- require shared norms
- enable semantics and truth conditions
- are historically and culturally contingent
Narrative and selfhood operate at this symbolic level, not earlier.
A.3 Semiotics vs Semantics (Critical Distinction)
- Semiotics concerns how something can function as a sign
- Semantics concerns what a sign means under rules
Indexes are semiotic without being semantic, which explains how:
- recurrence can be meaningful before explanation
- antenarrative can exist prior to story
- meaning can begin without interpretation
A.4 Ordering Matters
Peirce’s ordering is structural, not optional:
- Index — re-identifiable connection
- Icon — structured resemblance
- Symbol — conventional meaning
Later modes depend on earlier ones:
- symbols presuppose icons and indices
- narratives presuppose symbols
- identity presupposes recurrence
A.5 Alignment with Antenarrative
In antenarrative terms:
- Recurrence produces indexability
- Antenarrative is recurrence made visible
- Indexing is the first semiotic act
- Narrative is a late symbolic closure
Hence the core claim:
Antenarrative reveals recurrence; recurrence licenses indexing; indexing is the first semiotic level of meaning.
A.6 Canonical One-Sentence Summary
In Peirce’s semiotics, indexing is the minimal semiotic operation: signification by persistence and connection, prior to resemblance, convention, semantics, narrative, or self.
Radical Centrism 