Registration at the Limit of Recognition
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This paper develops and extends a registrar-based theory of knowledge previously introduced in The Limits of Enumeration: A Registrar-Based Theory of Knowledge and Beyond Enumeration: Minimal Action and the Dynamics of Registration. In those works, knowledge was approached as an operational outcome of registration rather than as a representational or justificatory state, and enumeration was shown to be insufficient for accounting for epistemic stability. The present study clarifies and refines this framework by systematically distinguishing data, information, and knowledge in functional rather than semantic terms. A registrar is treated as a minimal epistemic structure capable of producing stable knowledge through the comparison of traces, without requiring transparency of internal states or direct access to external reality. Particular attention is given to the limits of recognizability: the paper demonstrates that registration and operational stability may persist even where knowledge cannot be externally recognized or coordinated. By introducing the boundary case of the solitary registrar, the analysis shows that multiplicity is not an ontological presupposition but a functional requirement of recognizability. This allows the framework to account for epistemic opacity without invoking Kantian transcendental conditions or collapsing into solipsism. Ordering, comparison, and stabilization are treated as effects of registration dynamics rather than as a priori forms. The result is a non-representational, non-anthropocentric model of knowledge that both preserves the insights of the earlier registrar-based approach and exposes its implicit assumptions. The paper thus positions itself not as a standalone construction, but as a systematic continuation and internal critique of the registrar framework, extending its scope while explicitly marking its limits.
Author: Zaichenko, Vladimir
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7127907623
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