Meaning System Science

Authors: Jordan Vallejo and the Transformation Management Institute Research Group

Status: Monograph A2 | November 2025

Abstract

Meaning System Science (MSS) is the scientific framework for diagnosing interpretive reliability within meaning systems. It specifies a minimal diagnostic architecture—Truth Fidelity (T), Signal Alignment (P), Structural Coherence (C), Drift (D), and Affective Regulation (A)—that governs whether meaning remains reconstructable, compatible, and corrigible under constraint.

MSS requires an explicitly declared meaning-system boundary and membership condition so interpretive claims remain comparable, auditable, and grounded in checkable traces rather than narrative accounts. System admissibility and identity constraints are specified by System Existence Theory (SET) and are not defined within MSS.

MSS does not define the interpretive process itself, event identity, binding mechanics, post-closure authorization regimes, or re-opening thresholds. Those constructs are specified in the Canonical Definitions, Monograph A7 (Forces & Dynamics of Interpretation), and Monograph B4 (Temporal Behavior of Meaning Systems).

MSS provides the diagnostic foundation for applied instruments, including proportional stability diagnostics and transformation governance standards, without adjudicating authority, legitimacy, or moral correctness.

I. Introduction

Interpretation is the condition that enables coordinated action in complex systems. Policies, decisions, instructions, norms, and model outputs all depend on shared assignments of reference and action relevance. When interpretive conditions remain stable, coordination proceeds with limited corrective effort. When they become unstable, even routine action requires repeated clarification, exception handling, and escalating governance overhead.

Modern environments intensify interpretive demand while compressing correction capacity. Signals arrive across multiple channels with uneven timing, resolution, and authority. Roles and tools update asynchronously. Artificial intelligence increases output volume and plausibility while lowering the marginal cost of variation. Under these conditions, meaning systems face more competing action-relevant interpretations than their pathways can reliably integrate.

Meaning System Science addresses this problem by treating interpretation as a system behavior, not as a synonym for language, belief, culture, or intent. A system interprets when it evaluates signals relative to reference conditions and routes action under constraint. This function is substrate-neutral: it applies to human, organizational, institutional, and artificial systems alike.

MSS provides a structural account of how interpretive reliability is preserved, degraded, and restored, without collapsing diagnosis into persuasion, messaging, or attribution to individual traits.

II. Definition of Meaning System Science

Meaning System Science is the scientific study of the conditions under which meaning production remains reliable within a declared meaning system.

In MSS, meaning is not semantic content or belief. Meaning is the action relevance assigned within an Interpretive Event when an evaluated interpretation becomes binding and constrains what the system treats as permissible, required, or prohibited next. The post-binding force-bearing state is specified elsewhere as Action-Governing Meaning (AGM).

MSS governs the reliability of that production—whether meaning remains reconstructable, compatible, and corrigible across roles and time—without defining the semantic, moral, or narrative content of meanings themselves.

MSS is defined by five commitments:

1. Meaning is structural. Interpretive reliability depends on system conditions and routable constraints, not on intent, eloquence, or persuasion alone.

2. Meaning is proportional. Stability depends on relationships among conditions, not on the strength of any single factor.

3. Meaning is patterned. Meaning systems exhibit repeatable failure and stability signatures under comparable conditions.

4. Meaning is analyzable. Interpretive behavior can be evaluated from checkable traces: artifacts, signals, pathways, correction behavior, and outcomes.

5. Meaning is cross-scale. The same architecture applies across individuals, teams, organizations, institutions, and artificial agents when interpretation governs action over time.

MSS does not compete with domain-specific theories of language, cognition, law, or culture. It provides a unifying diagnostic layer that allows interpretive reliability to be evaluated as a system property within an explicitly declared boundary.

III. The Minimal Architecture of Interpretive Reliability

Regardless of domain or substrate, interpretive reliability requires five structural conditions. MSS formalizes these as diagnostic variables.

Truth Fidelity (T)

Truth Fidelity is the degree to which reference conditions, evidence, and decision rationales remain reconstructable and usable across roles and time. T is evaluated through reference artifacts, verification routines, traceability rules, and the continuity of reference claims treated as in force.

Without sufficient T, interpretive claims lose comparability and drift toward narrative substitution.

Signal Alignment (P)

Signal Alignment is the degree to which authority signals, incentives, cues, and action weight converge on the same reference conditions. P is evaluated through consistency across channels, stability of criteria, and the ratio of reinforcement to contradiction in operational signaling.

Without sufficient P, identical conditions yield incompatible routing despite shared reference artifacts.

Structural Coherence (C)

Structural Coherence is the availability and continuity of pathways through which interpretation routes for decision, correction, and closure within the declared boundary. C is evaluated through pathway clarity, decision rights continuity, handoff integrity, and the reconstructability of correction and escalation routes.

Without sufficient C, meaning cannot reliably propagate or be revised.

Drift (D)

Drift is the post-crystallization rate at which unresolved inconsistencies accumulate faster than the meaning system can correct and integrate them. D is evaluated through persistence of contradictions, exception growth, recurring re-interpretation of settled baselines, and correction backlog relative to throughput.

Drift is a rate, not a defect. It distinguishes isolated variance from systemic accumulation pressure.

Affective Regulation (A)

Affective Regulation is the system’s capacity to sustain update and correction quality under load. A is evaluated through correction throughput under consequence, recovery after disruption, stability of decision quality under pressure, and the ability to hold uncertainty long enough to complete verification and correction routines.

Without sufficient A, correction pathways saturate even when reference and structure remain intact.

ogether, these variables are sufficient as a minimal diagnostic architecture for interpretive reliability within a declared meaning-system object.

IV. Meaning-System Boundary and Membership Conditions

MSS requires explicit declaration of the system object under analysis. A meaning system is not a topic, channel, or cultural label. It is a bounded environment whose interpretive reliability can be evaluated from artifacts, signals, pathways, and outcomes.

Boundary

Boundary specifies what is in scope for interpretation, correction, and accountability. At minimum, boundary declaration states:

• the coordination or decision domain being governed,

• the authoritative artifact set used to establish or audit reference,

• the time window over which continuity and correction are evaluated.

Membership

Membership conditions specify who or what participates in the interpretive loop and under what rules their inputs count. Membership determines which agents, roles, or systems are authorized to generate, modify, or finalize governing meaning within the boundary.

Boundary and membership do not add variables. They define the unit of analysis to which T, P, C, D, and A apply. Without them, interpretive claims become non-comparable.

Interpretive Events are the minimal observable unit within the declared system object and are defined in the Canonical Definitions.

V. The Five Sciences of Meaning

MSS integrates five scientific domains by treating each as a partial view of the same system behavior:

• Semantics → Truth Fidelity (reference and verification discipline)

• Semeiology → Signal Alignment (action-relevant signaling)

• Systems Theory → Structural Coherence (pathways and dependency structure)

• Thermodynamics → Drift (accumulation rate under constraint)

• Affective Science → Affective Regulation (capacity under load)

Interpretive reliability is not reducible to any one domain. It emerges from their proportional interaction within a declared boundary.

VI. Why Interpretation Fails Without a Structural Theory

Without a structural theory, interpretive failure is commonly misattributed to:

• miscommunication instead of reference failure,

• misalignment instead of signal incoherence,

• poor execution instead of pathway breakdown,

• burnout instead of regulation saturation,

• resistance instead of accumulated drift.

MSS replaces persuasion-based explanations with diagnostic ones by requiring:

• boundary and membership declaration,

• variable-level hypotheses,

• proportional reasoning,

• evaluation from checkable traces.

The correct diagnostic question is not who is wrong, but which stability conditions are out of proportion within the declared system object.

VII. Meaning Systems as a System Class

Meaning systems constitute a system class defined by invariant stability requirements rather than by content, mechanism, or substrate. A system belongs to this class when coordinated action depends on the same minimal architecture (T, P, C, D, and A) operating proportionally within a boundary.

Interpretation in this sense is not uniquely human. It occurs wherever signals must be evaluated relative to reference promises and routed into action under constraint.

VIII. Scientific Criteria

Meaning System Science satisfies general scientific criteria by:

• specifying a minimal diagnostic architecture,

• requiring explicit unit-of-analysis declaration,

• grounding evaluation in reconstructable traces,

• supporting cross-scale application,

• enabling falsifiable, proportional hypotheses.

The explanatory power derives from constrained diagnosis, not from moral or metaphysical claims.

IX. Relation to Applied Disciplines

MSS provides the diagnostic foundation for:

• Proportional Stability Diagnostic Protocols, which estimate interpretive reliability without adjudicating authority.

• Transformation Science, which studies reorganization under uneven variable movement.

• Transformation Management, which governs change by preserving verification, signal alignment, pathway coherence, correction capacity, and drift control within declared boundaries.

Authorization, legitimacy, and regime doctrine are defined elsewhere and are not inferred from MSS diagnostics.

X. Conclusion

Meaning System Science defines interpretive reliability as a system property. It establishes the meaning system as the unit of analysis, requires explicit boundary and membership conditions, and specifies a minimal diagnostic architecture evaluable from artifacts, signals, pathways, and outcomes.

By separating diagnosis from authority and process from persistence, MSS enables interpretive stability to be analyzed, governed, and restored across human and artificial systems without shifting the system object midstream.

Citation

Vallejo, J. (2025). Monograph A2: Meaning System Science. TMI Scientific Monograph Series. Transformation Management Institute.