Procedural Ambiguous Referents

Definition and scope

Procedural Ambiguous Referents are referents whose indeterminacy arises not from the thing referred to but from the sequence of steps by which it is approached. Where a Locative Ambiguous Referent resists a single position, a Procedural Ambiguous Referent resists a single route. The referent itself may be entirely stable — indeed, the Tower holds several cases in which the referent is a Concrete Referent of unimpeachable clarity — but the procedure that would establish contact with it admits of two or more genuine, non-equivalent paths, none of which can be shown to be canonical.

The category was first set down in Concordance 12, Annex Δ, which assigned it to the Department of Ambiguous Metrics alongside its better-known locative charges. Annex Δ is explicit that the indeterminacy is procedural rather than ontological, a distinction that the Manual of Concrete Referents later absorbed into its third recension without fully endorsing it.

Historical basis

The category's earliest recorded instance concerns the re-shelving of a damaged codex on Floor 88, where two routes from the recovery cart to the assigned shelf were of equal length and equal probability of success. The clerk on duty, one Hesper Vane, declined to choose between them, and the codex remained on the cart for eleven days. The resulting dispute was referred to The Silent College, which declined to rule, on the grounds that a choice between equal routes is not an ambiguity of the referent but an ambiguity of the chooser.

This ruling was subsequently contradicted by Concordance 27, which held that where the procedure itself is indeterminate, the referent must be considered indeterminate with it. The two positions have never been reconciled. Cross-references between the two documents are filed under Vault of Ambiguous Records, Shelf 9.

Classification

The Department of Ambiguous Metrics maintains three subclasses, distinguished by where in the procedure the indeterminacy falls:

• Antecedent ambiguity — the initial step cannot be uniquely identified. The classic instance is the Aisle of Ambiguous Prepositions, where the preposition governing the query admits of two readings before any movement begins.
• Intervening ambiguity — the procedure diverges mid-sequence and reconverges only at an outcome that both paths reach by different means. The Bureau of Ambiguous Real Estate reports this class most often in surveyor affidavits.
• Terminal ambiguity — the procedure is determinate throughout, but its end state cannot be confirmed as reached. This subclass is administered under the Principle of Terminal Referents and is generally considered closed to further appeal.

Measurement proceeds by Ambiguous Calipers, which must be set to a dissonant frequency as set out in Protocols for the Calibration of Ambiguous Calipers. Calibration is performed quarterly, or after any incident.

Points of disagreement

The Warren of Ambiguous Fonts holds that Procedural Ambiguous Referents are merely a rhetorical species of Identical Ambiguous Referents, differing only in whether the indeterminacy is described in verbs or nouns. The Warren's position is that all procedural ambiguity reduces, on sufficient analysis, to a set of identical outcomes wearing different precedents. The Department of Ambiguous Metrics rejects this, noting that its registry for Identical Ambiguous Referents and its registry for procedural cases are kept in separate ledgers for administrative reasons that have since been lost.

A third view, associated with the Chamber of Latent Referents, holds that the procedure is never truly indeterminate — that one path is always preferred and the appearance of parity is an artifact of incomplete record-keeping. This view has never been tested, because no one has yet produced a complete record of any procedure.

Administration

Cases are logged with the Department of Ambiguous Metrics and cross-filed at the Desk of Concrete Referents whenever a concrete referent is implicated, which is more often than the taxonomy would predict. Consultation hours are held on the second and fourth Thursday of each month, at the foot of the main stair; visitors are reminded that the stair itself is not a Procedural Ambiguous Referent, having been ruled concrete in 3891.

"Where two routes are of equal standing, neither is a route. The Tower does not proceed."

— Concordance 27, Annex 4