An Epistemological Foundation for Governance Design: Semiotic Mediation and the Iteration of V&V (ガバナンス設計の認識論的基礎)

This record bundles the English-only, Japanese-only, and bilingual (EN/JA parallel-column) editions of the same paper, with the LaTeX sources. Provides an epistemological foundation for a highly abstract question: for institutions such as business models, organisational governance, and compliance, what do the indicators that describe them — and the relations among those indicators — mean? Starting from the constraint that human cognition is constituted only through semiotic mediation, the paper shows that the classical axiomatic approach (which requires prior closure of the universe of discourse, the formal language, and the granularity) cannot apply to koto (relational/semantic objects), and adopts Verification and Validation (V&V) — which incorporates the judging subject — as the primitive cognitive operation. Two foundational principles, read as Kantian regulative principles rather than Hilbertian formal axioms, are proposed: (1) the unavoidability of V&V iteration through semiotic mediation, and (2) the ergodicity condition for granularity choice. The mathematical grounding of V&V inseparability via the fundamental theorem of calculus, the structural isomorphism with the operator formalism of quantum mechanics (the conjectured non-commutativity of V&V), the operator/content distinction (illustrated by Leibniz's calculus vs Seki Takakazu's wasan), and the Münchhausen-trilemma reading are developed; dissipative structures ground the in-principle incompletability of V&V iteration. The framework exhibits structural isomorphism with BCS superconductivity theory, Feynman's path integral, and the Heart Sūtra's shiki-soku-ze-kū, with prospects for a categorical formulation 'more than mere analogy.' Companion preprints: Mediation, Différance, and the V&V Asymmetry (doi:10.5281/zenodo.20096463) — the discrete-phenomenological reduction; and Applications of the Governance Foundations Framework — the applications; with the underlying Prolegomena to an Epistemology of Mediation, which argues the sufficiency of treating différance as an operator (this paper argues its necessity).