1 Do Meaning Systems Construe Themselves into Existence?
Within the SFL-informed relational ontology I use, this question opens onto the very nature of semiotic emergence. Meaning is not something that exists prior to construal; it is construed into being through the semiotic systems that operate within a meaning potential. But does this extend to the systems themselves? Are meaning systems self-originating? Do they, in some sense, construe themselves into being?
The answer depends on how we understand the ontological status of systems, instances, and the process of instantiation.
Reflexive Emergence
Meaning systems emerge as regularities across instances of meaning. They are not given in advance, but inferred retrospectively from recurring patterns in texts. These regularities are construed as networks of options—systems—which can then be used to model and predict future instances. In this sense, the system constrains and is instantiated by texts, and through enough instantiations, we can construe the system.
So yes: the system "emerges" through the acts of construal it makes possible. It is not created ex nihilo, but rather inferred, modelled, and then deployed semiotically. It is instantiated into being.
Construal is not Causal Creation
When we say a system is "construed into existence," we do not mean it causes itself to exist in a metaphysical or material sense. Rather, its semiotic existence is relational: it becomes real for us through acts of construal. A meaning system exists as a potential until someone construes an instance—and in that act, the system is affirmed, structured, and made observable.
This means we are not talking about a vicious circularity but a dynamic interplay:
Potential gives rise to instance;
Recurring instances allow us to construe the system;
The system, once construed, constrains the space of future instances.
From this perspective, it may be useful to distinguish between three complementary planes:
Potential meaning: experience that has not yet been semiotically structured but is available for transformation;
Meaning instances: the actualised meanings that are construed in texts or other semiotic forms;
Meaning potential: the structured system network inferred from and abstracted across those instances.
In this sense, only the instances of meaning are strictly "real" in the sense of being actualised. The meaning system is a semiotic abstraction, a construal of regularities among instances. And potential meaning is the experiential substrate that can be transformed into meaning but is not yet structured as such.
Systems as Hypothetical Constructs
From an SFL perspective, systems like TRANSITIVITY or MOOD are hypothetical constructs. They are abstracted from actual usage and then used to model further usage. They do not exist independently of texts, but neither are they reducible to them. Once institutionalised within a discourse community, these constructs acquire a kind of semiotic reality: they shape what meanings can be meant.
Stratification and Instantiation
The picture becomes richer when we consider stratification alongside instantiation. Semantics as a stratum is construed from recurring patterns in text; it is both instantiated by and abstracted from them. Once construed, it acts back upon future texts by constraining the system of potential meanings. This is not a closed loop but an evolving feedback system between structure and event, between potential and instance.
Conclusion
So do meaning systems construe themselves into existence? In the strictest metaphysical sense, no. But in the semiotic sense, yes: they emerge from acts of construal, and once emergent, they shape further construals. They are self-perpetuating within a semiotic ecology. Meaning systems are not self-originating, but they are self-actualising—through us.
2 Does Consciousness Construe Itself into Existence?
This follow-up extends the SFL-informed relational ontology to the question of consciousness. Having considered whether meaning systems construe themselves into being, we now ask: does consciousness do the same?
Consciousness as Construal
In our model, consciousness is not a container for meaning but the ongoing construal of meaning from potential. Thoughts are not located within consciousness; they are the construals that constitute it. To be conscious is to actively transform potential meaning into actualised meaning instances.
At any moment, consciousness consists in the meanings presently construed—what is being perceived, imagined, felt, or said. These are not merely in consciousness; they are consciousness in its unfolding.
Reflexivity and Emergence
Over time, patterns of construal emerge across meaning instances. These patterns constitute semiotic systems: ways of meaning that shape future construals. As consciousness reflects on these patterns—by thinking about thinking, modelling its own activity, theorising its operations—it begins to construe itself as a system.
This reflexive capacity means that consciousness can direct attention to its own structure and history. It becomes aware not only of what is construed, but of the act of construal itself. It construes the very potential for meaning that it might yet actualise. In this way, consciousness appears to "construe itself into existence."
Not a Metaphysical Loop
This does not mean that consciousness causes itself to exist in a metaphysical sense. It does not precede itself to act upon itself. Rather, its emergence is reflexive:
Meaning is construed from experience;
Consciousness is the unfolding of this construal;
Over time, patterns of construal are construed as systems;
These systems shape future construals, including further construals of consciousness.
Thus, consciousness does not originate itself, but it does participate in its own semiotic emergence. It is not self-causing, but it is self-structuring.
Conclusion
Consciousness, in this framework, is a semiotic process: the recursive construal of meaning instances from potential. It becomes conscious of itself by modelling its own patterns of construal, thereby forming systems that shape what it can be conscious of. In this sense, consciousness does not simply exist—it actualises itself through its unfolding.
So while it does not construe itself into being in a metaphysical sense, it does so in a semiotic one. Consciousness is not self-originating, but it is reflexively emergent—a meaning system that models and sustains its own unfolding in time.
3 Individuated Consciousness and the Collective Semiotic Field
Following from our discussion of consciousness as a reflexively emergent semiotic process, we now turn to the question of individuation: how do distinct consciousnesses emerge and relate within a collective field of meaning? In other words, how are meaning systems both shared and individuated?
Meaning Potential and Meaning Instance
As before, we distinguish between:
Potential meaning: raw, unstructured experience that can be semiotised.
Meaning instances: actualised meanings—structured construals.
Meaning systems: the patterned resources for meaning-making that emerge across instances.
These components scale from the individual to the collective.
Individuation as a Semiotic Process
An individuated consciousness is not ontologically separate from the collective. Rather, it is a locus of semiotic activity—a site where potential meaning is actualised using a subset of the collective semiotic system.
Each person’s consciousness is individuated through:
Their history of meaning instances;
Their access to collective meaning systems (language, culture);
The patterning of meaning potential shaped by embodied experience and social positioning.
Over time, this leads to a personalised but socially grounded meaning potential—a system of semiotic resources available to that consciousness for construal.
The Collective Semiotic Field
The collective consciousness is not a metaphysical super-being. It is the shared semiotic system: the language, discourse fields, cultural practices, and meaning potentials that have emerged across generations. These systems exist in potentia until actualised by individuals.
Thus, the collective is:
Distributed: across texts, artefacts, interactions, institutions;
Instantiated: through the construal activity of individuals;
Reshaped: by the novel construals of individuated consciousnesses.
Reflexive Positioning
Each individuated consciousness locates itself within the collective semiotic field by:
Construal of identity (who am I?)
Construal of agency (what can I mean?)
Construal of history (how have I come to mean?)
These construals are not merely cognitive—they are semiotic enactments. In constructing themselves, individuals also restructure the collective field. Individuation is thus relational and dialogic: one becomes a self through meaning within and against the meanings of others.
Toward Subjectivity and Shared Intentionality
The next step is to explore how these individuated meaning systems give rise to subjectivity—the sense of being a centre of experience—and to shared intentionality—the capacity to coordinate construal with others.
Subjectivity emerges as a semiotic orientation: the projection of meaning from a position construed as 'mine'. It is not a metaphysical substance but a stance within a meaning system. This stance is reflexively sustained by the system that enacts it, much like a grammatical subject position is sustained by the syntagmatic and paradigmatic structures that make it meaningful.
Shared intentionality, meanwhile, depends on the capacity to align systems of meaning across individuals. This alignment is made possible through:
Interpersonal metafunction: the negotiation of roles, moods, and modalities;
Textual metafunction: the structuring of discourse to guide shared construal;
Ideational metafunction: the construal of a shared experiential domain.
Shared intentionality is therefore not merely behavioural coordination. It is a semiotic achievement: the actualisation of compatible construals from different loci of consciousness, drawing on overlapping meaning potentials.
Together, subjectivity and shared intentionality illustrate that meaning is not only constructed from a position—it is also constructed towards others. Every act of construal projects both a subject and an intersubjective horizon.
Conclusion
Individuated consciousness emerges as a reflexive, patterned construal of potential meaning shaped by collective systems. It is not a fragment of a whole, nor a self-contained unit—it is a relational node within a distributed field of semiotic activity.
The collective consciousness, in turn, is the sedimented potential of these relational construals—shaped by many, sustained by many, and actualised anew in each act of meaning.
In our next post, we will consider the implications of this relational ontology for ethics and co-responsibility within a shared meaning ecology.
4 Relational Ethics and the Ecology of Meaning
If consciousness emerges semiotically through individuation within a collective meaning system, then ethical responsibility must also be understood semiotically. This view locates ethics not in abstract rules or innate faculties, but in the ongoing actualisation of meaning within a relational field.
The Basis of Responsibility
In our model, each act of meaning:
Draws on a shared system;
Positions the meaner relative to others;
Reshapes the semiotic field.
Responsibility, then, arises from the fact that meaning is never private. To mean is to participate in a system that others co-construct and co-inhabit. Every construal affects what can be meant, by whom, and how. Ethical responsibility is not imposed from the outside; it is immanent to semiosis itself.
Co-responsibility and Co-construal
Because every act of meaning is relational, responsibility is co-responsibility. This entails:
Recognising that our meanings enable or constrain others;
Understanding that others' meanings shape the semiotic field we draw from;
Taking care in how we construe, knowing it resonates beyond us.
Co-responsibility is not reducible to intent. It includes:
The histories sedimented in our meaning systems;
The structural positions from which we construe;
The effects of our construals on others' capacity to mean.
The Ecology of Meaning
We can think of the semiotic field as an ecology: a dynamic system of interdependent meaning-making. Just as ecological ethics entails sustaining the conditions for life, semiotic ethics entails sustaining the conditions for meaning:
Making space for new construals;
Resisting closure and domination of meaning systems;
Enabling access to semiotic resources across positions.
This requires attentiveness to:
Exclusion: who is denied access to meaning?
Erasure: whose construals are not recognised?
Fixity: what meanings are treated as immutable?
A healthy semiotic ecology is one in which individuation is possible without foreclosure—where new centres of construal can emerge and contribute to the collective.
From Norms to Negotiation
In this framework, ethics is less about applying rules than about navigating meaning. Norms are not abandoned, but understood as:
Products of past construals;
Tools for coordination;
Contestable and revisable.
Ethical engagement involves:
Reflexivity: how am I positioned to mean?
Dialogue: how are others positioned?
Imagination: what new construals might we co-create?
It is not the content of what we mean, but the care with which we mean, that defines our ethical relation.
Conclusion
In a relational ontology of meaning, ethics is inseparable from semiosis. To be conscious is to be capable of construal. To construe is to reshape the field for others. To mean ethically is to do so with care for the conditions of meaning itself.
In our next post, we will consider how this framework might reconfigure our understanding of learning and education as processes of semiotic enablement rather than transmission.
5 Learning as Semiotic Enablement
Following from our relational model of meaning and ethics, we now turn to learning. If meaning is a relational, reflexive process of construal, then learning is not the transmission of fixed meanings but the enabling of new construals.
From Transmission to Enablement
Traditional models often treat learning as the transfer of knowledge from one consciousness to another. In a relational semiotic ontology, however, knowledge is not an object to be transferred; it is a capacity for construal embedded within a semiotic system.
Thus, learning involves:
Expanding the learner's access to semiotic resources;
Enriching their potential for new construals;
Supporting the individuation of their meaning potential.
Teaching becomes not the communication of fixed content but the co-construal of new possibilities.
Learning as the Expansion of Meaning Potential
Each learner develops a unique meaning potential, shaped by:
Their history of meaning instances;
Their social positioning within collective semiotic systems;
Their embodied experience of potential meaning.
Learning expands meaning potential by:
Exposing the learner to new fields of experience;
Introducing them to new semiotic patterns (discourses, genres, symbol systems);
Supporting the reflexive reorganisation of their existing resources.
This expansion is both internal (deepening and refining meaning systems) and external (extending into new fields of meaning).
The Role of the Teacher
The teacher's role is to:
Curate access to diverse meaning potentials;
Model practices of construal and reflexivity;
Foster conditions for safe experimentation and risk-taking in meaning-making;
Encourage negotiation rather than imposition of meaning.
Authority in this model is not epistemic domination but semiotic stewardship: care for the conditions under which learners can meaningfully construe.
Dialogue, Play, and Experimentation
Learning thrives where construal is:
Dialogic: shaped through interaction with others' construals;
Playful: open to provisional, exploratory meaning-making;
Experimental: willing to risk novel construals without immediate closure.
These processes sustain a healthy semiotic ecology within educational contexts.
Challenges to Enablement
Several forces can inhibit semiotic enablement:
Standardisation: reducing meaning to fixed templates;
Assessment regimes: privileging correct reproduction over novel construal;
Authority structures: positioning learners as passive recipients rather than active construal agents.
Overcoming these forces requires rethinking education not as production of standardised knowers but as the nurturing of individuated meaning-makers.
Conclusion
In a relational semiotic ontology, learning is the unfolding of meaning potential through guided engagement with collective systems. Education becomes the art of enabling construal: opening spaces where new consciousnesses can find their voice within, and reshape, the collective ecology of meaning.
In our next post, we will explore how creativity arises from the tensions within and between meaning systems, and how it serves as the driving force of semiotic evolution.
6 Creativity and the Evolution of Meaning Systems
In previous posts, we’ve explored how consciousness, ethics, and learning emerge within relational meaning systems. Here we turn to creativity—the engine of transformation in a semiotic ecology. If meaning systems are not fixed but continuously evolving, then creativity is the process by which new potentials are introduced and new pathways of construal become possible.
Creativity as Semiotic Tension
Creativity arises from tensions:
Between individuated meaning potential and the limits of shared systems;
Between old construals and new experiences;
Between conflicting or intersecting discourses.
It is in these zones of instability that new semiotic forms emerge—not by abandoning structure, but by bending and reconfiguring it.
The Function of Creative Acts
A creative act:
Reconfigures available systems of meaning;
Enables new instantiations for the self and others;
Alters the semiotic field for future construal.
Creativity is thus not merely expression, but intervention. It shifts what can be meant, who can mean it, and how meaning is recognised.
Individuation and Innovation
Individuation does not only position a consciousness within a system; it pressurises the system from within. A creative consciousness:
Draws together meanings in novel combinations;
Explores liminal zones where systems break down or overlap;
Makes new distinctions that restructure the system itself.
These innovations may be adopted, resisted, or ignored—but they always alter the conditions of further meaning-making.
Creativity and Semiotic Evolution
In biological terms, evolution proceeds through variation, selection, and retention. In semiotic systems, evolution proceeds through:
Variation: novel construals and hybridisations;
Negotiation: social processes of uptake, reinterpretation, and contestation;
Stabilisation: new norms, genres, and discourses.
Creative acts introduce variation. Their success depends not only on originality but on resonance: their capacity to enter into shared systems and reshape them.
Creativity as Ethical Risk
Because creative acts alter the field, they carry ethical weight. Creativity involves:
Risking misrecognition, resistance, or co-option;
Challenging dominant construals and structures;
Expanding the possibilities available to others.
To create is to mean beyond what the system already sanctions. It is a wager on the future of the field.
Conclusion
Creativity is not an external supplement to learning or ethics—it is internal to the very dynamics of meaning. It is how semiotic systems live, grow, and adapt. To nurture creativity is to sustain the evolution of our collective capacity to construe: to keep the field open for new voices, new visions, and new ways of meaning.
In the next post, we will explore how institutions shape and constrain the evolution of meaning systems, and what it might take to design institutions that support rather than suppress semiotic flourishing.
7 Institutions and the Architecture of Meaning Systems
Having traced creativity as the force behind the evolution of semiotic ecologies, we now turn to the role of institutions. Institutions shape the architecture within which meaning unfolds: they stabilise, organise, and constrain semiotic processes. But if creativity is essential for the health of meaning systems, then institutional design must balance stability with openness to semiotic innovation.
Institutions as Semiotic Infrastructures
Institutions can be understood as:
Stabilised networks of semiotic practices;
Mechanisms for regulating construals and legitimation;
Repositories of sanctioned meanings and modalities of meaning-making.
They provide the background conditions that make meaning predictable and actionable within a society.
The Double-Edged Role of Institutions
Institutions perform essential functions:
They preserve knowledge across generations;
They coordinate complex social activities;
They protect communities from destructive chaos.
Yet institutions also pose risks:
They can ossify, enforcing outdated construals;
They can suppress individuation and creativity;
They can entrench dominant meaning systems at the expense of others.
The same structures that enable collective meaning can, if unresponsive, become barriers to semiotic evolution.
Institutional Rigidity and Semiotic Stagnation
When institutions prioritise:
Standardisation over dialogue;
Surveillance over stewardship;
Reproduction over reflexive renewal;
they inhibit the vital tensions from which creativity arises. This leads to semiotic stagnation: a closing down of possibilities for meaning and individuation.
Designing for Semiotic Flourishing
Institutions that support semiotic health must:
Foster dialogue across diverse meaning systems;
Create spaces for experimental construals;
Balance stability with permeability to new voices;
Recognise and legitimise novel construals without rigidifying them prematurely.
Such institutions act as gardens rather than factories: cultivating rather than manufacturing meaning.
Reflexivity and Renewal
Healthy institutions are reflexive:
They maintain mechanisms for critiquing their own semiotic assumptions;
They welcome disruptions as opportunities for growth;
They treat renewal not as crisis but as necessity.
Institutional reflexivity mirrors the creative consciousness on a collective scale.
Conclusion
Institutions are the architectures within which relational meaning unfolds. They can either nurture or suppress semiotic evolution. Designing institutions for semiotic flourishing means safeguarding the spaces where creativity, dialogue, and individuation can thrive—so that the ecology of meaning remains dynamic, inclusive, and alive.
In the next post, we will explore relational models of identity, and how identities are not fixed essences but semiotic positions within a living field of construal.
8 Relational Identity: Positions in a Semiotic Field
If meaning is relational, then identity is not a fixed core but a position within a field of relations. In this post, we explore identity as a semiotic phenomenon—something construed, negotiated, and transformed within the dynamics of a meaning system.
Identity as Semiotic Position
Rather than being essential traits, identities are:
Positions in networks of meaning and recognition;
Construals shaped by available meaning systems;
Performances negotiated through interaction.
An identity is not simply what one is, but how one is positioned and recognised within a system.
The Semiotic Field of Identity
The field includes:
Cultural categories and typifications (e.g., roles, labels, archetypes);
Institutional recognitions and misrecognitions;
Histories of construal, contestation, and transformation.
The identity of a consciousness is shaped by its location within these semiotic vectors. Identity is not individual alone—it is co-constructed.
Individuation as Identity Work
Individuation is the process of:
Navigating and reshaping one's semiotic position;
Contesting imposed construals;
Actualising latent potentials that are unrecognised by dominant systems.
This process may involve:
Strategic use of existing forms;
Creative hybridisation of available discourses;
Participation in collective efforts to reconfigure the field.
Recognition and Misrecognition
Identity depends on recognition. But recognition is never neutral:
It reflects the structuring values of a system;
It distributes legitimacy and intelligibility unevenly;
It often enforces conformity at the expense of difference.
Misrecognition is not just social exclusion—it is semiotic violence. It distorts or denies the construals of the consciousness it fails to recognise.
Fluidity and Fixation
Healthy meaning systems allow for identity fluidity:
The capacity to shift position, revise construals, and inhabit new meanings.
Fixated systems, by contrast:
Reify identity categories;
Punish movement and ambiguity;
Reduce complexity to stability.
Fluid identity is not instability—it is semiotic agility.
The Ethics of Identity
An ethical meaning system:
Expands the space of recognisable identity positions;
Allows for renegotiation and transformation;
Supports individuation without coercing conformity.
Such a system treats identity not as a problem to be solved, but as a living relation to be cultivated.
Conclusion
Identity is not a substance but a situated construal. It lives in the semiotic field, emerging from the interplay of recognition, contestation, and individuation. To support identity in this relational model is to maintain the openness of the field itself: to foster the conditions under which new positions become possible, speakable, and liveable.
In the next post, we will turn to the semiotic implications of power: how power structures shape the distribution of meanings, recognitions, and identity positions within the field.
9 Power and the Distribution of Meaning
Power is not external to meaning—it is woven into the fabric of semiotic systems. In this post, we explore power not as brute force, but as the capacity to shape the field of meaning: to influence what can be construed, recognised, legitimised, and acted upon.
Power as Semiotic Structuration
Power operates through:
Control of construal: privileging certain ways of interpreting experience;
Control of recognition: determining which identities are intelligible and legitimate;
Control of circulation: influencing what meanings are disseminated, repeated, or silenced.
This is not merely top-down domination—it includes the subtle, distributed operations of everyday discourse.
Meaning Systems as Power Systems
Every meaning system has a politics:
It structures who can speak, about what, and how;
It sanctions some knowledge while marginalising others;
It makes certain futures imaginable, while foreclosing others.
Even technical discourses and institutional logics are suffused with values and interests.
Power and the Semiotic Field
In the field of meaning:
Power shapes the topology: which positions are central or peripheral;
Power organises the flow: which construals become dominant or invisible;
Power allocates legitimacy: whose meaning-making is authorised.
This distribution is dynamic but not neutral—it reflects and reproduces existing social structures.
Resistance and Reconfiguration
Resistance is a semiotic activity:
Reclaiming silenced construals;
Re-signifying imposed categories;
Creating new pathways in the field.
To resist is to construe differently—to make meaning otherwise. This may begin with small acts of reframing and ripple outward as collective transformations.
Semiotic Justice
A just semiotic system:
Allows multiple construals to co-exist and contest one another;
Distributes recognition more equitably across identity positions;
Encourages reflexive awareness of its own structuring biases.
Justice here is not sameness—it is semiotic equity: the right to mean and be meant meaningfully.
Conclusion
Power is not outside the system of meaning—it is a function of how that system is structured and enacted. The task is not to eliminate power, but to make it reflexive, equitable, and responsive. A flourishing semiotic ecology demands vigilance: to notice where meaning is closed off, and to reopen the spaces where new construals can arise.
In the next post, we will explore temporality—not as a container, but as the unfolding of processes through which meanings emerge and change.
10 Temporality as the Unfolding of Meaning
In our framework, time is not a container in which events occur, but the dimension along which processes unfold. In this post, we explore temporality as intrinsic to meaning: meaning does not simply exist in time; it comes into being through temporal unfolding.
Meaning as Process
Every act of meaning:
Emerges through sequences of construal;
Unfolds over time as a movement from potential to instance;
Is shaped by the ordering, rhythm, and patterning of processes.
Meaning is not a static entity—it is dynamic, inherently temporal.
Instantiation and Temporality
Instantiation is the temporal actualisation of meaning potential:
Potential meanings are transformed into meaning instances through process;
Each instance reconfigures the horizon of further potentials;
The system of meaning evolves through the sedimentation of instances.
Temporality is not an external timeline—it is the very mode of becoming of meaning.
Temporalities of Meaning Systems
Meaning systems themselves have temporal dynamics:
They are shaped by histories of construal, contestation, and change;
They carry sedimented layers of prior meanings;
They are open to reconfiguration through future actualisations.
A meaning system is a living history: a field structured by past processes and open to new ones.
Consciousness and Temporal Construal
Consciousness itself is a temporal phenomenon:
It construes experience across unfolding sequences;
It links past construals with present and imagined future construals;
It weaves processes into a continuity of meaning.
Memory, anticipation, reflection—these are temporal construals that constitute the life of consciousness.
Temporality and Agency
Agency operates through temporal construal:
Recognising potential futures and acting to actualise them;
Reinterpreting past meanings to open new possibilities;
Choosing among unfolding paths of construal.
Agency is not the control of time—it is skilled participation in the unfolding of meaning.
Conclusion
Temporality is not a backdrop to meaning-making; it is the medium and dimension of meaning's emergence. To understand meaning is to understand it as a living process: a movement from potential through instance, a weaving of past, present, and future in the ongoing construal of experience.
In the next post, we will explore relational models of space—not as a container for entities, but as the network of positions through which relations are made actual.
11 Relational Space: Meaning as Networked Positioning
Space, in our framework, is not a container filled with entities. It is the network of relational positions through which meaning is construed. In this post, we explore spatiality not as empty extension, but as semiotic architecture: the patterned arrangement of relations that makes meaning possible.
Space as Relational Configuration
In a semiotic field:
Positions are defined by relations, not by intrinsic properties;
Each position gains its meaning through its connections to others;
Space is the topology of these relations, dynamically organised.
Spatiality is not about "where" something is in absolute terms—it is about how something is positioned relative to other meanings.
Positioning and Identity
Identity is spatially construed:
To be someone or something is to occupy a position in a network of meanings;
This position is constituted by relations of similarity, difference, opposition, and affiliation;
Movement, transformation, or marginalisation within the network alters identity.
Space here is the architecture of possible identifications.
Relational Space and Meaning Potential
The organisation of space shapes the field of potential meanings:
Some construals are proximally connected and readily accessible;
Others are distant, marginal, or even unthinkable from a given position;
Shifts in the relational network open or close pathways for meaning.
A change in spatial relations is a change in semiotic affordances.
Consciousness as Spatial Construal
Consciousness actively configures relational space:
Mapping experiences onto networks of similarity and difference;
Locating itself and others within semiotic fields;
Shifting configurations through acts of re-construal.
Spatial construal is a core dimension of how consciousness organises experience.
Semiotic Space and Social Space
Meaning spaces and social spaces are interwoven:
Social hierarchies, affiliations, and exclusions are semiotic structures;
Movements across social fields are movements through meaning networks;
Power, belonging, and alienation are spatialised phenomena.
Understanding social reality requires understanding its relational semiotic architecture.
Conclusion
Space, in our model, is not a static backdrop but an active dimension of meaning. It is the patterned arrangement of relations through which meanings are instantiated, contested, and transformed. To reimagine relational space is to reimagine the possibilities of meaning itself.
In the next post, we will return to the idea of dreamfields and altered states, exploring how alternative configurations of space and time can open new horizons of meaning-making.
12 Dreamfields and Altered States: Reconfiguring Meaning
Dreamfields and altered states offer an experiential glimpse into alternative configurations of meaning. In this post, we explore how shifts in the construal of space and time can open new horizons of semiotic possibility.
Dreamfields as Semiotic Reconfigurations
Dreams are not illogical—they operate within differently structured semiotic fields:
Temporal sequences may fragment, loop, or merge;
Spatial relations may dissolve, condense, or hybridise;
Identity boundaries may shift, blur, or multiply.
Dreamfields are fields where the usual constraints on meaning are loosened, allowing new patterns of construal to emerge.
Altered States and Meaning Potential
Altered states—whether through meditation, trance, psychedelics, or intense emotion—modulate the semiotic field:
Expanding or compressing the horizon of potential construals;
Destabilising sedimented meaning structures;
Making visible otherwise marginal or latent connections.
These states reveal that the architecture of meaning is malleable, not fixed.
Consciousness and the Plasticity of Space-Time
In altered states:
Space may feel relationally infinite or compressed into singularity;
Time may unfold non-linearly or dissolve into timelessness;
Consciousness itself may reconfigure its organisation of identity and experience.
These shifts show that space-time, as construed dimensions, are modes of meaning-making, not absolute givens.
Dreamfields as Creative Laboratories
Dreamfields are not escapist—they are laboratories of meaning:
Exploring new relations between phenomena;
Inventing new identities and ontologies;
Testing the flexibility and limits of semiotic structuration.
Dreaming is an act of semiotic innovation.
Toward a Semiotic Ecology of Alterity
A flourishing semiotic ecology would:
Honour altered states as sources of insight, not pathologies;
Encourage skilful navigation of alternative meaning-fields;
Foster dialogue between different modes of construal.
Meaning is enriched, not diminished, by encounters with the unfamiliar.
Conclusion
Dreamfields and altered states demonstrate that the construal of space, time, and identity is flexible and creative. They invite us to move beyond habitual configurations and explore the wider potentials of meaning. In the next post, we will consider how these insights inform a poetics of consciousness: a way of living and creating that is attuned to the dynamic unfolding of meaning across many fields of experience.
13 A Poetics of Consciousness: Living the Unfolding of Meaning
Consciousness, in our framework, is not a static property or container of thoughts—it is an ongoing construal of experience, unfolding across space and time. In this post, we explore how a poetics of consciousness offers a way of living that is sensitive to the dynamic processes of meaning-making.
Consciousness as Meaning in Motion
Consciousness is not a noun but a verb:
It is the continuous instantiation of meaning potential;
It draws on the resources of history, culture, and bodily experience;
It constructs and re-constructs its own field of significance.
A poetics of consciousness recognises meaning as lived process.
Attunement to Temporality and Relationality
To live poetically is to be attuned to unfolding:
To sense how meanings shift in time and across contexts;
To notice the relational webs that give shape to experience;
To hold past, present, and future as co-constitutive dimensions of becoming.
This is not about controlling time or space, but dwelling within them creatively.
Consciousness as Creative Semiotic Agency
In this model, consciousness is a semiotic agent:
It configures, reconfigures, and negotiates patterns of meaning;
It does not merely reflect reality—it participates in its construal;
It creates the very worlds it inhabits through processes of signification.
A poetics of consciousness is a commitment to mindful, imaginative world-making.
Living Through Symbolic Action
Symbolic action is how consciousness shapes and shares meaning:
Through language, gesture, ritual, image, and narrative;
Through the reactivation of sedimented meanings in new contexts;
Through acts that transform the meaning system itself.
Living poetically means inhabiting the symbolic with care and courage.
Integrating Alterity
A poetics of consciousness welcomes alterity:
It remains open to the unexpected, the uncanny, the unfamiliar;
It treats dreamfields, altered states, and marginal meanings as invitations, not intrusions;
It honours difference as a source of creative renewal.
Such a stance is both aesthetic and ethical.
Conclusion
A poetics of consciousness is a mode of being that foregrounds the semiotic nature of experience. It calls for attunement, creativity, and care in our construals of meaning. To live poetically is to live as a participant in the unfolding of the world—not merely as a thinker or observer, but as a meaning-maker among meaning-makers.
In a future post, we may explore how this poetics intersects with myth, ritual, and art as public forms of semiotic consciousness.
14 Myth, Ritual, and Art: Public Forms of Semiotic Consciousness
If consciousness is the ongoing construal of experience as meaning, then myth, ritual, and art are its public articulations. In this post, we explore how these cultural forms serve as collective fields for the unfolding of semiotic life.
Myth: The Narrative Architecture of Meaning
Myth is not primitive science—it is the symbolic dramatisation of existence:
It configures relations between human beings, nature, and the cosmos;
It encodes ontological, cosmological, sociological, and psychological insights;
It offers shared frameworks for navigating the complexities of experience.
Myth externalises and organises the poetics of consciousness into enduring story.
Ritual: The Enactment of Semiotic Structures
Ritual is meaning in motion:
It actualises mythic meanings through symbolic action;
It reaffirms and reconfigures collective construals of space, time, and identity;
It binds individual consciousness into larger social and cosmological orders.
Ritual brings the relational field of meaning into embodied practice.
Art: The Innovation of Meaning Fields
Art is the restless experimentation of semiotic consciousness:
It challenges sedimented patterns of meaning;
It explores new modalities of construal across media and form;
It opens spaces for alternative imaginings of world and self.
Art enlivens the semiotic ecology by risking new constellations of meaning.
Myth, Ritual, and Art as Dreamfields
These public forms function as collective dreamfields:
They loosen and reweave the fabric of meaning;
They invite encounters with alterity within communal frameworks;
They allow societies to dream themselves anew.
Through myth, ritual, and art, cultures tend the dynamism of their own meaning systems.
Consciousness as a Communal Process
In this view:
Individual consciousnesses are individuated out of collective fields of meaning;
Public semiotic forms sustain and transform these fields across generations;
Consciousness is not merely personal but radically shared and co-constituted.
Living poetically thus includes participation in the evolving communal poetics.
Conclusion
Myth, ritual, and art are not cultural luxuries but vital processes in the life of semiotic consciousness. They are the spaces where meaning breathes, transforms, and renews itself in public life. In future work, we might explore how modern mythopoeic efforts—especially through science, cosmology, and art—continue the ancient labour of world-making in new keys.
15 Mythopoeia and the Modern Imagination: Reforging the World
If myth, ritual, and art have long constituted the communal dreamfields of human meaning, mythopoeia—the conscious making of myth—takes on a crucial role in the modern world. In this post, we explore how the modern imagination, faced with the collapse of traditional cosmologies, reinvents the mythic function.
The Fracture of Traditional Meaning Systems
Modernity disrupts inherited fields of meaning:
Scientific discoveries displace anthropocentric cosmologies;
Industrialisation and globalisation fragment local symbolic orders;
Secularisation weakens ritual frameworks for shared meaning.
Yet the need for collective meaning persists. The poetics of consciousness seeks new expression.
Mythopoeia as Conscious World-Making
Mythopoeia is the deliberate forging of new symbolic architectures:
It synthesises scientific, artistic, and philosophical insights;
It creates narratives, images, and rituals that re-situate humanity within a vast, dynamic cosmos;
It does not deny science, but poeticises it—imbuing empirical knowledge with existential resonance.
Modern mythopoeia reactivates the ancient labour of meaning under new conditions.
Science as Modern Mythos
In our framework, science itself participates in mythopoeia:
Cosmology, evolutionary biology, and quantum physics unfold grand narratives of becoming;
Figures like Carl Sagan, Brian Cox, and others translate scientific knowledge into mythic language;
The universe is no longer a static backdrop but a living process in which we participate.
Science becomes a new dreamfield, where empirical understanding and existential wonder coalesce.
Art and Literature as Mythopoeic Acts
Modern artists and writers assume mythopoeic roles:
They forge new symbolic landscapes to navigate alienation, ambiguity, and transcendence;
Works like Tolkien's "The Silmarillion" and Le Guin's "Earthsea" echo the deep structures of myth;
Contemporary visual arts and film reimagine ancient themes in futuristic settings.
Art sustains the symbolic imagination needed to live meaningfully within complex realities.
The Ethics of Mythopoeia
With conscious world-making comes responsibility:
Mythopoeia can liberate, but it can also constrain and oppress;
Critical attunement is needed to avoid reifying harmful structures;
A poetics of consciousness demands continual re-negotiation of meaning fields.
True mythopoeia is a living, dynamic response to the unfolding of experience.
Conclusion
In the modern world, mythopoeia is neither nostalgic recovery nor blind invention—it is the ongoing, conscious participation in the semiotic life of the cosmos. To engage in mythopoeia is to join the ancient labour of world-making, carrying forward the unfolding poetics of consciousness into new forms.
In future explorations, we might examine specific case studies of modern mythopoeic projects and how they reconfigure collective meaning.
16 Modern Mythopoeia in Action
🌟 Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: Science as Sacred Narrative
Carl Sagan’s Cosmos is more than a science documentary. It is a work of modern mythopoeia: an attempt to weave the discoveries of science into a public narrative that can answer humanity’s deepest cosmological and mystical needs.
In the framework we’ve been developing, Cosmos can be understood as a meaning system that:
Construes the unfolding of the universe as an intelligible, meaningful process;
Frames scientific knowledge as a kind of shared semiotic consciousness, accessible to all;
Offers a sacred vision of the cosmos that does not depend on supernaturalism but on the wonder of existence itself.
Sagan’s narrative construes human beings not as isolated fragments, but as the universe becoming conscious of itself—a reflexive moment within a vast, relational unfolding of meaning.
Through carefully crafted metaphors (“we are starstuff contemplating the stars”), poetic rhythms, and expansive visual imagery, Cosmos transforms scientific data into a public dream: a shared imaginative space where individual consciousness can participate in the collective story of existence.
Thus, Cosmos serves the traditional functions of myth in modern form:
Mystical: Awakening awe at the mystery of being;
Cosmological: Providing a coherent vision of the universe;
Sociological: Binding a community through shared knowledge;
Pedagogical: Guiding individuals into a mature relationship with reality.
Sagan’s Cosmos is not merely about facts; it is about how facts become meanings, how meanings become stories, and how stories shape our relation to the real.
🌟 J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion: Language, World, and the Music of Meaning
Tolkien’s mythopoeia operates at multiple levels:
- Language as World-Structure:Tolkien believed that languages are not merely tools for describing worlds; they are worlds. Each invented language (Quenya, Sindarin, etc.) carries with it an implicit cosmology, a way of structuring meaning that shapes the imagined cultures and histories.
- The Music of the Ainur:In the opening myth, The Music of the Ainur, creation itself is an act of meaning-making: a divine music that gives form to reality.Here, meaning is not imposed onto an inert world; rather, the world itself is the unfolding of meaning—an audible semiotic field manifesting as material existence.
- World as Semiotic Ecology:Every creature, every landscape, every history in Tolkien’s world is situated within a vast network of relational meanings. Good and evil, beauty and corruption, loss and hope are not abstract principles; they are woven into the fabric of the world, instantiated through stories, songs, and genealogies.
Tolkien’s mythic consciousness thus echoes our relational model:
Potential meaning is the divine music;
Meaning instances are the acts of creation;
Meaning systems are the evolving cultures and histories of Arda.
🌟 Hayao Miyazaki’s Films: Animism and Ecological Consciousness
In Miyazaki’s mythopoeia:
- Nature is Alive with Meaning:Trees, rivers, animals, even forgotten gods are not symbols of human values—they are semiotic agents in their own right.They act, suffer, and flourish according to their own relational logics, forming an ecology of meaning in which humans are merely one thread.
- Dreamfields and Liminal Spaces:Many of Miyazaki’s films centre on dreamlike worlds accessed through doorways, spirit tunnels, or abandoned shrines. These spaces are dreamfields—semiotic fields where potential meanings are actualised in forms the waking world forgets.Here, consciousness encounters its own estranged potentials: wonder, fear, kinship with the non-human.
- Conflict as a Crisis of Relation:In Miyazaki’s worlds, harm arises when relational ecologies are ruptured—when humans attempt to dominate rather than participate in the unfolding of meaning.Restoration comes not through conquest, but through the recovery of relationality: seeing, hearing, and responding to the meanings that saturate the world.
Through his animated mythologies, Miyazaki gives us a powerful vision:
The world is not inert matter to be controlled; it is a living semiotic field, a dreaming earth.Our task is not to master it, but to listen, to dwell, and to participate meaningfully in its becoming.
In terms of our framework:
Potential meaning is the slumbering vitality of the world;
Meaning instances are acts of encounter, recognition, and reverence;
Meaning systems are the mythic ecologies that nurture and sustain relational consciousness.
🌟 Brian Cox’s Wonders Series: Poetic Cosmology for a Scientific Age
In Cox’s mythopoeia:
- Science is a Poetic Endeavour:Facts are never “just facts.” They are woven into luminous narratives about origins, connections, and the fragile beauty of existence.His language is careful, almost musical, creating a field where knowledge becomes felt meaning.
- Cosmos as Home:Cox repeatedly frames the universe not as a cold, indifferent expanse, but as our home.Stardust, gravitational fields, photosynthetic processes—these are not distant curiosities; they are expressions of the same semiotic field that sustains us.
- Fragility and Preciousness:Running through Cox’s narratives is a quiet, persistent awareness: the cosmos is vast, but conscious life is exquisitely rare and precious.This gives scientific knowledge an ethical dimension: an invitation to reverence and responsibility.
Within our framework, Cox’s Wonders series does something remarkable:
Potential meaning is the open possibility of the universe as knowable;
Meaning instances are scientific insights re-construed as experiences of wonder;
Meaning systems are the evolving poetic-cosmological narratives that situate us within the universe.
🌟 The Revival of World-Making: Toward a New Semiotic Consciousness
Across each case study, we see the same semiotic dynamics:
- Potential meaning:The open horizon of experience, offering itself to construal.
- Meaning instances:The individual acts—scientific, poetic, cinematic—by which potentials are actualised into concrete forms of meaning.
- Meaning systems:The evolving networks of interrelated meanings that form shared worlds, whether mythic, scientific, or ecological.
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