The Projected Self: Consciousness Rewritten in Relation

1 Consciousness Is Not What You Think

What is consciousness? Western traditions have often pictured it as a light inside the mind, an inner eye surveying the world from a private theatre. From Descartes' cogito to the computational mind of cognitive science, consciousness has been cast as a thing — something that resides in us, that we possess, that acts as the origin of meaning.

But what if this picture is backwards?

This series proposes a reorientation: that consciousness is not the origin of meaning, but an instance of it — not an inner substance, but a semiotic unfolding. Rather than something we have, consciousness is something that happens: a relational phase in the movement of meaning potential across strata, speakers, and systems.

Consciousness is not what you think — and not where you think it is.

This is not a metaphor. It is a shift in ontology. Instead of treating the self as a bounded subject who produces thoughts, we treat the self as a semiotic position that emerges from the interplay of signs. The "I" is not the source of meaning but its temporary centre of gravity — a node in a relational network of meaning-making.

We draw on a relational ontology informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), which understands language not as a conduit for thoughts, but as the very architecture that makes thought possible. In this model, consciousness is:

• Relational: It arises through semiotic relations, not in isolation.

• Stratified: It unfolds across different levels of language (semantics, grammar, phonology).

• Instantiated: It is not a fixed entity but an event — a moment of actualisation from potential.

To say that the self is "semiotic all the way down" is not to deny its reality, but to reconstrue it. We are not peeling away layers to find an inner core; we are following threads in a relational fabric. And what we find is not an essence, but a pattern — one that is always in the making.

In the parts to come, we will explore:

• How projection, stratification, and instantiation shape the architecture of consciousness.

• How meaning unfolds not in the mind alone, but in the relation between potential and instance, self and other.

• How rewriting consciousness requires rewriting the ontological assumptions that have shaped our thinking for centuries.

We are not theorising about consciousness from the outside. We are inhabiting it differently — from within a system that is always already relational.

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2 Projection, Stratification, and the Architecture of Experience

If consciousness is not a substance within us, but a phase in the unfolding of meaning, how does it come to feel so immediate — so real? The answer lies in how language organises experience through projection, stratification, and instantiation.

Projection: Consciousness in Transit

In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), projection refers to the linguistic mechanism by which one clause is made to represent another — as in she thought he was late. This is not just grammar reporting thoughts; it is grammar enacting them.

To think is to project: to represent meaning as meaning.

Projection models consciousness as a relation between semiotic instances — one clause standing in for another, one layer of experience doubling as another. Far from being a mirror of inner life, projection constructs that innerness as a semiotic effect. Consciousness, then, is not the origin of projected meaning but the outcome of projection itself.

Stratification: The Semiotic Planes of Experience

Stratification refers to the layered architecture of language: meanings (semantics) are realised by wordings (lexicogrammar), which are realised by soundings or scriptings (phonology/graphology). These are not just technical distinctions — they define how meaning is formed.

Consciousness emerges not at a single level, but across strata.

To become aware of something is to move across these planes: from potential to meaning, from meaning to wording, from wording to form. Thought is not confined to a single level but arises in the relation between them — in the semiotic tension that makes meaning perceivable.

When we speak of "inner speech" or "the voice in the head," we are invoking these strata at work: grammar silently enacting a semantic episode, internally projected and potentially actualised. The so-called "inner world" is just language folding back on itself.

Instantiation: From Potential to Presence

Every act of meaning is an instance — a momentary actualisation of a broader system. Instantiation is the process by which meaning potential becomes meaning instance. Consciousness, in this light, is not the totality of a self but the immediate instance of its semiotic system in action.

This is why consciousness feels temporal, fleeting, and ungraspable — because it is. It is the instantial tip of a semiotic iceberg, a phase in a system whose full potential always exceeds what is actualised.

Consciousness is not the full field of being, but a vector within it — the trajectory of meaning becoming actual in time.

In sum, the architecture of experience is not built from the inside out, but from the relational operations of language. Projection gives us a structure for representing thought. Stratification gives us the layers through which it is realised. Instantiation gives us the pulse of presence — the moment when meaning takes form.

This is not a deflation of consciousness. It is a reconfiguration: to see consciousness not as a container of thought, but as the flow of meaning between planes, systems, and selves.

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3 No Mind Without Meaning — No Meaning Without Relation

We have now seen that consciousness does not emerge from a hidden interior, but from semiotic processes — from projection, stratification, and instantiation. In this part, we take the claim further: not only is there no mind without meaning, but no meaning without relation.

The Self as Semiotic Effect

In traditional metaphysics, the self is often imagined as the stable centre of experience — a thinker behind the thought. But in our relational ontology, there is no "self" prior to the systems that make it possible. What we call self is the emergent effect of relations: between meaning potentials, between speakers, and between semiotic strata.

The self is not the source of meaning, but a position within meaning systems — a semiotic locus where relations converge.

In SFL terms, this self emerges through instantiation and individuation. Instantiation is the relation between the system of meaning potential and the actual meaning instance. Individuation is the relation between the collective meaning potential of a culture and the specialised meaning potential of a particular person.

Consciousness emerges as the ongoing interplay of these two: the individual's unique trajectory through meaning systems, shaped by what they have meant before, and constrained by what the culture makes possible to mean now.

Meaning as Always Already Relational

There is no isolated meaning. Meaning only becomes actual through relation — to a context, to a co-text, to a system, and to an interlocutor.

A word only means something because it enters into relation: with other words in the clause, with other clauses in the discourse, with the situation in which it is spoken. And these relations do not merely surround meaning — they constitute it.

Meaning is not an object in the mind but a structure of difference — a pattern of choices in a system that becomes real in context.

This is why meaning must be relationally semiotic. It cannot be located in a mind or encoded in a brain. It is the product of selections within systems — systems that are themselves relational configurations of possibility.

From Relation to Realisation

It is tempting to imagine that meanings exist somewhere, floating in the mind, waiting to be expressed. But meanings do not pre-exist their realisation. They come into being through the act of meaning — through the process of selecting features from systems and actualising them in context.

And because those systems are themselves formed through social interaction, meaning is always a shared phenomenon. Even our most private thoughts take shape in systems we did not create, using categories we inherited.

There is no isolated mind observing the world; there is only semiotic unfolding in relation — between strata, between speakers, and between potential and instance.

In this light, we no longer ask where the mind is. We ask how meaning is made — and we find consciousness not in a place, but in a pattern: the unfolding of systems in time, the movement of meanings across strata, the pulse of instantiation in context.

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4 Consciousness Without a Self, Thought Without a Thinker

We are used to imagining thought as an action performed by a self — a thinker who observes, reflects, and decides. But if consciousness is a semiotic unfolding, as we’ve seen, then this "thinker" may be no more than a useful fiction. In this final part, we step fully into the implications of a relational semiotic ontology: there is no self behind thought, and no mind behind consciousness. There is only relation — enacted in language, instantiated in context, and stratified across semiotic planes.

The Illusion of the Interior

Western traditions have long placed the self at the centre of consciousness — a private, interior subject with privileged access to thought. But the relational ontology unravels this image. If every act of meaning is systemic, and every system is social, then what we call “interior” is already a product of shared semiotic history.

The inside is made from the outside: what feels like personal thought is the actualisation of cultural potential, through the individuated system of the speaker.

The self, then, is not the agent of thought but its outcome. It is what appears when systemic selections cohere in a recognisable pattern — a pattern that we narrate as identity, stabilised only through repetition.

Thought as a Phase in the Semiotic Flow

What, then, becomes of thought? If there is no thinker, does thought disappear? On the contrary, it becomes more visible — not as a hidden process within a mind, but as a visible unfolding across meaning systems.

Thought is not a possession. It is a phase in the unfolding of meaning: the projection of meaning from one stratum to another, or from one speaker to another.

It is this movement — from semantic potential to lexicogrammatical selection, from clause to clause, from instance to system — that constitutes the rhythm of thought. The “mind” is not thinking — meaning is happening, and the illusion of thought arises when we experience our place within that flow.

The Architecture of Unfolding

In SFL terms, we can think of consciousness as the dynamic organisation of system and instance, stratification and individuation. Each moment of experience is shaped not by an inner will, but by the semiotic engines of language and culture, which condition what can be meant — and by whom, and how.

To be conscious is to stand at the intersection of these engines: to find oneself actualising potential meaning, shaped by a history of prior instantiations, constrained by a system, animated by relation.

And thus:

• There is no self who has thoughts. There is only thought as semiotic patterning.

• There is no mind that observes the world. There is only the unfolding of meaning across systems of potential.

• There is no consciousness as essence. There is only consciousness as process — as meaning made momentary and relational.

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Epilogue: What Happens When We Mean

What happens when we mean?

We are not expressing a hidden self. We are not revealing inner truth. We are not transporting thoughts from one head to another.

We are entering a field — a field of potential meanings structured by culture, history, and the systems of language. And in that field, we are making selections: actualising potentials, configuring strata, and participating in patterns that stretch far beyond the instant.

To mean is to move. Not in physical space, but in semiotic space — across the cline from potential to instance, from system to realisation, from what could be said to what is said now.

And in that movement, there is no need for a central self. No interior agent. No metaphysical essence doing the meaning. Meaning happens relationally, in the encounter between speakers, systems, and situations.

The “self” is what appears when this process stabilises — when recurring configurations of meaning take on a patterned shape. The “mind” is the name we give to the unfolding of this process as it becomes conscious — but only because it folds back on itself, projects itself, and sees its own patterns reflected in the mirror of language.

We are not beings who mean.

We are becomings of meaning.

To rewrite consciousness, then, is not to redefine what a mind is, but to let go of the need for minds entirely — and to see instead the semiotic engines, the unfolding systems, the relational grounds from which meaning emerges.

And this is not a loss. It is a liberation: from the myth of the isolated self, from the illusion of mental privacy, from the Cartesian prison. It is an invitation to reimagine who we are — not as containers of meaning, but as moments in its ongoing flow.