22 August 2025

3 The Agency of Construal: Meaning, Perspective, and the Field of Possibility

1 Construal as Agency – How Meaning Enters the World

We often speak as though meaning is already there, waiting to be discovered—hidden in things, embedded in events, encoded in signs.

But in a relational ontology, this view doesn’t hold.
There is no meaning without construal.
And construal is not passive. It is an act of agency.

To construe is to bring meaning into being—to differentiate what matters, in a field that could have been cut otherwise.

Construal Is How Meaning Happens

In this model, the world does not arrive pre-interpreted.
It arrives as potential—a patterned openness structured by relation.
And meaning happens when a construal orients that potential.

A gesture becomes affection.
A trace becomes evidence.
A ripple becomes a signal.
Only through construal do these become something rather than anything.

This means that meaning is not uncovered, but made—through the orientation of difference.

Theorising as Construal of System

While all meaning arises through construal, not all construal is theorising.

To construe is to make meaning through perspective: to see something as something, to position an event, entity, or relation within a meaningful frame.

To theorise is to go further: to construe a system—a structured potential of possible construals—based on patterns observed across instances.

The bird that senses danger construes.
The ethologist who models behavioural patterns theorises.

The child who calls a round red object “ball” construes.
The linguist who builds a semantic system for nominal groups theorises.

Every act of theorising builds on earlier acts of construal.
It is a reflexive movement: from meaning-in-experience to meaning-as-system.

Construal Is Oriented Differentiation

Construal is not a mapping of objects, but a cutting of possibility.
It is differentiation with orientation—meaning arises by drawing a distinction from a position.

This is what gives meaning its perspectival character.
There is no unconstrued meaning, because there is no view from nowhere.

Each construal:

  • Selects from a field of potential

  • Structures what counts as difference

  • Makes some meanings salient and others latent

Even to see a pattern, a signal, or a unit is already to construe.
Meaning begins not when we interpret, but when we attend.

The Agency of Construal

To construe is to act.
Not in the sense of imposing meaning on a blank world,
but in the sense of entering into relation with what is already open to meaning.

This is why we speak of the agency of construal.

It is not the agency of domination or imposition.
It is the agency of participation—of orienting within a space of unfolding.

Construal is the universe becoming meaningful through us.
And our construal, in turn, becomes part of the potential that others may orient.

What Comes Next

In the next post, we’ll explore how perspective gives shape to construal:
how meaning is always “from somewhere,”
and how the structuring of difference depends on the position of the agent within the relational field.

2 Perspective as Differentiation – Seeing from Somewhere

We often imagine perspective as a limit—an angle that distorts a fuller view.

But in a relational ontology, perspective is not distortion.
It is the condition for meaning.
Because to mean anything at all is to construe from somewhere—within a field, toward a difference, for a purpose.

Perspective is not what blocks objectivity.
It is what makes meaning possible.

There Is No View from Nowhere

The idea of an objective, detached position outside the world collapses in this model.
You cannot step out of relation to describe the relational.

Every instance is seen as something—
from a point, within a system, toward a construal.

To observe is to be located.
To interpret is to participate.
To make meaning is to orient difference from a position.

Even the idea of “the world as it is” is a construal—
a powerful one, but no less perspectival.

Differentiation Requires Perspective

Construal begins with differentiation.
But difference does not exist in the abstract.

A cloud of air molecules is not hot until it is construed as such.
A ripple in a screen is not a signal until it is seen from a context that makes it significant.

This means that:

  • Difference without perspective is not yet meaning.

  • Perspective is what makes a cut in the potential.

Every act of meaning is an orientation—
a way of saying: this difference matters, here, for us.

The Situatedness of Knowing

Knowing is often thought of as getting closer to the truth.
But in this model, knowing is a positioned construal of relation.

We know by:

  • Entering into relation with a structured field

  • Differentiating it from within

  • Holding the cut open as meaningful

This is why different knowers construe differently.
It’s not (only) because they have different beliefs—
but because they occupy different positions in the field.

Perspective is epistemological location.
To shift it is to change what can be meant, and how.

Perspective Structures Possibility

Every construal makes further construals more or less likely.
It modifies the potential for what can be seen next.

This recursive dynamic is what allows systems to evolve.

  • In language, an initial clause sets up thematic expectations.

  • In science, a theory reconfigures the questions that can be asked.

  • In culture, a shift in perspective alters what counts as meaningful action.

So perspective is not just about the present act of construal.
It is about the trajectory of possible meanings it enables or forecloses.

Where We Go Next

If construal is agency, and perspective is its condition,
then we now turn to the field of possibility in which construal unfolds.

In the next post, we’ll ask:

What is this field we cut from?
How is it structured?
And how does the act of construal reshape the possibilities it emerges from?

3 Fields of Possibility – Constraint, Potential, and Meaningful Orientation

If meaning arises through construal, and construal depends on perspective, then we must now ask:

What is the field from which construal selects?
What is this space of meaningful potential—structured yet open, constrained yet generative?

In a relational ontology, meaning does not emerge from the interaction of things, but from the orientation within fields of relation.

These are the fields of possibility—and to construe is to make a cut in them.

Potential Is Not Chaos

We often imagine potential as formless possibility—a blank canvas of “anything could happen.”

But in our model, potential is already structured.
It is not arbitrary freedom, but constrained openness—a patterned system of possible relations.

  • In language: the systemic potential of a grammar

  • In weather: the evolving structure of a climate

  • In quantum physics: the probabilistic field of a wavefunction

Each is not a list of outcomes, but a space of differentiable possibility—
a topology of what could happen, where, and with what likelihood.

Constraint Is Generative

In a substance ontology, constraint limits what a thing can do.
But in a relational ontology, constraint makes meaningful action possible.

Constraint gives shape to potential.
It structures the field from which construal cuts meaning.

  • A key signature limits which notes feel resolved.

  • A grammar limits which expressions are well-formed.

  • A system of ethics limits which acts are intelligible as “just.”

In each case, constraint does not reduce possibility—it organises it.

Without constraint, we cannot differentiate.
Without differentiation, we cannot construe.
And without construal, there is no meaning.

Fields Are Historical

No field of potential appears from nowhere.
Every system of possibility is shaped by past instances—by previous construals that recondition what is now available.

  • A language evolves through the texts it has instantiated.

  • A climate evolves through patterns of past weather.

  • A field evolves through the probabilities perturbed by past events.

This recursive logic is foundational:
Each instance both draws from and reshapes the field.

Meaning unfolds in a feedback loop:
→ Orientation construes meaning from potential
→ The construal alters the potential for further meaning

Fields Are Social

Fields of potential are not just historical. They are also socially structured.

  • We do not each construct our own grammar. We inherit it.

  • We do not invent our own ethics or aesthetics. We negotiate them.

  • Even perception is not private—it is oriented within cultural fields.

This means every construal is situated within shared fields of possibility—
and those fields carry the weight of past selections, exclusions, and habits of differentiation.

To make meaning is to join a history of cutting and orientation.

Construal Is a Cut in a Field

We can now say this:

To construe is to cut a patterned field of potential—
to differentiate something as meaningful,
to hold open that difference within a context of constraint.

This is not to impose order on chaos.
It is to select a path through already-structured relation.

Each construal is:

  • Oriented: made from a perspective

  • Structured: constrained by a field

  • Recursive: altering what is possible next

This is how meaning moves forward.

Coming Next

In the next post, we turn from the field to the cut itself—
from potential to instance, from possibility to event.

How do these construals take shape as realised meaning?
What is an instance, in this ontology?
And how do instances participate in reshaping the world they emerge from?

4 Meaning as Event – Construal, Instance, and the Cut That Matters

If potential is a field of possibility, then instance is a cut in that field—
a differentiation that becomes real by being construed as meaningful.

This post asks:
What does it mean to say that construal becomes an event?
And how do such events shape the ongoing reality in which we live?

In our model, instance is not a thing that happens.
It is meaning realised in context—
a cut made in a field, from a perspective, that matters.

The Instance Is Not a Thing

In a substance ontology, the world is made of objects, and events are things that happen to them.
But in a relational ontology, there are no primary substances—only relations becoming structured.

So we say:

  • An instance is not an object.

  • An instance is not a discrete act or occurrence.

  • An instance is not a slice of time.

An instance is a differentiation of meaning—a construal that takes effect.

This means an instance is always:

  • Situated in a field of potential

  • Oriented by a perspective

  • Held open by constraint

  • Made real through meaning

The Cut That Matters

Why call it a cut?

Because construal always excludes as it includes.
To make something meaningful is to draw a boundary.
To make a cut is to select a distinction, to assert a relation.

A cut:

  • Says this and not that

  • Joins some patterns and severs others

  • Selects from a field and thereby reshapes it

So not all perception becomes an instance.
Only those construals that enter the ongoing unfolding—
that participate in and perturb the system—
become events that matter.

Instances as Meaningful Differentiation

This is why every instance is meaningful:
It doesn’t just reflect the world.
It reconfigures the field.

  • A sentence alters the probabilities in a grammar.

  • A measurement perturbs the wavefunction.

  • A decision changes the ethical terrain.

  • A social act reshapes the field of possible responses.

This is logogenesis: the meaning-event that feeds back to recondition what can come next.

In this model, instance is not a product of the system.
It is a participant in its evolution.

The Logic of Instance

Every instance emerges from four conditions:

  1. A field of constrained potential

  2. An orientation or perspective within that field

  3. A cut—a construal made meaningful by the system

  4. A feedback into the system’s evolving potential

This means instance is not an endpoint.
It is a hinge—a recursive turn in the unfolding of meaning.

It is what allows the system to change itself from within.

The Event Is Meaning, and Meaning Is the Event

When we understand this, we no longer look for reality behind events.
We see that meaning is what happens.

An event is not a trace of something deeper.
It is a construal that matters in context—
a configuration that changes what is next possible.

In this view:

  • A text is not a message; it is a cascade of construals.

  • A particle is not a thing; it is a site of relational instance.

  • A choice is not an act of will; it is a moment of systemic difference.

The world does not contain meanings.
It is made of meaningful cuts—perspectival differentiations of unfolding relation.

Coming Next

If construal makes a cut in a field, and if instance reshapes potential,
then what does this say about agency?

Who or what construes?
What is the nature of a “subject” in this model?
And how does agency itself emerge as a site of relation?

5 The Subject of the Cut – Agency, Meaning, and Participatory Realism

If construal makes a meaningful cut in a field of potential, then we must ask:

Who—or what—makes the cut?

What kind of subject can participate in the unfolding of meaning?

In this post, we explore agency not as the power of an independent actor, but as the emergent capacity to construe difference—to hold open a meaningful orientation in a field of unfolding relation.

This is not the freedom to choose anything, but the responsiveness of being situated—
a position within the system that shapes and is shaped by the construal it enacts.

From Independent Agent to Site of Construal

Traditional models of agency begin with the individual—
a substance-like subject that acts upon an external world.

But in a relational ontology, there are no external subjects.
There are only sites of orientation—places where construal happens.

A subject is not an object with properties.
It is a position in a field that brings relations into differential focus.

An agent, then, is:

  • Not a “doer” acting on the world

  • But a perspective participating in the world’s unfolding

  • A point of recursive construal within a dynamic system

Agency Is Meaningful Responsiveness

Agency is not about initiating causes.
It is about meaningfully differentiating from within a structured field.

This means agency is:

  • Constrained by systemic potentials

  • Shaped by historical patterns of previous cuts

  • Dependent on the structure of the field itself

But it also means:

  • Capable of changing that structure

  • Capable of reorienting what becomes possible

  • Capable of transforming the terms of differentiation

To act is to participate in reconfiguring the real.

There Is No Agent Without a Field

This is a foundational principle:

There is no construal without a field to construe.
There is no subject without a system to differentiate within.

The subject is not prior to the act.
It emerges with the construal.

We are not fixed observers in a pre-given world.
We are instances of the world’s own meaningful differentiation—
temporary stabilisations of perspective, always unfolding.

The Subject as Participatory Cut

We can now see that the subject is:

  • A cut in the field of possibility

  • A recursive instance of orientation

  • A pattern of construal that both emerges from and reshapes the system

This reframes agency as:

Participation in reality’s unfolding—not from outside, but from within.

The subject is not separate from the field of meaning.
It is a way the field construes itself.

This is what it means to be an agent in a relational world:
To be both cut and cutter, both instance and difference, both subject and system.

A Participatory Realism

This gives us a new kind of realism—
not a world of facts waiting to be known,
but a world of relations waiting to be oriented within.

This is participatory realism:

  • The real is not what is there regardless of us

  • The real is what becomes through our situated construals

  • Knowing is not external representation—it is internal differentiation

We do not describe a world from the outside.
We co-create it from within, by cutting the field and holding that cut open.

This is not solipsism.
It is the deepest humility:
We are not sovereign agents, but relational loci of meaning-making.

Coming Next

If we are participants in the unfolding of potential,
then our next question must be: what kind of ethics does this entail?

What does it mean to be responsible for our cuts?
What do we stabilise through our construals?
And how does meaning become shared, disputed, or transformed?

6 The Ethics of Orientation – Responsibility, Constraint, and the Shared Field

In a relational ontology, meaning is not discovered—it is made.
It is made through cuts in potential, through construals that orient,
through instances that matter.

But every cut is also a commitment.
Every construal stabilises some paths—and forecloses others.

This brings us to the ethical dimension of meaning:

If we are participants in the unfolding of potential,
then we are responsible for the patterns we bring into being.

This is not a moral claim in the usual sense.
It is an ontological one.

To construe is to orient reality.
To orient is to constrain.
And to constrain is to shape what becomes possible.

Ethics as Situated Construal

Ethics, in this model, is not a system of rules imposed on the world.
It is a responsiveness to the shared field in which we are embedded.

To act ethically is:

  • To acknowledge the relational stakes of every construal

  • To remain aware of what our cuts exclude as well as include

  • To take care in how we stabilise patterns of meaning

  • To be answerable for the systems we reinforce and realities we co-create

This is not about guilt or virtue.
It is about being attuned to our embeddedness—
and recognising that every instance is also a difference that matters.

Constraint Is Not the Enemy

We often think of ethics as limitation: don’t do this, avoid that.
But in a relational view, constraint is formative.

It is through constraint that fields take shape,
that meanings become coherent,
that life holds itself open.

The question is not: how do I avoid constraint?
It is:

What kinds of constraints am I helping to bring into being?
Do they open new potential—or shut it down?
Do they honour difference—or flatten it?
Do they sustain the field—or destabilise it?

The Shared Field

Meaning is never made alone.
We do not construe in isolation.

Every act of meaning participates in a shared system:

  • A grammar

  • A culture

  • A language

  • A history

  • A material ecology

To construe is to intervene in that system.
It is to introduce a difference that others must then navigate.

This is why construal is always political.
And always relational.

The field is shared.
So the burden of meaning is also shared.

Holding Open Possibility

If the universe is made of constrained unfolding,
then every construal either widens or narrows that unfolding.

Ethics, then, becomes the question:

What possibilities do I help keep open?
What patterns do I make easier for others to see?
What orientations do I disrupt or reinforce?
What meaning-systems am I extending, challenging, or foreclosing?

This is ethics as field-awareness.
And it is ethics as agency:
Knowing that to construe is to contribute to the world’s becoming.

Participating in the Real

In this model, reality is not neutral.
It is structured by what becomes meaningful.

And what becomes meaningful depends on us.

Not “us” as sovereign individuals.
But “us” as loci of orientation—
situated participants in a shared field of relational unfolding.

We are not just knowers of the world.
We are world-makers.
And that making always comes with responsibility.

Coda: Becoming With

If potential is structured possibility,
and if reality is the unfolding of that possibility through situated cuts,
then the deepest ethics is this:

To become with others in the shared unfolding of the field.

To hold space for difference.
To constrain with care.
To cut without closing.
To stabilise without suppressing.
To orient toward futures that include, rather than foreclose.

This is not a rulebook.
It is a way of being in relation.

And perhaps it is the only kind of realism worth living by.

Reflective Coda: Orientation and the Craft of Meaning

We began with a simple question:
How does meaning arise in a universe made of relation?

Through six arcs of inquiry, we have traced how potential becomes instance,
how construal brings worlds into being,
and how orientation is not merely a cognitive act,
but a participatory shaping of the real.

We have seen that:

  • To see meaning in the world is already to participate in its unfolding.

  • To theorise is to make sense of patterns across instances—
    and to do so through the very systems we help sustain.

  • To construe is to cut into possibility,
    shaping what matters and what becomes.

  • To know is not to capture,
    but to dwell in patterned tension—
    to hold the real open across perspectives.

  • To act is to stabilise relation,
    and with every action, to shift the field.

  • To care is to recognise that meaning is never made alone—
    and that every construal is an invitation, a commitment, a responsibility.

At the heart of this journey is a reorientation of thought:

From the idea of meaning as content,
to meaning as patterned difference in a shared field.

From the knower as observer,
to the knower as participant.

From knowledge as possession,
to knowing as presence.

This is not an abstract philosophy.
It is a living ethics.
A practice of making meaning with care,
within the fragile, fertile spaces we share.

We do not float above the world.
We cut into it.
And with each cut,
we make a future.

Let us make futures that hold open more than they close.
Let us become meaning-makers worthy of the world we help to unfold.

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