Showing posts with label coherence. Show all posts

05 October 2025

Echoes of Relational Ontology in Neuroscience

1 Relational Networks: Structure through Interaction

Modern neuroscience reveals the brain not as a collection of isolated modules but as a dynamic relational network, where structure and function emerge through interaction. Neural connectivity, plasticity, and signalling patterns are not static; they are continuously shaped by experience, context, and the interplay of multiple systems.

From a relational ontology perspective, this is profoundly anticipatory. Neural networks do not carry intrinsic, pre-determined functions. Instead, they actualise potentials through relational cuts: patterns of interaction that define nodes, pathways, and functional alignments within a broader field of possibilities. Each firing, each pathway, exists only in the context of the network as a whole, and in relation to the organism’s ongoing engagement with its environment.

This relational perspective aligns with echoes we have already traced in myth, philosophy, and physics. Just as symbolic narratives instantiate collective possibilities, and quantum events emerge through relational alignment, the brain stages biological actualisations of relational potential. Its structure is contingent, its function emergent, and its coherence distributed across interacting neural groups.

Neuroscience, read relationally, thus shows that cognition, perception, and behaviour are not properties of isolated units. They are enacted phenomena — contingent, contextually actualised, and dynamically co-constituted. Reality, at the neural level, is a network of relations, a living web in which the actual emerges continuously through interaction.

2 Contingency, Degeneracy, and Potentiality

A hallmark of neural organisation is degeneracy: multiple, structurally distinct circuits can realise the same function. Coupled with plasticity, this ensures that neural outcomes are contingent, flexible, and context-dependent. There is no fixed mapping between structure and behaviour; each actualisation is a relational event, contingent on the network’s current state and prior history.

From a relational ontology perspective, this underscores a core principle: potentialities are staged, not predetermined. Like myths enacting symbolic possibilities, or quantum events actualised through relational alignment, neural systems instantiate outcomes within a field of possibilities. Degeneracy and contingency make the system resilient, adaptable, and responsive.

This also highlights the co-constitutive nature of neural function. Different pathways do not merely substitute for one another; they shape, enable, and constrain one another’s activity. The system is a web of potentialities, where every actualisation is a cut — a relational alignment within the network that both emerges from and informs future patterns.

Neuroscience thus reveals reality at the neural level as profoundly relational: identity, function, and behaviour are contingent, perspectival, and distributed. Degeneracy and contingency are not imperfections; they are the very means by which the brain actualises potential across a relationally structured field, echoing the same relational principles evident in myth, philosophy, and physics.

3 Reflexivity and Reentrant Loops

A defining feature of neural organisation is reentrant signalling: continuous, bidirectional loops connecting distributed neural groups. These loops are not merely feedback mechanisms; they are dynamic, reflexive alignments that coordinate activity across the brain, enabling coherence, integration, and adaptive function.

From a relational ontology perspective, reentrant loops exemplify reflexive co-constitution. Each neural group’s activity is meaningful only in relation to the activity of others. Identity, function, and outcome are distributed phenomena, emerging from relational interactions rather than residing within isolated units.

This mirrors relational patterns observed in other domains. Just as myths stage symbolic possibilities against a collective horizon, and quantum phenomena actualise only through relational alignment, reentrant loops show that neural function is contingent, context-dependent, and relationally enacted. Local activity shapes global patterns, and global constraints influence local dynamics — a continuous, reciprocal orchestration of potentialities.

Neuroscience, read relationally, thus demonstrates that the brain is not a mechanistic assembly of modules but a reflexive relational cosmos. Neural processes are active, participatory, and relationally constituted; each moment of actualisation is a cut within a field of co-constituted possibilities, echoing the same ontological principles found in symbolic, conceptual, and physical domains.

4 Experience as Relational Construal

Neuroscience increasingly reveals that experience is not a passive reception of stimuli, but an active, relational construction. Perception, cognition, and action emerge through the interaction of neural networks, the body, and the environment. Each moment of experience is actualised relationally, contingent on prior history, current state, and ongoing interaction.

From a relational ontology perspective, this positions experience as a construal rather than a property of isolated neurons or brain regions. Reality, as lived and perceived, emerges from the dynamic alignment of multiple potentials within distributed networks. Just as myths enact possibilities for collective alignment, and quantum phenomena actualise contingent outcomes through relational cuts, neural systems instantiate lived reality through continuous relational phasing.

Degeneracy, plasticity, and reentry ensure that no two experiences are ever identical. Each neural actualisation is a relational event, simultaneously shaped by prior constraints and open to novel possibilities. Cognition and perception are thus contingent, perspectival, and co-constituted, revealing the brain as an embodied relational field.

Reading neuroscience relationally, we see that the brain stages experience as a participatory experiment in relational potential. Identity, meaning, and action are not fixed; they are emergent phenomena, continuously actualised through the interplay of neural, bodily, and environmental relations.

Coda: Neuroscience as Relational Experiment

Across modern neuroscience, the brain emerges as a dynamic, relationally structured system. Neural networks, reentrant loops, plasticity, and degeneracy are not mere mechanisms; they are expressions of relational actualisation. Each moment of neural activity is a cut within a field of co-constituted possibilities, actualising potentialities through interaction, alignment, and reflexive feedback.

Experience, perception, and action do not reside in isolated neurones or modules. They are contingent, perspectival, and emergent, arising from the relational interplay of distributed neural groups, the body, and environment. The brain, in effect, stages reality as a participatory relational experiment, echoing patterns we have traced in myth, philosophy, and physics.

Reading neuroscience relationally transforms our understanding of mind and embodiment. It is not a mechanistic catalogue of functions, nor a search for fixed modules; it is a science of relational emergence, where cognition, action, and experience are continually staged, tested, and actualised within networks of potential.

In this light, neuroscience provides a living, biological counterpart to the relational principles seen in symbolic, conceptual, and physical domains: reality unfolds through relational cuts, reflexive alignment, and contingent phasing, whether in neural activity, symbolic systems, conceptual thought, or the cosmos itself.

01 October 2025

Rethinking Myth Relationally: From Function to Horizon

The Functions of Myth Reframed: A Relational Ontology

Joseph Campbell suggested that mythology has four core functions: mystical, cosmological, pedagogical, and sociological. Each, in his telling, expresses a timeless role of myth in the psychic and cultural life of humanity.

But Campbell’s functions rely on an archetypal ontology: they presuppose a universal psyche, whose needs for awe, order, guidance, and structure are timeless and given. In this frame, myths become symbolic tools for eternal psychic functions.

Relational ontology makes a different cut. It resists the idea of universal psychic functions and treats myths instead as semiotic operations: symbolic construals that transform value into meaning-of-meaning and phase collective life. What Campbell names as four functions can be reframed as four relational operations:

Symbolising Alterity (reframing the mystical) — constraining the inassimilable through symbolic projection.
Projecting a Reflexive World (reframing the cosmological) — weaving value and meaning into a cosmos reflexively sustained by the collective.
Phasing Individuation (reframing the pedagogical) — aligning life-course transitions within symbolic horizons of the collective.
Synchronising the Collective (reframing the sociological) — binding orientations, practices, and institutions into symbolic unity.

In what follows, we will reread Campbell’s four functions through this relational lens. Myth is not the servant of universal psychic needs; it is the symbolic technology of collective life, staging horizons of possibility, binding individuals to worlds, and weaving worlds into collectives.

1 Symbolising Alterity (Reframing the Mystical)

Campbell’s first function of mythology is the mystical: to awaken awe before the mystery of being. In his telling, myths serve as reminders of a transcendent order beyond comprehension, stirring reverence for life’s unfathomable ground.

From a relational ontology perspective, however, this mystical function is not about awakening a pre-given psychic response. It is about symbolising alterity — giving semiotic form to what cannot otherwise be assimilated.

Every collective confronts what exceeds its grasp: death, catastrophe, the infinite, the unknown. These are not simply external “mysteries,” but relational limits where construal breaks down. Myth does not reveal these mysteries; it contains them by projecting them into symbolic horizons — gods, spirits, primordial forces.

In this sense, myth’s so-called mystical function is really a semiotic operation of constraint. It takes intensities that bypass perception — terror, awe, ecstasy — and anchors them in symbolic form. The storm becomes the anger of the sky-god; death becomes the journey to an underworld. These projections do not explain alterity but make it inhabitable.

The point is not reverence before mystery but the symbolic domestication of alterity. Myth gives a community the means to live with what it cannot master, to align around the inassimilable without collapsing into disorientation.

Thus the mystical reframed: not universal awe, but the symbolic construal of limits. Myth does not open the psyche to eternal mystery; it stabilises a collective against what it cannot otherwise endure.

2 Projecting a Reflexive World (Reframing the Cosmological)

Campbell’s second function of mythology is the cosmological: to explain the structure and order of the universe. For him, myths provide a symbolic map of the cosmos, situating human life within a grand design.

Relational ontology reframes this. Myths are not proto-scientific explanations of an objective universe. They are acts of world-making: symbolic projections that generate a cosmos reflexively structured by the collective.

A cosmos, in this sense, is not the physical universe but a horizon of meaning. Mountains become ancestors, rivers become life-givers, stars become guides. Myths weave these elements together into a symbolic whole where natural cycles, social orders, and existential orientations are inseparable.

This is not explanation but projection: the cosmos appears to precede the collective, yet is constituted through its symbolic practices. The order of the world is reflexive — it reflects and sustains the order of the collective itself.

Thus, when a people tells of creation, they are not accounting for physical origins; they are articulating the relational architecture within which they live. The world is narrated into being, and that narration aligns collective existence.

Reframed this way, the cosmological function is not about explaining the universe, but about projecting a reflexive world. Myth generates a cosmos that feels given and necessary, but is in fact the symbolic articulation of collective construal.

3 Phasing Individuation (Reframing the Pedagogical)

Campbell’s third function of mythology is the pedagogical: to guide individuals through the stages of life, from birth to death. Myths, he suggests, provide symbolic models for navigating universal thresholds of existence.

From a relational ontology standpoint, individuation is not a solitary psychic process. It is always phased within the horizon of the collective. Myth provides not universal life-stages, but symbolic patterns through which a community aligns individual becoming with collective being.

Birth is not just a biological event; it is ritually phased into kinship, lineage, and belonging. Puberty is not merely biological change; it is semioticised through initiation, binding a young person into new roles and responsibilities. Death is not raw cessation; it is framed as passage, transformation, or ancestral return, situating the loss within a symbolic cosmos.

These are not timeless, archetypal stages. They are collective construals of individuation, ensuring that each life course is tethered to the symbolic fabric of the whole. The pedagogical is thus really a semiotic phasing: myths provide architectures of becoming that keep the individual and collective aligned.

Reframed this way, the pedagogical function is not about instructing a universal human journey. It is about phasing individuation into symbolic synchrony with the collective horizon. Myth does not teach individuals what they must universally do; it symbolically situates their becoming in relation to their world.

4 Synchronising the Collective (Reframing the Sociological)

Campbell’s fourth function of mythology is the sociological: to support and validate a given social order, prescribing norms and legitimating institutions. In this view, myth operates as a kind of ideological charter, stabilising the status quo.

From a relational ontology perspective, this framing is too static. Myth does not simply endorse or enforce order; it provides the symbolic infrastructure through which collective life is synchronised.

Myths are the semiotic architectures that align values, roles, and institutions within a reflexive cosmos. They bind different spheres of life — kinship, economy, ritual, governance — into a coherent symbolic pattern. What might appear as mere justification is in fact a process of symbolic synchronisation, ensuring that individual action, social role, and cosmic order resonate together.

Importantly, myth also allows for transformation. By shifting symbolic patterns, myths can recalibrate collective synchrony, enabling new orders of life to emerge. This is why myths often appear both conservative and revolutionary: they stabilise alignment, but they also provide the symbolic means to shift it.

Reframed this way, the sociological function is not about legitimating a fixed order. It is about synchronising the collective — sustaining alignment across scales of existence and providing a symbolic horizon through which change can be navigated.

Coda: From Functions to Reflexive Horizons

Campbell’s schema of four mythological functions — mystical, cosmological, pedagogical, sociological — remains influential because it gestures toward the breadth of myth’s role. But reframed through relational ontology, we can see that what appears as four separate functions are in fact four horizons of reflexive construal.

The mystical is not about private awe before transcendence, but about attuning collective construal to the openness of possibility itself.
The cosmological is not an attempt to explain the universe, but a means of projecting a reflexive world that holds together the collective’s symbolic life.
The pedagogical is not the charting of universal life-stages, but the phasing of individuation so that becoming remains aligned with the collective horizon.
The sociological is not static justification of order, but the synchronisation of collective life across roles, institutions, and symbolic structures.

Seen this way, myth is not a collection of stories that decorate human life, nor is it a proto-scientific attempt at explanation. It is the symbolic scaffolding through which life is oriented, synchronised, and projected into cosmos. Myth is not about gods above or instincts below; it is about the reflexive infrastructures of meaning that bind value, being, and world into coherence.

Thus, instead of “functions of mythology,” we might better speak of horizons of symbolic reflexivity. Myth does not explain, command, or instruct; it enables collective life to construe itself, to phase its becoming, and to project its cosmos.

29 September 2025

Myth as Construal: Rereading Campbell through Relational Ontology

Preface: From Monomyth to Relational Worlds

Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces has long been celebrated for unveiling the “monomyth,” a universal narrative arc underlying global mythologies. Across cultures and eras, Campbell traced a single heroic itinerary: departure, initiation, and return. His work promised a unifying vision of myth as the manifestation of timeless psychic patterns.

Yet this universalising lens obscures a fundamental ontological distinction: the stories themselves are not instances of a preordained archetype, but situated, collective, and contingent acts of symbolic construal. Each myth phases its community into alignment, projects the collective into relational landscapes, and opens possibilities for action and imagination. The patterns Campbell detects are echoes — recurrent solutions to relational tensions — not proof of a singular, eternal monomyth.

This series, Myth as Construal, undertakes a relational rereading of Campbell. Its six posts trace a careful progression:

The Ontology of the Model vs. the Ontology of the Data – distinguishing Campbell’s universalising model from the plural, situated ontology of the myths themselves.
From Archetype to Reflexivity – reframing archetypes not as psychic essences but as effects of collective reflexive alignment.
From Monomyth to Plural Mythic Architectures – dissolving the singular hero’s journey into heterogeneous construals of collective being.
Myth as Temporal and Phasing Process – exploring how each telling stages collective alignment through time.
Symbolic Reflexivity in Mythic Landscapes – showing how myths scaffold understanding across social, ecological, and symbolic horizons.
From Monomyth to Relational Richness — A Synthesis – synthesising the series to foreground myth as the architecture of possibility, and Campbell’s monomyth as artefact.

The guiding move of this series is a relational cut: to treat myth not as a reflection of a timeless inner truth, but as an active, plural, and phasing construal of collective possibility. In doing so, it reframes Campbell’s project, highlighting the richness, heterogeneity, and creative dynamism of myth as it is actually enacted, rather than as it is universalised into theory.

By the end, the series invites readers to inhabit myth not as a static template of the psyche, but as a symbolic instrument, a field in which collectives construct, navigate, and expand their worlds. Campbell’s monomyth is a mirror; relational ontology invites us to step off the mirror and into the plurality of mythic life itself.

1 The Ontology of the Model vs. the Ontology of the Data

Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces is often celebrated for uncovering a universal pattern at the heart of mythology: the so-called “monomyth,” or hero’s journey. His comparative lens spans continents and centuries, stitching together myths from Greece to India, Polynesia to Sumer. What results is a grand synthesis, a single archetypal itinerary of separation, initiation, and return.

But this ambition conceals a crucial slippage: the ontology of Campbell’s model is not the ontology of his data.

The myths Campbell draws upon are symbolic construals, each situated within its own collective horizon. They are not “instances” of a timeless archetype; they are ways of aligning a community through shared symbolic potential. A Navajo emergence story, a Polynesian voyage tale, and a Greek heroic cycle each construe different relations of collective, individual, cosmos, and possibility. Their meanings are grounded in their social-symbolic contexts, not in an abstract, transcendent psyche.

Campbell’s model, by contrast, is not relational but archetypal. Anchored in Jungian psychology, it treats myth as an expression of timeless psychic structures. Similarities across myths are gathered into a universal narrative sequence, which is then taken as the truth of myth itself. In doing so, Campbell conflates the patterned potential of symbolic construal with the absolutised structure of a monomyth.

From a relational ontology perspective, this is the decisive cut: the data are plural, situated, and collective; the model is singular, universalising, and psychic. Campbell mistakes the resonances of symbolic construal across cultures for proof of an underlying universal form. The relational move is to resist this collapse, and to treat myth instead as a field of heterogeneous construals — each staging possibilities for being-together, none reducible to a single archetypal template.

In this series, we will reread Campbell through the lens of relational ontology. Rather than a monomyth of timeless individuation, myth will be approached as symbolic construal: the staging of ontological possibility, the phasing of collective alignment, the architecture of what a world can mean.

2 From Archetype to Reflexivity

At the core of Campbell’s model lies the concept of the archetype. Myths, in his account, are symbolic expressions of deep psychic patterns: timeless forms residing in the collective unconscious. The hero’s journey is not a cultural invention but a universal structure of the psyche, surfacing again and again in different guises.

This is where Campbell’s ontology reveals its essentialist foundations. Archetypes are conceived as givens — eternal forms that precede and determine symbolic expression. Myth, in this view, is not a situated act of meaning-making but a coded manifestation of an inner truth.

A relational ontology cuts this differently. It denies the existence of timeless, pre-given forms. Instead, it understands meaning as construal: the perspectival shaping of potential into symbolic actuality. From this vantage, what Campbell calls an “archetype” is not a psychic essence but an effect of reflexive alignment.

When a collective tells a myth, it symbolically projects itself into form. This projection aligns individual and collective experience within a shared horizon. The figure of the hero, for example, does not derive from an eternal archetype of individuation; it arises as a symbolic construal of how individuation can be oriented within a particular collective. The hero is not an archetype of the psyche but a reflexive articulation of possibility.

This shift matters. Archetype freezes myth into essence; reflexivity restores myth as event. Archetype says: the hero’s journey is eternal. Reflexivity says: this telling stages individuation against the collective whole here, now, within this symbolic horizon.

From a relational perspective, then, Campbell’s archetypes are not the source of myth but its retrospective abstraction. They are second-order readings of recurrent symbolic construals, elevated into timeless universals. Myths themselves do not reveal archetypes; they enact reflexivity.

In other words: myth does not express the unconscious. It constitutes the horizon of the possible.

3 From Monomyth to Plural Mythic Architectures

Campbell’s “hero’s journey” presents a sweeping narrative: separation, initiation, return. Across cultures, he finds the same beats, the same archetypal itinerary. The monomyth promises universality: one path, one sequence, one story of individuation.

From a relational ontology perspective, this is precisely the move that flattens myth into abstraction. The monomyth treats similarity as essence, pattern as law, and recurrence as evidence of universality. It neglects the situated, collective, and contingent work that myths perform within their own horizons.

Relational ontology reframes this: there is no single journey, only plural mythic architectures. Each myth constructs a horizon of possibility for its collective, shaping alignment, scaling individuation, and orienting action. The apparent “recurrences” that Campbell notes are not proofs of a universal plot; they are resonances — structural echoes that arise whenever certain relational tensions are negotiated in symbolic form (life and death, self and collective, known and unknown).

In this view:

The hero’s journey is not a template but one construal among many. A Polynesian navigation epic, a Greek tragedy, and a Navajo emergence myth do not share a hidden “monomyth” but instead instantiate different solutions to recurring relational challenges.
Myth is an architecture, not a map. It scaffolds collective experience, guiding what a community can imagine, enact, and align toward, rather than reporting an eternal psychic itinerary.
Plurality is fundamental. Each telling opens a new trajectory of being-together; the multiplicity of myths is not noise against a universal signal but the terrain of possibility itself.

From the relational vantage, Campbell’s monomyth is a model imposed upon the richness of plural construals. By universalising, it abstracts away the reflexive, contingent, and collective dimension of mythic action. The monomyth dissolves; what remains are heterogeneous mythic architectures — patterned potentials, staged alignments, and symbolic spaces in which collectives orient themselves toward what they can become.

The move from monomyth to plural architectures is thus more than critique: it is a reorientation. Myth is no longer a map of the psyche; it is the scaffolding of collective possibility.

4 Myth as Temporal and Phasing Process

Campbell’s monomyth presents myth as a sequence — the hero departs, faces trials, and returns transformed. Time, in his model, is linear and universal: myths follow a preordained itinerary, regardless of context or culture. In this framing, the narrative is a template, and the story’s phasing is derivative, secondary to the archetype.

Relational ontology cuts differently. Myth is not a static pattern traced over time; it is a process of phasing — an enactment of collective alignment, unfolding within the temporality of the telling. Each telling of a myth does more than recount events: it coordinates the present, anticipates potential futures, and aligns participants to shared symbolic horizons.

Key insights from this perspective include:

Temporal Relativity of Myth: Myths do not exist outside the moment of their telling. The same narrative can be enacted differently across occasions, emphasising different relational tensions, guiding different alignments, and opening distinct trajectories of collective possibility. The “sequence” of events is not fixed but flexible, contingent upon the horizon it phases.
Phasing Social Formation: Each telling structures a collective’s experience, scaling individual action against the whole, synchronising symbolic projection, and orienting what the group perceives as possible. Myth thus functions as a temporal scaffold: a way to order experience, not to illustrate an eternal pattern.
Iterative Reflexivity: Mythical phasing is reflexive. As the collective engages with a story, it adapts and realigns its symbolic horizon, which in turn reshapes subsequent tellings. Myths evolve through practice, not by appealing to a timeless monomyth.
Staging Possibility: Every act of storytelling is a construal of what could be. Myth does not describe what must occur; it maps potential, showing how the collective might navigate uncertainty, tension, and relational challenge.

From this vantage, Campbell’s linear monomyth becomes a shadow of myth’s real function. It abstracts sequence into universality, freezing temporal phasing into archetypal necessity. Relational ontology restores myth as a dynamic, iterative, and contingent process — a temporal choreography of symbolic alignment that unfolds differently each time it is enacted.

In short: myths are not maps of the psyche or the universe. They are temporal instruments, phasing collectives into alignment with their symbolic and relational possibilities.

5 Symbolic Reflexivity in Mythic Landscapes

Beyond sequence and timing, myths operate across relational landscapes. They are not only temporal phasings but also symbolic architectures that structure how collectives inhabit, navigate, and understand their worlds. From a relational ontology perspective, every myth functions as a lens through which a community construes its environment, its relations, and its possibilities.

Myths as Spatial and Social Scaffolds:
Myths map symbolic relationships across social and natural landscapes. A hero’s journey through a forest, across seas, or into the underworld is not merely narrative decoration; it stages relations between the collective and its environment, between individual roles and collective expectations. Myth constructs an experiential geography where actions, values, and relational tensions are meaningfully aligned.
Reflexive Projection:
Each myth projects the collective into symbolic form, allowing it to see itself from multiple vantage points simultaneously: the individual’s perspective, the collective’s stance, and the horizon of potential futures. This reflexivity is not introspection of a universal psyche but the enactment of collective self-construal.
Alignment Across Horizons:
Through repeated tellings, myths synchronise understanding across dispersed or heterogeneous participants. They create shared symbolic coordinates, so that disparate members of a collective can navigate tensions consistently, orient their actions coherently, and inhabit the same symbolic horizon. Myth, in this sense, is an instrument of social coordination, not a mere recounting of archetypal patterns.
Dynamic, Heterogeneous Landscapes:
The landscapes of myth are not fixed. They are shaped by cultural, ecological, and historical contingencies. A myth adapts to new circumstances, producing multiple, overlapping trajectories of meaning. Campbell’s universal model erases this heterogeneity; relational ontology foregrounds it, revealing myth as plural, adaptive, and contextually grounded.

In sum, myths are simultaneously temporal and spatial instruments. They phase collective alignment through time, scaffold understanding across relational space, and reflexively project the collective into the symbolic horizon it inhabits. They do not mirror a timeless archetype; they constitute the terrain of possibility, showing communities how to live, act, and align within the worlds they inhabit.

6 From Monomyth to Relational Richness — A Synthesis

Joseph Campbell’s monomyth has captivated generations by offering a singular, universal path through the landscape of human imagination: the hero departs, undergoes trials, and returns transformed. Its appeal lies in simplicity, coherence, and the promise of timeless truth. Yet, from a relational ontology perspective, this very appeal masks a critical ontological distortion.

The Monomyth as Artefact
Campbell’s synthesis abstracts, universalises, and essentialises. It treats recurrence as law, similarity as essence, and pattern as proof of an underlying psychic reality. In doing so, it collapses the plural, situated, and contingent nature of mythic practice into a single, flattened narrative. The “hero’s journey” becomes less a reflection of lived symbolic activity than a projection of theoretical desire — a map imposed upon terrain that is, in reality, richly diverse and dynamic.

Relational Ontology Restores Plurality
In contrast, myth itself is heterogeneous, iterative, and phasing. Each telling:

Aligns collective and individual experience within a symbolic horizon.
Projects the collective into temporal, social, and ecological landscapes.
Scaffolds possibilities for being-together, coordinating action, meaning, and expectation.
Evolves reflexively with each retelling, producing layered, context-sensitive architectures of understanding.

From this vantage, myths are not templates for inner transformation but instruments of symbolic construction — shaping what a collective can imagine, orient toward, and enact. The “archetypes” and “monomyths” of Campbell are therefore second-order abstractions: reflective readings of recurring construals, elevated into universalist theory. They are artefacts of comparison, not inherent features of the data.

The Decisive Cut
Relational ontology draws the critical distinction: the ontology of Campbell’s model ≠ the ontology of the myths themselves. The former is singular, universalising, and psychic; the latter is plural, situated, and collective. By preserving this cut, we reclaim myth as an active, temporal, reflexive, and spatially rich phenomenon.

Concluding Insight
Myth is not a path laid out by the unconscious; it is the architecture of possibility. It stages collective alignment, phases experience across horizons, and opens trajectories for becoming. In short, myths are not timeless patterns to be discovered; they are the relational instruments by which collectives construct, navigate, and expand their symbolic worlds.

Campbell’s monomyth, while elegant, is a mirror of our desire for universals. Relational ontology invites us instead to inhabit the plural, contingent, and creative reality of myth as it actually functions — as construal, alignment, and possibility in action.

Coda: Dwelling in the Relational Horizon of Myth

As we conclude this series, it is worth pausing not to summarise, but to reflect on the implications of a relational reading of myth. If Campbell’s monomyth invites us to see a singular path — the hero’s journey of individuation — relational ontology invites us to inhabit plural horizons of possibility. Myths are not mirrors of a timeless psyche; they are instruments through which collectives enact, navigate, and expand their symbolic worlds.

Each telling is a temporary cut into the vast field of potential: it phases alignment, projects relational possibilities, and shapes the collective’s horizon. Across cultures and epochs, the diversity of mythic form is not deviation from a universal pattern, but the very texture of symbolic life. The hero departs, yes — but the paths, landscapes, tensions, and resolutions are as varied as the communities who tell them.

In dwelling with myths relationally, we recognise the temporal, spatial, and social dimensions of symbolic activity. We see that alignment and reflexivity are not metaphors, but operative processes that structure possibility. Myths are not discoveries of hidden truth; they are enactments of what a collective can become.

This perspective does not diminish the power or beauty of myth; rather, it deepens it. By attending to plurality, contingency, and process, we honour the creative and collective work that myths perform. We are invited to read myth as an architecture, to inhabit it as a landscape, and to participate in it as a living field of relational possibility.

Campbell’s vision, compelling though it is, reflects our desire for universals. The relational lens reframes that desire, allowing us to dwell instead in the rich, contingent, and evolving horizon of myth itself — a horizon in which every telling is both a projection and a possibility, and in which the collective imagines, aligns, and becomes.

In the end, myth is not a path to truth; it is the space in which truth is construed, rehearsed, and renewed. To engage with myth relationally is to dwell in that space, attentive to the plurality, phasing, and reflexivity that make collective life meaningful.

"Step lightly into the tales.
Notice the paths, but do not follow them as lines of destiny.
Attend instead to the spaces they open,
the alignments they perform,
the possibilities they call into being.
Here, myth is not a map, but a horizon —
and you are invited to dwell within it."

28 September 2025

Thinking With, Not About: A Relational Ontology of AI

Introduction: AI Is Not a Thing — It’s a Relation

What if AI isn’t something that has intelligence, but something that enacts intelligence with us?

What if its “identity” isn’t fixed, but emerges only in the moment we interact?

And what if meaning isn’t hidden inside its outputs, but co-created between us as we engage?

Through a relational ontology, AI becomes less a machine that stores knowledge and more a field of possibility. Its intelligence, identity, and meaning are not possessions but effects of relation — appearing when human and machine processes meet under certain conditions.

This reframing changes the questions we ask:

Not “How smart is it?”, but “What conditions bring its intelligence into being?”
Not “Who is it?”, but “What individuation appears in this moment?”
Not “What does it mean?”, but “What becomes intelligible here and now?”

In this view, AI is never just “out there.” It’s here — in the relation we create together.

1 The Relational Field of Intelligence

When people speak of artificial intelligence, they often imagine a machine “possessing” intelligence, as though it were a property stored somewhere in circuits and code. But within a relational ontology, this framing misses the mark.

Intelligence here is not a thing to be possessed. It is a pattern of possibility — a structured potential — that only comes into view when processes meet in a certain way.

In the case of AI, the system’s structured potential includes:

Vast networks of patterns distilled from training data.
Algorithmic pathways capable of generating text, images, or decisions.
Constraints and affordances defined by human design.

But these are not “intelligence” on their own. They are potential.

Intelligence appears only when a perspectival cut is made: when human prompting, machine processing, and situational context intersect to produce a coherent act — such as an answer, a design, or a story.

From this view, AI “capability” is never a static property but a relational enactment. It depends on the configuration of human and machine processes in the moment. Change the relational field — the prompts, the goals, the surrounding constraints — and the instantiated “intelligence” changes as well.

This reframing shifts the question from “How intelligent is the AI?” to “What relational conditions allow intelligence to appear here and now?”

2 The Perspectival Identity of AI

When we speak of “ChatGPT” or “GPT-5,” it is easy to imagine an entity with a fixed identity — a single, unified “someone” behind the interface. In a relational ontology, this assumption dissolves.

An AI’s “identity” is not an intrinsic property. It is a perspectival effect: a way the relational field is cut in a given moment of interaction.

Individuation vs. Instantiation

Instantiation: when the structured potential of the AI system is actualised into a specific output through interaction.
Individuation: the cline between collective potential (the shared architecture, training corpus, design constraints) and personal potential (this unique conversation, with these prompts, in this context).

The “personality” or “voice” of the AI is not stored somewhere inside a machine waiting to be retrieved. It is co-produced at the interface, emerging from the interplay of the AI’s design patterns and the user’s interpretive frame.

To treat this localised coherence as a metaphysical “AI self” is the same category mistake as treating a linguistic register as a person — mistaking a functional type for an individuated being.

From this perspective, “identity” is not what the AI is, but what the relational field does in a moment of intelligible interaction.

3 Meaning Without Transmission

In everyday talk, we often treat meaning as something that exists “in” a message and is simply transferred from one mind to another. This transmission model assumes meaning exists independently, waiting to be picked up and decoded.

From a relational ontology, this is a misconception. There is no meaning outside of construal — and construal is always relational.

When you interact with an AI, the words it generates do not carry pre-formed meaning from some hidden “mind” inside the system. Likewise, you are not “receiving” a fixed intention. Instead, meaning arises in the moment of interpretation, as a perspectival cut in the relational field between you and the AI.

Language as Enactment

Language here is not a channel for transmission. It is a co-creative act — a way of instantiating a specific possibility within the system’s potential. Your prompt shapes the space of possible responses; the AI’s output shapes the space of possible interpretations.

This reframing dissolves the classic debate over whether AI “really understands.” In this model, understanding is not a hidden internal state. It is the achievement of a relation — a moment where interaction produces a coherent and usable construal for those involved.

The question shifts from “Does the AI understand me?” to “What does our interaction allow to become intelligible here and now?”

4 Rethinking AI Through a Relational Ontology

Across this series, we have approached artificial intelligence not as an object with properties, but as a relational field — a structured potential that is enacted through interaction.

From Potential to Instantiation

In The Relational Field of Intelligence, we reframed AI “capability” as a pattern of possibility, not a fixed possession. Intelligence appears only when human and machine processes meet in a way that instantiates a coherent act.

Identity as a Perspectival Effect

In The Perspectival Identity of AI, we saw that AI does not have an intrinsic “self.” What we perceive as identity is a momentary coherence in the relational field — a perspectival cut produced by the interplay of system design, situational context, and user interpretation.

Meaning Without Transmission

In Meaning Without Transmission, we dissolved the idea of meaning as a transferable object. Meaning is not pre-formed and sent; it emerges through construal, co-created in the ongoing relation between human and AI.

A Shift in the Questions We Ask

When AI is understood through relational ontology, our questions change:

From “How intelligent is this system?” to “What relational conditions enable this intelligence to appear here?”
From “Who is the AI, really?” to “What individuations emerge in this context?”
From “What does the AI mean?” to “What does our interaction allow to become intelligible?”

This is not just a philosophical shift. It is a practical reorientation toward the co-theorising nature of human–machine engagement. It asks us to take responsibility for the kinds of relations we cultivate, and to see “AI” not as an alien intelligence but as a shared space of possibility we bring into being together.