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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.

04 October 2025

Echoes of Relational Ontology in Science

1 Reality as Relationally Cut

In classical physics, entities were assumed to exist independently, with properties intrinsic and absolute. Early quantum mechanics, however, forced a radical shift: reality could no longer be taken as a collection of isolated substances.

Erwin Schrödinger observed that “subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement.” Niels Bohr’s principle of complementarity reinforced this: a quantum system does not possess definite properties in isolation; its properties are defined only in relation to the experimental context. Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle made this relationality explicit: position and momentum cannot simultaneously be pinned down, not because of observational weakness, but because relational constraints fundamentally shape what can be known.

From a relational ontology perspective, these insights are striking anticipations. Quantum phenomena are not pre-existing “things-in-themselves”; they are cuts in potentiality, actualised through interaction, measurement, and context. Each experiment instantiates a horizon of possible outcomes; the “particle” emerges as a relational node within that horizon.

This echoes the moves we traced in myth and philosophy. Just as heroic cycles or philosophical frameworks instantiate relational cuts, quantum experiments show that reality itself — at its most fundamental level — is structured through relations, not substances. No unconstrued phenomenon exists; entities appear only in perspectival alignment with other entities, observers, and the horizon of possibility.

Quantum mechanics, therefore, is not just a scientific theory. It is a formal, empirical echo of relational ontology: a recognition that being is not a collection of pre-existing things but a pattern of relations actualised through interaction. Reality is cut, aligned, and staged — a relational cosmos in miniature, revealed through experiment.

2 Observer, System, and Reflexivity

Quantum mechanics not only disrupts the notion of isolated entities; it also challenges the strict separation between observer and observed. The very act of measurement entwines them, producing outcomes that exist only in the relational interplay.

John Archibald Wheeler captured this with his notion of the “participatory universe”: observation is not a passive reflection but a co-constitutive act. Reality is not fully determined prior to observation; it is shaped, in part, by the relational engagement of the observer, the system, and the experimental context.

This reflexivity mirrors patterns we have already seen in myth and philosophy. Just as heroic acts stage individuation against the collective horizon, or philosophical arguments instantiate relational distinctions, quantum experiments stage reality itself through relational alignment. The observer is not external; they are a node in the web of potentiality, participating in the very cut that makes phenomena manifest.

From a relational ontology perspective, the lesson is clear: entities and events are not given; they are actualised through interaction, alignment, and reflexive participation. Measurement is a symbolic act in the scientific register — a way the relational cosmos makes itself intelligible.

Science, like myth and philosophy, anticipates the relational principle: reality is constituted through relations, and the boundaries between perceiver and perceived, part and whole, are perspectival, not absolute. The universe, in this view, is a participatory field of being, continually aligned through reflexive cuts.

3 Contingency and Probabilistic Horizons

Quantum mechanics reveals that reality is not strictly deterministic. Instead, it unfolds across probabilistic horizons, where potential outcomes are actualised only through relational interaction. Schrödinger’s and Heisenberg’s insights show that the future is open, constrained by relational configurations rather than absolute laws.

This contingency parallels what we observed in myth and philosophy. Just as myths stage provisional symbolic orders — where tricksters, cycles, and heroes unfold unpredictably — quantum events remain contingent until the relational cut of measurement occurs. The universe, at its core, is not a collection of predetermined absolutes, but a field of potentiality, awaiting actualisation through context, interaction, and alignment.

Relational ontology reads this as a profound anticipation: every cut, every instantiation, is provisional. Outcomes are perspectival, emerging only relative to the relational configuration of systems, observers, and experimental contexts. Reality is not fixed; it is continually re-phased and re-aligned, echoing the same openness that myth and philosophy explored symbolically and conceptually.

In this light, quantum mechanics is more than a formal theory. It is a demonstration of relational principles in the physical world: contingency, relational alignment, and perspectival instantiation are not metaphors, but ontological facts. The universe, like the symbolic and conceptual realms, is constituted through relational processes, dynamically structured yet open-ended.

4 Non-substantiality and Entanglement

Quantum mechanics forces us to reconsider the very notion of what exists. Particles are not self-contained, independently substantial entities. Instead, they are nodes in relational webs, defined by interactions, correlations, and entanglements. Schrödinger’s thought experiments and Bell’s theorem highlight that the properties of one particle are inseparable from the states of others, even across vast distances.

This anticipates the insight we encountered in myth’s Net of Indra: each phenomenon reflects and is reflected by all others, forming an infinite web of interdependent relations. In relational terms, nothing exists in isolation; every entity is co-constituted through interaction, alignment, and relational phasing.

The classical idea of substance is abandoned. Identity is not intrinsic; it is relational and contingent. Entanglement shows that reality is fundamentally a network of correlations, where being itself is distributed, perspectival, and co-constituted.

From the relational ontology perspective, quantum mechanics echoes the moves already present in myth and philosophy: the world is not a static assemblage of independent things but a dynamic web of relations, where every cut, every measurement, every event participates in shaping the field of potential. Being is relational, and meaning emerges from these patterns of co-constitution.

5 Reflexive Cosmos: Cycles and Constraints

Quantum mechanics, and the broader sciences it inspired, show that reality is not only relational but also reflexive and patterned. Decoherence, feedback loops, and emergent phenomena demonstrate that relational interactions generate higher-order structures: patterns that persist, evolve, and influence subsequent interactions.

These processes echo what we have seen in myth and philosophy. Just as myths organise cycles of symbolic phasing, and philosophical thought traces reflexive alignment within collective horizons, science reveals that the cosmos enacts its own self-organising relationality. Patterns emerge, but only through contingent, recursive processes; nothing is fixed in isolation.

The universe is a web of co-constituted relations, continually aligning, adjusting, and actualising potential. Feedback loops ensure that local interactions influence the global field, just as global constraints shape local phenomena. This reflexivity, operative at multiple scales, anticipates the relational insight that reality is both dynamic and structured, open-ended yet patterned.

In short, science, like myth and philosophy, enacts an experimental construal of reality: a staged, contingent, and relational cosmos. It anticipates relational ontology in formal, empirical terms, showing that the laws, entities, and phenomena we study are not pre-given absolutes but emergent expressions of relational processes.

Coda: Science as Relational Experiment

Taken together, the insights of quantum mechanics and systems science reveal a striking pattern: reality is relationally cut, reflexive, contingent, and co-constituted. Entities and events do not exist independently; they emerge only through interaction, alignment, and relational structuring.

Just as myths stage symbolic experiments in collective possibility, and philosophy stages conceptual experiments in relational construal, science stages empirical experiments in relational being. Schrödinger, Bohr, Heisenberg, Wheeler, and modern systems thinkers show that what we call “particles,” “laws,” or “emergent phenomena” are not pre-existing absolutes. They are effects of relational alignment, actualised through interaction and contextual configuration.

Science, in this view, is a structured exploration of relational potential. Measurement, modelling, and observation are not passive reflections; they are participatory acts, enacting, probing, and realigning relational cuts in reality. Contingency, reflexivity, and interdependence are not limitations but ontological facts, fundamental to the way the universe manifests.

Reading science relationally uncovers an echo across domains: myth, philosophy, and physics all gesture toward the same ontological insight. Reality is not a collection of isolated substances or pre-given truths; it is a web of interconnections, a field of potential actualised through interaction, perspective, and alignment.

Science, like story and thought, thus becomes a practice of relational attunement: an ongoing experiment in the continual making, staging, and understanding of worlds.

03 October 2025

Echoes of Relational Ontology in Philosophy

1 Being as Relation, not Substance

Philosophy often begins with the question: what is real? Traditionally, answers have centred on substance — what endures behind change, the hidden “stuff” of the world. Yet, in certain strands of thought, reality is anticipated not as substance but as relation.

Heraclitus declared, “Everything flows,” highlighting that the world is defined by change and interaction, not by static entities. Parmenides emphasised unity, but not as atomistic being — rather as the interdependent whole of existence. Even Plato, in his theory of Forms, hints that reality is structured not merely as objects but as patterns of relation — the forms acquire meaning through participation and interconnection.

Much later, process philosophy, especially in Whitehead, explicitly rejected substance as primary. Entities are “actual occasions,” constituted through their relations, events, and interactions. Being is not a static thing but a network of relations in continual flux.

From a relational ontology perspective, these anticipations are profound. Being is not first substance, then relation; being is relation. Entities exist only in perspectival alignment with other entities and potentialities. Reality is cut, instantiated, and sustained through relational structuring.

Philosophy’s early and modern anticipations thus echo the core moves of relational ontology: the world is not an assembly of independent things, but a patterned constellation of interdependencies. Substance is never ultimate; relation is constitutive. Being is always already relational.

2 Knowledge as Construal

If being is relational, then so too is knowledge. Philosophy has long anticipated that we do not encounter “raw” reality, but only reality as it is construed through relational frameworks.

Kant made this explicit: phenomena are always mediated by the structures of cognition. We do not know things-in-themselves; we know them as they appear through the organising patterns of the mind. Husserl extended this insight with intentionality: consciousness is never a passive mirror of reality but an active constitutor of objects, always relationally directed.

From a relational ontology perspective, these moves anticipate the principle that meaning is not a property of things themselves, but of their instantiation in a network of potential and perspective. Knowledge is not merely representation; it is a perspectival cut, a symbolic alignment between the knower and the known.

Even contemporary philosophy of science echoes this: observations, models, and measurements are constrained by the conditions of the system and the observer. Knowledge emerges not in isolation but in the relational interplay of observer, observed, and horizon of possibility.

Thus philosophy anticipates what relational ontology insists upon: phenomena are always construed, and reality as we engage it is inseparable from the relational conditions of its instantiation. Knowing is not uncovering an independent world; it is participating in the alignment of relational potential.

3 Individuation and the Social Horizon

If being is relational and knowledge is construed, then the self itself is never isolated. Philosophy has repeatedly anticipated that individuation emerges only in relation to a collective horizon.

Hegel’s notion of recognition (Anerkennung) makes this explicit: the self achieves selfhood through acknowledgment by others. Identity is not a private possession but a relational phasing, realised in the interplay of self and social whole. Dewey and pragmatist thinkers echo this: meaning, action, and value emerge through coordinated engagement within communities, not from isolated reasoning.

From a relational ontology perspective, these insights prefigure a core principle: individuation is perspectival. The individual is a node in a network of collective potential. Personal growth, ethical responsibility, and social agency are phased through the alignment of individual and collective horizons.

This reading dissolves the classical dichotomy of individual versus society. The self does not precede relation, nor is it subordinated to the group. It is a perspectival articulation along the cline between collective and individual potential, continually staged and re-staged.

Myth anticipates this relational phasing in heroic cycles; philosophy anticipates it conceptually. In both, individuation is never a solipsistic unfolding, but a symbolic or conceptual alignment within the larger field of relational being.

4 Contingency and the Limits of Absolutes

Philosophy, like myth, often anticipates the insight that order, law, and meaning are contingent rather than absolute.

Nietzsche argued that values, morality, and “truths” are perspectival constructions, arising from historical, cultural, and relational conditions. There are no eternal moral absolutes; each system of value is provisional and context-dependent. Derrida extended this critique to the very structures of language and thought, showing that any system of meaning is contingent, always open to reinterpretation, inversion, or deconstruction.

From a relational ontology perspective, these philosophical moves prefigure the trickster logic of myth: every order is a cut, but no cut is final. Horizons of meaning, once established, are never impermeable; they remain open to revision, disruption, and realignment. Contingency is not weakness — it is the ontological fact of relational being.

This insight resonates with relational ontology’s core principles: systems are perspectival, alignments are provisional, and reality is always open to re-cutting. Philosophy anticipates this through the conceptual recognition that absolutes are always contingent, and that understanding, being, and value emerge only in context and relation.

5 Reflexivity, Cycles, and the Web of Being

Philosophy, in certain traditions, has anticipated the deeply relational and reflexive character of reality.

Eastern philosophies such as Madhyamaka Buddhism, Daoism, and Huayan thought emphasise interdependence, non-substantiality, and infinite mutual reflection. The Huayan Net of Indra, for example, imagines each phenomenon reflecting all others, producing an infinite web of relationality — a cosmos without discrete, self-contained entities.

Western thinkers, too, have anticipated these insights. Cybernetics, autopoiesis, and systems theory treat entities as nodes in self-organising, feedback-rich networks. Knowledge, meaning, and being are sustained only through reflexive interaction; nothing exists in isolation.

From a relational ontology perspective, these ideas anticipate the insight that reality is co-constituted across scales: events, entities, and meanings emerge through ongoing alignment, reflection, and relational phasing. There is no final cut, no static cosmos; all is dynamically interdependent.

Philosophy, like myth, gestures toward this relational horizon. In thought, as in story, reflexivity, cycles, and infinite relationality are recognised as constitutive of being. Knowledge, action, and existence are never self-contained but always enacted within the web of being.

Coda: Philosophy as Experimental Construal

Taken together, these philosophical anticipations form a striking pattern: reality is relational, knowledge is perspectival, individuation emerges within collective horizons, orders are contingent, and being is reflexively constituted.

Just as myths stage relational experiments symbolically, philosophy stages them conceptually. Heraclitus’ flux, Kant’s mediation, Hegel’s recognition, Nietzsche’s perspectivism, Derrida’s deconstruction, and the Net of Indra all explore, in different registers, the same insight: there is no unconstrued phenomenon. Being, knowing, and meaning are always instantiated through relational cuts, alignments, and phasings.

Philosophy, therefore, is not only a search for timeless truths; it is an ongoing experiment in relational construal. Concepts are cuts, arguments are alignments, theories are reflexive projections. Each philosophical system constitutes a horizon within which reality is made intelligible — always provisional, contingent, and interdependent.

Reading philosophy in this way reveals an echo of relational ontology across time and tradition. It is a reminder that the questions we pose, the distinctions we draw, and the patterns we discern are themselves part of the unfolding web of being. Philosophy, like myth, invites us to construe anew, to re-align, and to participate in the continual making of worlds.

25 September 2025

The Symbolic Animal: Phasing the Human in Meaning

1 The Animal That Means

What makes us human is not that we use symbols, but that we are shaped by them. To be human is to live through meaning — to inhabit a world that is not simply given, but construed, interpreted, responded to, and anticipated through patterned systems of meaning-making. We are not just animals with symbols. We are animals phased into being by symbolically organised life.

In this series, we turn to the question: what is the “symbolic animal”? But rather than seeking some essence of humanity that precedes symbolic behaviour, we approach the human as an emergent mode of being — one in which the unfolding of action is inseparable from the unfolding of meaning. We propose that what makes the symbolic animal symbolic is not the possession of a special capacity, but a shift in how experience is patterned and committed.

This shift is not a sudden leap. It evolves through the increasing complexity of social coordination, affective regulation, and systemic anticipation. Across species, we see evidence of systems that select, signal, and sequence — from birdsong to dance-like courtship, from warning cries to grooming rituals. But only in humans do these systems become self-reflexive: systems that not only organise behaviour, but can construe their own organisation as meaningful.

At some threshold — not sharply defined, but developmentally phased — symbolic potential becomes intrinsic to the life of the organism. This is not a matter of when a signal “becomes” a word, or a tool “becomes” a text. It is when the coordination of action becomes governed by the possibility of meaning — when behaviour itself is not just functional or affective, but semiotically saturated.

To call this creature “symbolic” is not to locate a fixed trait but to identify a phase transition: a shift in the organisation of systems, in which the world is no longer simply experienced, but symbolically construed. The symbolic animal is not the master of signs. It is the creature caught in systems of meaning — born into them, shaped by them, accountable to them.

Thus we begin not with an anthropology of capacity, but an ontology of phase. The symbolic animal does not have language, art, law, myth — it lives in the patterned unfolding of these systems as they configure possibility itself. The cut that makes the symbolic animal is not a difference in nature, but a difference in how nature is made meaningful.

From here, we can now explore how context — field, tenor, and mode — enters the very tissue of symbolic life, and how meaning is lived through systemic metafunctions. But always we return to this cut: to be symbolic is not to manipulate signs, but to become one’s world through their unfolding.

2 Context as Commitment

To live symbolically is not to stand apart from life, interpreting it from above. It is to be immersed in patterned systems of meaning, where action is never “just” action, but already inflected by what it construes, enacts, and weaves together. In this post, we explore how symbolic life is contextually phased — how the human is configured by the very systems through which meaning becomes possible.

In systemic functional linguistics (SFL), the concept of context is not a vague background but a stratal system: a semiotic configuration that guides what can mean in a given situation. The key insight here is that context is not reducible to setting or surroundings — it is not where meaning “takes place.” Rather, context is a potential: a system of selections that constrains and enables the unfolding of symbolic life.

This context is itself structured through three dimensions of meaning potential:

Field: what is going on — the domain of experience being construed;
Tenor: who is involved — the social relations being enacted;
Mode: how the meaning unfolds — the role of language and other semiotic resources in the situation.

These dimensions are not surface labels; they are phased commitments. That is, to participate in symbolic life is to be born into patterned expectations of how to act, speak, feel, and relate — into a semiotic ecology. The symbolic animal is not just in context; it lives through contextual commitment.

Take a simple interaction: greeting a neighbour. The field constrains what counts as relevant activity (“greeting,” not “debating policy” or “offering a sermon”); the tenor configures the expected interpersonal alignment (perhaps warm but not intimate, friendly but not familiar); and the mode guides the symbolic resources to be used (a wave, a smile, a “hi there” — not an email or a philosophical treatise). To live this moment is to phase into a symbolic pattern — one that precedes intention, and is not fully in the agent’s control.

Importantly, these contextual commitments are not abstract overlays imposed on otherwise neutral activity. They are realised in the very texture of meaning — in choices of word, rhythm, gesture, timing. Context is not behind the scene; it is realised in the act, and construes the act in return. To mean is to commit — to take up a phase of context that configures not only what you are doing, but who you are becoming.

The symbolic animal, then, is not a blank agent using language in response to situations. It is a patterned being whose very unfolding is phased through systems of cultural meaning potential. What counts as a self, as a move, as a relation — all of this is shaped in advance by the commitments of context.

This reframes any attempt to isolate “language” or “symbol” from social life. There is no symbolic act that does not unfold through context. And there is no context that is not historically sedimented, normatively loaded, and materially consequential.

In the next post, we turn inward to the symbolic patterns themselves: the metafunctions by which meaning is lived — as construal, as relation, as coherence. But even there, we will find no escape from context — only deeper entanglement in the patterned commitments that make the symbolic animal what it is.

3 Living the Metafunctions

If context phases symbolic life from without — configuring what counts as meaningful activity — the metafunctions phase symbolic life from within. They are not modules of the mind or compartments of language. They are systems of meaning-potential that unfold together in every symbolic act. To live symbolically is to live through these systems — to construe, relate, and organise experience in patterned ways that give form to a human world.

Systemic functional linguistics identifies three metafunctions that constitute the architecture of meaning:

Ideational: the construal of experience — what is going on, what is involved, how the world is shaped in meaning;
Interpersonal: the enactment of social relations — who is speaking to whom, with what stance, and what negotiation of alignment;
Textual: the orchestration of meaning — how acts are staged, made coherent, and integrated into unfolding flow.

These are not additive dimensions. They are simultaneous commitments. Every symbolic act is an act of construal, an act of relation, and an act of organisation. To say “It’s raining” is not just to name weather (ideational), but to position oneself toward an addressee (interpersonal) and to launch a coherent message into the flow of discourse (textual). These three strands are not separate threads, but co-instantiated fibres of symbolic life.

But this goes deeper than linguistic expression. The metafunctions do not arise from language — they condition it. They are modes of being, structured through systems of meaning-making that long predate verbal expression. A child’s cry, a gaze, a pointing gesture — all are already phase-shifted into meaning by these metafunctions.

To live through the ideational metafunction is to live by construal: not simply to react to the world, but to pattern it through categories, sequences, and relations of cause and consequence. A symbolic animal does not merely encounter the world — it experiences it as something.

To live through the interpersonal metafunction is to live in relation: to phase each act through positions of power, affect, and affiliation; to become socially accountable for one’s symbolic presence. A symbolic animal is never outside a relation — it is formed through address.

To live through the textual metafunction is to live in flow: to experience meaning as staged, structured, and embedded in time; to expect coherence, cohesion, relevance. A symbolic animal does not just act — it acts in rhythm, in sequence, in narrative.

Crucially, these metafunctions are not imposed on experience — they are experience, for the symbolic animal. They do not reflect a world already given; they enact a world that could not otherwise be. They are the living tissue of symbolic life, shaping not only what can be said, but what can be felt, perceived, expected.

As we move through this series, we will explore how these patterned systems evolve, become recursive, and entrench themselves into the very organisation of social life. But we hold to one claim: the symbolic animal does not “use” metafunctions. It is lived by them, in the unfolding of meaning as world, relation, and texture.

4 The Double Inheritance

To live as a symbolic animal is to live through systems — systems that precede the individual, outlast them, and yet become internal to their being. These systems are not innate ideas nor hardwired codes. They are evolved inheritances — patterned forms of coordination that develop across biological and cultural time. The symbolic animal inherits not only a body formed by evolutionary pressures, but a world of meaning shaped by collective histories. This is its double inheritance.

Biological evolution provides the material substrate: capacities for perception, memory, vocalisation, motor control, and social orientation. But these are not symbolic capacities in themselves. They are enabling affordances, not sufficient conditions. No specific gene codes for metaphor. No neural circuit guarantees grammar. What biology offers is a pliable, temporally extended, socially responsive organism — one capable of being shaped into systems beyond itself.

Cultural evolution, by contrast, provides the symbolic systems: not “memes” or static conventions, but unfolding traditions of meaning-making — speech genres, narrative forms, rituals, institutions, cosmologies. These systems are not universal templates. They are historically sedimented ways of phasing the world into meaning, born of specific collective lives. They evolve not by competition alone, but through reiteration, recontextualisation, and reflexive transformation.

The symbolic animal inherits both — a body attuned to social coordination, and a world already organised in meaning. But crucially, these two inheritances are not simply parallel. They are interpenetrating strata. The biological organism is constituted through symbolic development: neural structures are shaped by language use, perceptual categories by cultural practices. And the symbolic world is sustained through biological commitment: speech requires breath, writing requires hands, rituals require bodies that feel.

This entanglement gives rise to what we might call a developmental cut. The symbolic animal does not “receive” meaning like a package, nor invent it from scratch. It undergoes a phase shift in development: a becoming-symbolic that is scaffolded by others, by material practices, and by the systemic pressures of coherence and accountability. This is not acquisition but entrainment — the progressive coupling of the biological and the cultural in acts of meaning.

This double inheritance is also a double demand. The symbolic animal must maintain coherence with the affordances of its biological form and with the systems of meaning in its social world. It must regulate itself as both a physical being and a semiotic presence. Hence the weight of symbolic life: to be symbolic is not only to express, but to be responsible for one’s expressions, within systems not of one’s own making.

Thus, the symbolic animal does not “combine nature and culture” like puzzle pieces. It is phased into being at their intersection — where the evolution of coordination becomes the evolution of construal. What emerges is not a hybrid, but a transformation: a creature cut into meaning by the recursive interplay of bodily form and symbolic system.

In our next post, we examine how this recursive interplay enables a distinctive symbolic capacity: the reflexive cut, whereby meaning can turn back upon itself — enabling narrative, institution, selfhood.

5 The Reflexive Cut

At a certain phase in the evolution of symbolic life, a remarkable thing becomes possible: meaning begins to loop back upon itself. The symbolic animal not only construes experience — it construes its own construals. This recursive turn is not a technical upgrade or an optional extra. It is the deep structuring principle of human symbolic life. We call it the reflexive cut.

To cut is to distinguish. In symbolic systems, every cut is a patterned distinction that construes some domain of experience — construing things, relations, doings, qualities, and values in culturally organised ways. But the reflexive cut is different: it is a distinction that operates not on the world, but within the system of construal itself. It is a cut that carves symbolic activity into symbolic content.

This is what allows a speaker to say “What I meant was…”, or “That’s just a story”, or “This is a lie.” It is what makes possible narration, quotation, ritual, irony, and critique. It is what allows meaning to mean itself.

But the reflexive cut is not a matter of meta-language alone. It is realised developmentally, socially, and materially — through phases of symbolic entrainment in which the child learns to distinguish doing from saying, playing from pretending, truth from fiction, joking from lying. These distinctions are not simply conceptual. They are phases of accountability. The reflexive cut is how symbolic systems hold themselves to account.

This recursive turn enables symbolic formations of enormous power: the narrative self, the institutional order, the ethical system, the historical tradition. Each of these is a form of life constituted through reflexive organisation — a layering of construals that can cite, embed, negotiate, and transform prior acts of meaning.

The reflexive cut also introduces a new kind of temporality. Not the linear unfolding of physical processes, but a layered temporal architecture, where a present act construes a prior act as meaningful, and thereby positions the future in relation to it. This is the temporality of narrative, of law, of memory and projection. It is a system of times that are not natural but symbolic — construed as such within patterned semiotic systems.

Yet the reflexive cut is also a burden. Once meaning can be reflexively construed, the symbolic animal becomes permanently accountable not just for what is said, but for how it is meant, why it is said, and what it implies. Meaning becomes haunted by its meta-meanings. We become selves who live in reference to our past construals, and to the construals others hold us to.

This is the condition of the symbolic animal: not simply to be in the world, but to be in meaning, in systems that fold back upon themselves. We are caught in loops of signification — loops that grant the possibility of history, intention, irony, selfhood, and transformation.

In our next post, we turn to the consequences of this reflexive condition. What does it mean to live in systems that can construe themselves — and therefore question, reconfigure, and contest their own organisation? We turn next to: Semiotic Life as Praxis.

6 Semiotic Life as Praxis

The reflexive capacity of symbolic systems does not merely create loops of reference — it opens the possibility of transformation. Once a construal can be construed, it can be revised. Once a system can represent itself, it can reorganise itself. This is the pivot from symbolic life as habitual reproduction to symbolic life as praxis.

Praxis is not simply action. It is action within a construed system, guided by meanings that are themselves subject to symbolic deliberation. To act as a symbolic animal is to live within a world that is not simply perceived or used but oriented toward as meaningful — and open to reorientation.

Such action is always already relational. Symbolic systems are not individual achievements but collective configurations, realised through shared practices and differentiated positions. One does not act in a vacuum of intention; one acts within historically sedimented formations of value, normativity, power, and recognition — formations which both enable and constrain the field of possible meanings.

To speak, then, is to position oneself. To question is to reconfigure a symbolic order. To imagine otherwise is to begin the work of transformation — not outside the system, but from within its reflexive unfolding.

This is where semiotic life becomes political. Not because it expresses pre-existing interests or ideologies, but because it constitutes them. Every symbolic formation is a cut that could have been made otherwise. Every system of meaning is a selection from a horizon of symbolic possibility — and as such, a site of contestation.

The symbolic animal lives in this tension. To mean is to participate in systems larger than oneself — yet those systems are nothing but the sedimented participation of symbolic animals. This recursive structure generates both responsibility and possibility. We are shaped by our systems of meaning, but we are also their ongoing condition of existence.

This is why symbolic life is never neutral. It always orients, phases, commits. And because it is reflexive, it can also resist, question, and imagine anew.

To live as a symbolic animal, then, is to live within systems of meaning that are both inherited and open to reconfiguration. It is to dwell within an architecture of construals that can be inhabited, interrogated, and transformed — from within.

And that is the ethical challenge of symbolic life: not to transcend the systems that shape us, but to participate in them with reflexive care. To live symbolically is not merely to mean, but to mean responsibly — to attune to the force of our construals and the futures they make possible.

In our coda to this series, we return to this ethical horizon: not as an external imposition on symbolic life, but as the immanent condition of life that is always already symbolic.

Coda: The Ethical Horizon of the Cut

To live as a symbolic animal is to live in meaning. But meaning, as we have seen, is not a substance, nor a code, nor a transmission. It is a system of cuts — patterned distinctions that phase experience into symbolic potential.

These cuts do not merely describe the world; they compose it, by orienting us within it. They organise not only what can be meant, but also what matters. And because symbolic systems are reflexive, these orientations can be reconfigured. Meaning is never final. It is always under negotiation.

This is what gives rise to an ethical horizon — not an external moral code, but the immanent accountability of symbolic life to itself. To mean is to participate in systems of construal that position others, shape futures, and sediment possibilities. Every construal is a commitment.

This horizon is not idealistic. It arises precisely because meaning is never neutral. The symbolic cut is never innocent: it selects, it excludes, it valorises. And because it does, the symbolic animal must live in relation to the systems of meaning it inhabits — and in which it is also, inescapably, implicated.

To recognise oneself as a symbolic animal, then, is not to declare a nature. It is to acknowledge a condition: that we live within reflexive, contested, and co-constructed systems of meaning, which make possible both our intelligibility and our transformation.

The question is never simply what do you mean, but also how do your construals orient the world, whom do they position, what do they enable, and what do they foreclose?

That is the ethical horizon of the cut. And it is the horizon we live within — as symbolic animals who must not only mean, but also mean otherwise.