Showing posts with label objectivity. Show all posts

26 July 2025

A Relational Reimagining of Cosmology

1 Cosmology as Construal

In developing a relational ontology grounded in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and informed by theories of process, perception, and meaning, we have consistently challenged the assumption that science describes a mind-independent reality. Instead, we have treated scientific models as semiotic construals: disciplined, symbolic enactments of meaning within specific contexts of inquiry. Nowhere is this perspective more needed—and more revealing—than in the domain of cosmology.

Cosmology, on first encounter, appears to be the most objective of sciences. It concerns itself with the large-scale structure of the universe, the passage of cosmic time, and the origin and fate of everything. Yet these grand narratives emerge not from detached observation but from a deeply mediated process of semiotic work. Every model of the cosmos is a meaning instance within a historically evolving field of scientific meaning potential—a construal, not a mirror.

The Universe as a Field of Potential, Not a Container of Things

Classical cosmology operates on a foundational metaphor: the universe as a vast container filled with matter, energy, and fields. But our relational ontology begins elsewhere. It views the universe not as a container but as a field of unfolding processes, each related to others through coherence, resonance, and instantiation. Space is not a backdrop, but a topology of relations. Time is not a separate dimension, but the axis along which processes unfold.

From this view, cosmology is not the description of an objective universe out there, but the attempt to instantiate semiotic coherence across the relational fields that unfold around us and within us.

From Observation to Meaning Instance

Scientific cosmology is built on observation—but observation is always mediated. Photons arriving from distant stars are captured, filtered, interpreted, and modelled. What we call “data” is not raw input but already-semiotic material. The “cosmic microwave background” is not a discovered thing but a construed field: a patterned construal that emerges through recursive meaning-making between instrumentation, theory, and interpretation.

To claim, then, that we “know” the age of the universe or the structure of space-time is to confuse semiotic model with material process. This does not reduce the validity of cosmological inquiry—it sharpens it. The task is not to describe some imagined reality beyond construal — a metaphysical fiction — but to understand how meaning is instantiated across systems as they unfold in relation.

A Semiotic Ecology of Models

Models like the Big Bang, cosmic inflation, dark matter, and dark energy are not isolated conjectures but part of a semiotic ecology. Each draws on shared systems of meaning: mathematics, physics, observational technologies, philosophical assumptions. Each brings certain aspects of the cosmos into focus while rendering others backgrounded or unmodellable.

Our relational ontology invites us to treat these models not as approximations of truth but as expressions of individuation within the scientific community. They are ways of constraining potential into instance, shaped by material affordances, social imperatives, and the ongoing evolution of meaning.

Looking Ahead

In the posts that follow, we will revisit some of cosmology’s most profound constructs—black holes, the Big Bang, and cosmic expansion—through this relational lens. We will ask not what they are, but how they instantiate across relational fields. We will treat them not as objects of knowledge, but as meaningful compressions of unfolding processes, whose very intelligibility depends on the semiotic systems in which they are embedded.

Cosmology, then, is not the story of what the universe is. It is the story of how we, as semiotic beings embedded in unfolding processes, make meaning at the outermost edges of what we can construe.

2 Black Holes and the Collapse of Construal

In the previous post, we proposed a reframing of cosmology as a semiotic enterprise: not a mirror of an objective cosmos, but a set of disciplined construals that instantiate meaning from potential. In this frame, cosmological constructs like black holes must be understood not as fixed entities “out there” in a pre-given universe, but as meaning instances that compress and coordinate fields of experience within the scientific community. Few cosmological construals test this perspective more profoundly than the black hole.

From Prediction to Construal

Black holes entered scientific discourse not as observations but as mathematical inferences—solutions to the equations of general relativity under extreme conditions. Their subsequent evolution, from speculative singularities to central objects in astrophysics, illustrates the semiotic power of modelling. The black hole is not a thing; it is a boundary condition of a model—a projection of relational stress within an unfolding field.

From a relational-ontological perspective, the black hole instantiates the collapse of construal: it marks the limit at which the semiotic systems used to model gravitational interaction can no longer produce coherent symbolic interpretation. The breakdown of spacetime geometry at the singularity is not a feature of the material cosmos but a signal that the model’s meaning potential has reached its outer bound.

Event Horizon as Semiotic Boundary

The event horizon—often described as the boundary beyond which nothing can escape—is better understood as a boundary of construal. It marks the point beyond which observational processes can no longer instantiate meaning in the classical sense. What happens beyond the horizon cannot be modelled by light-based observations, and thus resists integration into the shared meaning potential of our scientific systems.

In this sense, black holes don’t just curve geodesics; they curve the field of construal itself, pulling semiotic coherence toward a singular limit. They instantiate relational compression so extreme that time, space, mass, and even process lose their conventional semantic coherence.

The Semiotics of Collapse

At its heart, the black hole is a semiotic paradox: it is the most predicted and indirectly observed entity in astrophysics, yet it fundamentally resists direct construal. The tension between prediction and observability forces the scientific community to instantiate coherence across models—linking gravitational lensing, accretion disk radiation, and gravitational wave signatures into a shared constellation of meaning.

This isn’t error; it’s how science functions as a semiotic ecology. The black hole emerges not as an ontological substance but as an effect of coordinated construal across multiple, interacting systems of interpretation.

Meaning Beyond the Horizon

So what lies beyond the black hole’s horizon? From our relational perspective, the better question is: what does it mean to posit such a region? The singularity is not a place; it is a collapse of coherence, where potential meaning cannot be instantiated with our current systems.

Black holes thus reveal something fundamental about the ontology of science: that every field of inquiry has limits of construal, and that these limits are not failures but structural boundaries of meaning-making. The more extreme the compression of relational fields, the more radically our semiotic systems are tested—and perhaps transformed.

A Space for New Construals

The continuing study of black holes—especially in relation to quantum mechanics and information theory—presses on the outermost edge of scientific meaning potential. It invites the development of new systems of construal: not merely extensions of general relativity or quantum theory, but novel architectures of meaning, able to hold together previously unconnected fields.

What we observe is not a collapse of reality, but a demand for deeper coherence. In this way, black holes are not just phenomena to be explained; they are generators of semiotic innovation, forcing us to rethink what it means to know.

3 Cosmological Expansion and the Scaling of Meaning

If black holes represent the collapse of construal—points at which semiotic coherence reaches a relational singularity—then cosmological expansion presents the opposite challenge: not compression, but scaling. The expanding universe does not rupture our models through intensity, but through scope. It asks how far meaning can extend before its coherence thins into abstraction.

What Expands in Expansion?

Standard cosmology construes expansion as the stretching of spacetime itself: galaxies are not moving through space so much as space unfolding between them. From a relational ontology, this construal is already highly abstracted: it interprets redshift, background radiation, and spatial distribution through a semiotic system—not as reality itself, but as a way of coordinating observations across time and frame.

But what does “expansion” instantiate in a system that models reality as unfolding relations? Not a ballooning of substance, but a scaling of relational topology. The fabric of co-unfolding processes spreads, not as metric extension, but as the increasing separation of interactive potential.

In other words, expansion is not of a container (space), but of the relational field that coordinates processual interaction.

Scaling Meaning Potentials

This scaling creates a unique semiotic challenge: how do we maintain coherent construal across increasing separation? How do we relate observations from early universe microwave background to current galactic structures without losing the meaning potential of either?

In the SFL-based framework, such work requires realising coherence across strata. In cosmology, coherence is realised across systemic models: from inflation theory to dark energy parametrisation to standard candles. Each instantiates meaning from a distinct set of potential, yet all are held together as instances of a single construal of unfolding.

The Horizon Problem as Semiotic Discontinuity

The horizon problem, for example—why regions of the universe not in causal contact display similar properties—can be reframed not just as a physical puzzle, but as a semiotic inconsistency: a mismatch in the instantiation of coherence across a relational field.

Inflation theory attempts to resolve this by reconfiguring the unfolding itself. It introduces a new construal of early process, compressing relational proximity into a prior epoch of co-interaction. This shows how cosmology innovates not just by observing more, but by reshaping the field of meaning to restore semiotic consistency.

Dark Energy and the Strain of Abstraction

The concept of dark energy represents a new form of semiotic strain. It is not observed directly; it is invoked to sustain coherence between the model and the observed acceleration of expansion. In relational terms, dark energy is a placeholder for a missing processual relation—an inferred dynamic necessary to uphold the model’s integrity across scale.

Like the singularity of a black hole, dark energy reveals the limits of current construal. It marks a region of potential that remains uninstantiated—a gap in meaning that propels the ongoing evolution of the semiotic system we call physics.

Expansion as a Semiotic Pressure

Thus, cosmological expansion is not just a physical phenomenon; it is a semiotic pressure. It demands the coordination of increasingly disparate instances of observation into a shared meaning potential. The challenge is not just to explain more, but to maintain coherence across scale, to trace unfolding relations even as their proximity thins.

In this sense, the expanding universe becomes a metaphor for the task of knowledge itself: not to capture the whole in a single frame, but to sustain meaningful construal across diverse and widening perspectives.

The Cosmos as Construal

In the relational ontology we are developing, the cosmos is not a container of things but a field of co-unfolding processes. Cosmology, then, is the attempt to instantiate coherence across that field—to construe unfolding at the limits of scale, time, and relation.

What expands is not space alone, but the field of semiotic engagement. And what science accomplishes is not the mapping of reality, but the organised construal of its unfolding.

Reflective Coda: Construal at the Edge of Everything

Across this trilogy, we have reframed three of cosmology’s most foundational concepts—black holes, the big bang, and expansion—not as brute physical realities, but as semiotic construals: patterned interpretations of how processes unfold and relate at different scales.

Each concept, in its own way, presses on the boundaries of our relational ontology:

Black holes reveal the compression of meaning, the limits of construal where processual coherence breaks down under intensity.
The big bang reframes origin not as a substance-based event, but as an inflection in the topology of unfolding: a convergence of potential and interaction whose reverberations persist in every instance of process.
Cosmological expansion shows that what unfolds is not space as container, but relation as field. The challenge is not tracking material drift, but maintaining semiotic coherence across widening scales.

Together, these re-interpretations lead us to a radical insight: cosmology is not the study of a thing called ‘the universe’ but the organised construal of how relational processes unfold at scale.

From Physics to Semiotics

This shift has significant consequences. What has long been treated as physics—the modelling of space, time, mass, energy—is here reunderstood as a semiotic system: a disciplined language for instantiating meaning from the field of observable process. What we call “laws of nature” are not directives from the cosmos but constraints on coherent construal within that system.

This is not relativism. It is not to deny the consistency of experience or the success of scientific modelling. It is to ground that consistency in relation, not in substance; in the logic of meaning-making, not the assumption of mind-independent objects.

The cosmos unfolds. Meaning construes. And what we call cosmology is their intersection.

A New Vision of the Universe

To see the universe through this lens is not to diminish its majesty. On the contrary, it draws us more deeply into its logic. We are no longer outside observers looking at a universe. We are participants in a field of unfolding, whose own meaning potentials instantiate the construals by which the universe comes to mean.

In this view, the universe is not something we find, but something we unfold with—a field of meaning instantiated process by process, relation by relation, across the clines of time, individuation, and semiotic abstraction.

The universe is not a noun. It is a clause complex.

19 July 2025

Relational Ontology and the Quantum Field of Meaning

Introduction: Why Quantum Physics Needs a New Ontology

Quantum theory remains the most successful predictive framework in physics — yet its foundations remain unresolved. The famous puzzles of uncertainty, entanglement, and wavefunction collapse have led to decades of interpretive controversy, often centring on the nature of observation and the role of the observer.

At the heart of these puzzles is a deeper problem: the ontology assumed by most interpretations of quantum mechanics. Traditional physical theories often presume a world of objectively existing entities — particles and fields — with properties defined independently of any observer. In such a framework, it becomes paradoxical that an observer’s measurement seems to affect the outcome. How can an electron know whether it is being watched?

This series proposes a shift. Rather than trying to resolve these puzzles within an object-based ontology, we approach them from a different standpoint: a relational ontology grounded in systemic potential, actualisation, and the dynamics of observation. This is not a metaphysical sleight-of-hand or a poetic metaphor. It is a rigorous account of reality as constituted by relations, not things — and by instances, not substances.

Our framework draws on a conception of potential and instance developed through systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and informed by neurobiological theories of consciousness. But it is not restricted to semiotic systems. The same principles can be extended to the material domain — including quantum systems — when we treat potential as structured, and actualisation as relational.

In this series, we will revisit each of the classic interpretive challenges in quantum mechanics through this lens:

How should we understand uncertainty when position and momentum are not hidden properties, but mutually exclusive potentials?
How can entanglement be seen not as spooky action, but as the co-structured potential of a relational field?
What really happens in measurement, when the wavefunction collapses to an outcome?
What is the role of the observer, if not a detached subject or external cause?
And how does all this relate to the processes of individuation, where systems of potential are differentiated into distinct fields of meaning?

By reframing these questions in a relational ontology, we aim to show that the strangeness of quantum mechanics is not a sign of its incompleteness — but of a mismatch between its insights and the assumptions we bring to its interpretation. When we shift from a substance-based to a relation-based ontology, what once appeared as paradox may instead become intelligible — not as knowledge of what the world is, but as insight into how the world unfolds.

1 Uncertainty and the Structure of Potential

The uncertainty principle is often misinterpreted as a statement about human ignorance — as though the act of measurement disturbs an otherwise well-defined reality. But the principle is more radical than that. It does not say we can’t know both the position and the momentum of a particle. It says they cannot both be actualised in the same instance.

In classical physics, properties such as position and momentum are conceived as attributes that objects possess. But quantum theory reveals that such properties are not always co-instantiable. They belong to different structures of potential, which cannot be simultaneously realised. To actualise one is to foreclose the actualisation of the other.

This suggests that we need to rethink what is meant by a “property.” From the perspective of relational ontology, a property is not a pre-existing thing that a particle carries around with it, but an instance drawn from a system of potential — one that is defined relationally, not absolutely.

The Heisenberg uncertainty relation describes the limit of simultaneous actualisability, not of precision. The wavefunction doesn’t conceal hidden variables; it expresses a structured potential that unfolds into actualities only when particular observational conditions are met. The more tightly constrained the conditions for actualising position, the less coherent the structure remaining for momentum — and vice versa.

This coherence is not noise or deficiency. It is a sign of the system’s internal organisation. A system that can be actualised as a position-instance or as a momentum-instance is not ambiguous — it is structured. But its structure is such that only one actualisation can be instantiated at a time.

On this view, uncertainty is not a flaw in our measurements, nor a result of disturbance. It is a natural consequence of how relational potentials are structured and instantiated. Each observation is a moment of selection — not of selection among equally real outcomes, but of which relation is brought into being as an instance.

The quantum world, then, is not a world of definite objects obscured by probabilistic fog. It is a world of structured potential in which some paths of actualisation are mutually exclusive. Uncertainty is not a veil over reality — it is a window into its relational constitution.

2 Entanglement as Non-Separable Relational Potential

Entanglement is famously described as “spooky action at a distance,” a mysterious link that instantly connects particles across space. Yet this mystique largely arises from our object-centred ontology — the assumption that particles are independent things with intrinsic properties, capable of existing separately and locally.

From a relational ontology perspective, entanglement reveals the fundamental structure of quantum systems as relational fields of potential. The entangled particles do not possess separate, independent states; instead, they jointly instantiate a single, unified system of potential that cannot be decomposed into isolated parts.

When two particles become entangled, their possible states become co-structured — the potential outcomes for one particle are inseparably linked to those of the other. This co-structure forms a holistic field, a relational pattern that transcends classical separability.

Measurement of one particle actualises a particular relation in this field, collapsing the range of potential outcomes for both. Rather than sending a signal or influencing the distant particle, measurement transforms the relational structure as a whole, instantaneously updating what remains to be actualised.

This is not “action at a distance” but the unfolding of a relational potential that is fundamentally non-local and irreducible. The space between particles is not empty but filled with relational meaning and structured potential that cannot be split without losing essential coherence.

Entanglement challenges the classical notion that reality consists of discrete, independently existing entities. Instead, it points toward a deeper reality constituted by relational fields whose parts are defined only through their mutual relations and co-instantiation.

This relational view opens a new way of understanding the quantum world — not as a collection of isolated things but as an interconnected web of potential, where the unity of the system precedes and determines the instantiation of its parts.

3 Measurement as Actualisation, Not Discovery

Measurement in quantum mechanics is often portrayed as a passive act of revealing pre-existing properties of particles. However, this view quickly runs into paradoxes: if properties are not definite until measured, what does it mean to measure? And how can the observer influence what is observed?

The relational ontology reframes measurement not as discovery but as actualisation — the selective instantiation of one among many possible relations within a structured potential.

The quantum wavefunction describes a system’s potential: a structured set of possibilities that exist relationally, not as concrete realities. Measurement is an interaction between the system and a material apparatus (including observer and environment), which together define the conditions under which one particular potential is instantiated as an actual event.

In this sense, measurement is a process — a relational unfolding in which the system’s potential is partially actualised. The outcome is not revealed but generated, through the relational constraints imposed by the measurement context.

This perspective dissolves the paradox of “wavefunction collapse” by seeing it as a transformation of potential into instance, mediated by relational conditions rather than a sudden, mysterious physical event. The wavefunction does not “collapse” like a physical object; it is restructured by actualisation.

Importantly, the apparatus is not a neutral observer but an active participant, providing the relational context that defines what counts as an outcome. Different apparatuses instantiate different aspects of the system’s potential.

Measurement also highlights the context-dependence of quantum phenomena. The actualised property is meaningful only within the relational field that includes the system, the apparatus, and the observer. There is no “property” detached from this context.

In sum, measurement is a creative, relational event — an actualisation of meaning from structured potential — rather than a passive uncovering of hidden facts. It is a moment where possibility becomes reality, shaped by the dynamics of relational fields.

4 The Observer as a Situated Field of Systems

Traditional interpretations often cast the observer as a detached, external subject — a “god’s eye view” perceiving a world of independently existing objects. This perspective struggles to account for the active role of observation in quantum phenomena.

A relational ontology repositions the observer as an embedded, situated system — itself a complex relational field composed of material, semiotic, and cognitive processes. The observer is not outside the system but entwined within it.

Consciousness does not “cause” wavefunction collapse in a mystical sense. Instead, it participates in the actualisation of meaning within relational fields. Observation is a dynamic process in which the observer’s state and the observed system co-define what becomes instantiated.

The observer’s semiotic systems — language, concepts, and sensory apparatus — shape the relational potential, influencing which relations are actualised. Observation thus transforms both the system and the observer, a mutual process of individuation.

This perspective aligns with neurobiological theories that view consciousness as the emergent product of neuronal group selection, where dynamic, selective processes instantiate meaning from potential. The observer’s field is itself a system of potentials and actualisations, resonating with the relational structure of the quantum system.

Rather than a passive watcher, the observer is a participatory agent, whose situatedness and embodiment condition the unfolding of quantum events. Objectivity emerges not from detachment but from the coherence of relational processes shared across observers.

By recognising the observer as a situated field of systems, we bridge the divide between subject and object, and understand observation as a fundamental relational event — a co-actualisation of potential in both system and observer.

5 Rethinking Objectivity, Causality, and Knowledge

Quantum mechanics challenges classical notions of objectivity, causality, and knowledge — concepts often taken for granted in everyday experience. A relational ontology invites us to rethink these ideas in light of structured potential and actualisation.

Objectivity is not about detachment or viewing the world from an external vantage point. Instead, it is about the coherence of relational processes across multiple situated perspectives. When observers share relational fields and contexts, their actualisations align, producing consistent accounts of phenomena. Objectivity, then, emerges from intersubjective resonance, not from observer-independence.

Causality in the quantum realm cannot be understood as simple, linear transmission of influence between independent objects. Instead, causality is the temporal unfolding of relational fields — a co-evolution of potential and instance within systems. The cause-effect relation is embedded in the dynamics of actualisation, where potential relations are instantiated in time.

Knowledge arises not from uncovering pre-existing facts, but from the structured actualisation of potential into meaningful instances. It is an emergent property of relational fields that includes observer, system, and context. Knowledge is inherently contextual and situated, shaped by the conditions of actualisation.

This reframing dissolves classical paradoxes and reveals quantum phenomena as natural expressions of relational reality. Rather than problems to be solved, these challenges become windows into the deeper structure of how reality unfolds.

By embracing a relational ontology, we gain a more coherent, integrated understanding of objectivity, causality, and knowledge — one that honours the dynamic, participatory nature of observation and existence.

6 Individuation and Quantum Fields

Building on our relational ontology, the process of individuation — how entities come to be distinct yet connected — finds a profound expression in the nature of quantum fields.

Quantum fields are not assemblages of isolated particles but fundamental relational structures encompassing all potential instances of particles and their interactions. Each particle is an individuated pattern emerging from the continuous field of potentiality.

Individuation is a process of differentiation within this holistic field, where relational potentials selectively actualise as distinct entities while maintaining their intrinsic connections. The boundaries between particles are not absolute separations but dynamic thresholds within the relational web.

This perspective aligns with the understanding of quantum entanglement as the non-separability of relational potentials, and measurement as the contextual actualisation of individuated instances. It reveals a universe woven from interdependent processes of co-instantiation and co-individuation.

In this light, quantum fields are not mere physical substrates but dynamic landscapes of potential meaning and relation, constantly shaping and reshaping the identities of their constituent parts.

Individuation within quantum fields exemplifies the fundamental relationality of reality — where distinctions arise not from isolation but from the patterned interplay of relational potentials, actualised through measurement, observation, and interaction.

27 June 2025

The World is Not Made of Things: A Relational Ontology of Meaning

Preface: A New Architecture of Meaning

What if the foundations of our understanding — of self, reality, and knowledge — were built on a hidden assumption? A tacit belief that the world is made up of isolated things, discrete entities locked in place?
This series challenges that assumption by proposing a relational ontology of meaning: a view where meaning is not static or contained but is dynamic, emergent, and fundamentally interwoven with interaction.
From the birth of the self in the semiotic interplay of caregiver and child, to the ghosts of metaphysical grammar haunting theology and science, to the reconstruction of thought itself as a semiotic engine, this collection explores how meaning potential underpins everything we know and are.
Drawing on systemic functional linguistics, semiotics, and contemporary philosophy, we unravel how meaning is enacted and individuated — and how our reality is less a world of things than a web of relations.
Whether you are a student of language, philosophy, cognitive science, or simply a curious mind, these essays invite you to rethink what it means to be.
To read these pages is to embark on a journey where to mean is to be, and to be is to relate.
Welcome to the architecture of meaning — the world remade.

1 Not Substance, but Relation

Western thought has long been preoccupied with things — with substances, entities, and essences. Philosophers have searched for the ultimate building blocks of reality: atoms, ideas, selves, substances, subjects. But what if this entire metaphysical project has been shaped not by insight into the world, but by the form of the language used to describe it?

This piece argues for a relational ontology of meaning: a view in which reality is not made of things with properties, but of meanings enacted through relations. Meaning is not contained in objects or residing in minds; it emerges through patterned interaction — semiotically, socially, and systemically.

In place of a world composed of static entities, we are invited to see a world construed in motion — not because reality itself is reducible to language, but because language is the means by which we make sense of what-is. And the model of language we draw on makes all the difference.

From Substances to Systems

Traditional metaphysics begins with things: God, soul, matter, mind, truth. These are often conceived as self-subsistent entities — each with its own inner nature, existing independently of its relations. This view is so deeply ingrained that it is rarely questioned.

But from a systemic-functional perspective, this starting point is itself a theoretical choice — one heavily shaped by the architecture of the clause. When grammar makes meaning in terms of Subject + Process + Complement, it predisposes us to see the world in terms of agent + action + patient. This, as earlier series have explored, is not an innocent projection. It is an ontological commitment, albeit an unconscious one.

In contrast, a relational ontology begins not with things but with systems of options. In the SFL tradition, the architecture of meaning is not substance-based, but relational:

A system is a set of options — potential ways of meaning.
An instance is a selection from those options.
Meaning arises through relation: between selected features, between strata, between individuals and collectives, between potential and actual.

This model reverses the metaphysical default. It does not treat meaning as carried by forms or stored in minds. It treats meaning as a pattern of relations instantiated through use.

Three Planes of Relation

In place of metaphysical dualisms (e.g. mind vs body, idea vs matter), a relational ontology recognises three interwoven planes of meaning-making:

Stratification – the relation between levels of symbolic abstraction
(semantics realised by lexicogrammar, which is realised by phonology)
Instantiation – the relation between potential and actual
(a system of meaning is instantiated as text, and texts accumulate into system)
Individuation – the relation between collective and personal meaning potential
(the self is not given, but formed through differential access and repeated instantiation)

Each plane is constituted by relation, not by substance. Stratification is not a stack of layers; it is a system of realisation relationships. Instantiation is not a sequence of outputs; it is a dynamic of probabilistic actualisation. Individuation is not the revelation of a pre-existing inner essence; it is the ongoing shaping of a personal semiotic profile through patterned participation in collective meaning.

These planes are not metaphorical. They constitute a semiotic ontology: an account of reality in which what-is is construed not through things, but through the patterned unfolding of meaning in context.

2 Reification as Ontological Error

If the world is not made of things but of relations, then how did it come to seem otherwise? The short answer is: we reified our own semiotic resources. We mistook our ways of meaning for the structure of the world. And once reified, those ways of meaning began to masquerade as metaphysical truths.

This is not a new insight. Philosophers from Nietzsche to Wittgenstein have warned of the perils of treating language as a transparent window on reality. What a relational ontology adds is a precise account of how reification works, and how deeply grammar is implicated in it.

From Meaning Function to Metaphysical Category

In the systemic-functional model, grammatical structure enacts meaning across three simultaneous metafunctions:

Experiential: construing experience as configurations of process, participant, and circumstance
Interpersonal: enacting roles and relationships between speakers
Textual: organising information flow in context

These are not domains of content, but functions of language in use. The clause functions simultaneously in all three ways — not to describe what is, but to enact meaning in context.

But when these grammatical functions are stripped of their semiotic role and treated as ontological categories, reification occurs:

The Subject becomes the essential Self
The Process becomes an Action or Force in the world
The Complement becomes a Thing that is acted upon

This is not simply a mistake in philosophical interpretation — it is a structural risk built into the architecture of the clause. Language construes meaning through function, but those functions are easily misread as entities.

God as Grammatical Projection

As explored in the earlier Grammar and the Ghost in the Machine series, one of the clearest examples of reification is theological:

In the beginning, God created...

This clause is not merely a declaration of faith. It is a projection of a particular semantic configuration: a Subject acting on a Complement through a transitive Process. And it sets the template for an entire metaphysics of agency. God becomes the ultimate Subject; creation becomes the ultimate action.

But this is not a neutral observation — it is a grammatical decision mistaken for metaphysical fact. The clause did not merely express belief in a creator; it structured belief around the transitive grammar of action. It became possible to imagine divinity itself in the image of the clause.

The same holds for Cartesian metaphysics. I think, therefore I am presumes that “I” is an independent Subject, thinking is an autonomous Process, and “being” is a resultant state. But each of these is a grammatical projection. There is no necessity that existence be transitive, or that subjectivity be singular and stable. The metaphysics derives from the syntax.

Science in the Image of the Clause

The same transitive logic finds its way into scientific discourse:

Gravity pulls.
Electrons flow.
Forces act.
Laws govern.

These are not simple descriptions. They are clauses: structured configurations of Subject, Process, and Complement. The world, in scientific narration, becomes a cascade of entities acting upon entities. Even where science resists metaphysical speculation, it often cannot escape grammatical reification.

In this light, both theology and science are not merely different genres of thought. They are semantic enactments shaped by the same underlying architecture: the clause as the organising unit of meaning, projected onto the cosmos.

Undoing the Illusion

To unthink reification is not to abandon meaning, but to locate it properly: not in the things language names, but in the systems of choice from which language draws.

This is the heart of Halliday’s system/instance framework. Systems are not categories of things; they are sets of potential relations. An instance does not point to an essence; it selects from a network of meaning possibilities. And over time, these selections form patterned tendencies — probabilistic potentials that evolve with use.

Reification short-circuits this dynamic. It freezes potential into substance. It treats the instantiation as the reality, and forgets the system that made it possible. It mistakes functional relation for ontological identity.

A relational ontology refuses this move. It keeps meaning in motion, refusing to let a semantic configuration harden into a metaphysical object.

3 Relational Being and the Cline of Instantiation

If language is not a system of labels for things, but a semiotic system for enacting meaning in context, then our ontology must reflect this. Being is not a state. It is a relation — and more precisely, a relation in motion.

This is the insight encoded in what Halliday called the cline of instantiation. The cline describes the relation between the system (the total meaning potential of a language or a speaker) and its instances (actual selections made in context). Meaning does not exist in either pole alone — it is the tension between them that constitutes semiosis.

To apply this to ontology is to say: what is, is what has been instantiated from potential. And what is not (yet) is still real — as potential.

Being as Selection from Meaning Potential

The cline of instantiation is not a continuum of degree, but a semiotic relation: a functional dependence of instance on system, and of system on the sum of its instantiations.

In this view:

A system is not a repository of rules or forms, but a structured potential — a network of options available for meaning.
An instance is not an object or utterance per se, but a selection: a particular realisation of meaning from that potential.

And over time, the instances themselves modify the potential. Meaning potential evolves by use.

This means that being is not fixed, but is inferred from patterns of instantiation. What something is cannot be defined in isolation, only in relation to the systems it realises and the contexts in which it is realised.

Relational Ontology: Not Essence, but Relation

Traditional metaphysics looks for essences — underlying substances or forms that define what a thing is. But in a relational ontology grounded in semiosis, essence gives way to relation:

A clause is not a thing, but a relation among systemic choices.
A person is not an essence, but a trajectory of instantiations across time and context.
Even identity is not a fixed self but a pattern of semiotic individuation — a personalisation of shared potential.

This perspective reshapes how we understand everything from agency to knowledge. A scientific law, for instance, is not a truth about reality but a pattern of meaning instantiations, regularised in a way that allows prediction. It is a kind of grammatical condensation: a semantic habit mistaken for a necessity.

Grammatical Being Is Not Ontological Being

The implications here are profound. If being is construed semiotically — and instantiated through grammar — then we must learn to distinguish grammatical being from ontological being.

To say The universe expands is not to identify an objective fact in neutral terms. It is to deploy a clause, with a Subject (the universe) and a Process (expands), in a transitive configuration. That configuration construes experience in a particular way — but does not prove that the universe is a ‘thing’ that ‘does’ something.

The clause realises a semantic construal, not a metaphysical entity.

And that is enough. For meaning does not require metaphysical guarantees — it requires semiotic accountability: coherence within a system of relations.

The Metaphysics of the Actual

In a relational ontology, the actual is not more real than the potential. It is simply more contextually salient. Potential meaning is not a shadowy prelude to reality — it is part of the architecture of being.

Every instance draws from a system; every system is shaped by instances. This reciprocal movement is the ontological rhythm of meaning: from potential to actual, and from actual back into potential, through memory, abstraction, and re-selection.

To be is to be instantiated.

To become is to be instantiated again — differently.

Part 4: The Individual as a Meaning System

What is a person?

Western thought often answers with some version of essentialism: the soul, the self, the rational mind, the subject of consciousness. But if we take the cline of instantiation seriously — if we understand meaning as a structured potential realised in context — then the individual is not a thing at all.

The individual is a system of meaning potential, continually reshaped by the meanings it instantiates and the meanings instantiated around it.

This is not a metaphor. It is a semiotic fact.

From System to Instance: Personalisation of Meaning

In Halliday’s framework, every speaker draws from the larger system of language — what he called the “meaning potential of the language as a whole.” But no individual realises the full system. Instead, each speaker develops a subsystem: a personalised repertoire of choices shaped by the contexts they’ve lived through, the meanings they’ve made, and the communities they inhabit.

This is individuation: the relation between the meaning potential of the system and the meaning potential of the individual.

Just as instances actualise the system, individuals are partial, patterned systems of the collective semiotic potential. The self is not separate from language. It is a particular way language has been actualised — and can be actualised again.

Instantiating the Self: Meaning as Becoming

If an individual is a system of meaning potential, then personhood is not a static identity but a trajectory of instantiations:

The meanings I have made are my history.
The meanings I can make are my potential.
The meanings I am making now are my becoming.

Every utterance is a selection — not just from the lexicon, but from the self. And over time, these selections accrue. Just as language evolves through use, so does the self. We become what we mean.

This is not a metaphorical claim. It is a grammatical one. The self is not a substance that uses language — it is a pattern of language in use.

The Individual as a Site of Semiotic Tension

What gives rise to individuality, then, is not separation from the system, but a particular relation to it.

Each individual negotiates tensions between:

Collective potential (language, culture, discourse)
Personal potential (the individual’s meaning system)
Instantial variation (the selections made moment by moment)

This triadic tension is where individuation lives. The self is not reducible to its system, nor to its instances. It is a site of semiotic resonance — where systemic meaning meets contextual selection in ways that are never fully predictable, never fully stable, and never entirely repeatable.

To speak is not only to mean. It is to become.

You Are Not a Thing. You Are a System.

This reframes our understanding of identity, agency, and social life. It means:

You are not a self-contained subject.
You are a semiotic self — a personalised organisation of meaning potential.
Your individuality is not prior to language.
It is realised through language, over time.

This also has ethical force. If each person is a system of meanings in motion — not a fixed category — then dialogue is not just interaction. It is a site of mutual becoming. To engage another person is to enter a shared field of potential. And what emerges is not given in advance.

5 The Relational Ethics of Meaning

Ethics as Semiotic Responsibility

If the individual is not a self-contained substance but a semiotic system of meaning in relation, then ethics is fundamentally about how we engage with that system—how we participate in each other’s meaning-making and individuation.

Ethics is not primarily about rules or laws. It is about responsibility in the unfolding of meaning.

To speak, listen, respond, and interpret is to affect the semiotic potentials of others — to alter their fields of possible meanings and identities.

Meaning is Never Solo

Because meaning is always realised in interaction — always relational — every act of communication is an ethical act.

When we speak, we do not simply transmit information. We enter into a dynamic process where:

We acknowledge the other’s meaning potential.
We negotiate meanings without fixing or reducing.
We create openings for alternative instantiations.

To deny the semiotic personhood of another — to treat them as a fixed object or a mere conduit — is to close down their potential to become.

The Ethics of Indeterminacy

Relational ontology acknowledges that meaning is never fully determined. This uncertainty is a source of creativity — but also of vulnerability.

Ethical meaning-making requires:

Tolerance for ambiguity — allowing meanings to unfold without premature closure.
Openness to transformation — embracing that identities and meanings evolve through interaction.
Careful listening — respecting how others instantiate their meaning potentials.

The ethical act is to support the semiotic freedom of the other, even when it challenges our own meanings.

Interdependence and Semiotic Ecology

Ethics emerges not just between isolated individuals, but within a web of semiotic relations — a shared ecology of meaning.

Our meanings depend on others’ meanings, and the community’s shared potentials.

This demands a relational humility:

Recognising that our own meaning potentials are co-constituted by others.
Understanding that we are part of a larger semiotic system, not autonomous islands.

Ethics is care for this semiotic ecosystem — nurturing the conditions for meaningful dialogue and shared becoming.

Conclusion: Ethics as Semiotic Praxis

In this relational ontology, ethics is an ongoing praxis of meaning — a continuous engagement with the semiotic potentials of self and other.

It demands that we approach communication as a shared creation, not a mere transaction.

And in doing so, we participate in the co-creation of selves, societies, and realities — always in flux, always becoming.

Coda: Becoming in Relation — The Future of Meaning

As we conclude this journey through a relational ontology of meaning, a vital insight emerges: the world is not composed of isolated things, but of relations — of meaning always in motion, always becoming.

This view invites us to rethink long-standing assumptions about self, knowledge, and reality itself. The individual is never a fixed entity, but a semiotic process continuously shaped by interaction with others. Meaning is not a static code or mere representation, but a living architecture enacted and re-enacted in dialogue.

Such a perspective transforms philosophy, science, and theology — revealing how much of what we call “reality” is an unfolding semiotic performance, a dance of potentials actualised through encounter.

The implications are profound:

For identity: We are not born but made — constantly individuating through relation.
For knowledge: Truths are not fixed but provisional, emerging through semiotic negotiation.
For ethics: Responsibility lies in nurturing others’ meaning potentials, sustaining the shared semiotic ecosystem.
For being: Existence itself is less a “thing” and more a becoming, a dynamic web of relational meaning.

To embrace this is to live with humility and openness — to recognise that our own meanings and selves are intertwined with the world’s ongoing story.

The path ahead is one of continuous dialogue — with others, with ourselves, and with the ever-unfolding semiotic cosmos.

In the end, to be is to mean — and to mean is to relate.