Worlds Within Meaning: subjectivity

Showing posts with label subjectivity. Show all posts

30 August 2025

Cosmology from Within: Persons, Cultures, and the Instantiation of Meaning

1 From Starfield to Self: The Scaling of Meaning

We often hear that we are made of stardust. The elements that compose our blood, our bones, and our breath were forged in the fiery hearts of ancient stars.

This cosmic origin story is beautiful, yet it still casts us as things—assembled from other things. It places us in the universe, as objects among objects. But it doesn’t show us how the universe lives through us.

This series invites a different way of seeing.

We are not merely made of stardust.

We are making meaning from stardust.

Meaning as the Cosmos Unfolding

Meaning is not a human invention layered onto a silent universe. Instead, it is the organising principle of the cosmos itself: a system of potential that unfolds across scales, from the galactic to the cellular to the conscious.

Each scale is not a new kind of substance but a new construal—a differentiation within the same patterned field.

From atom to organism, from signal to sentence, from culture to cosmos—meaning moves through construal: the selective instantiation of potential.

To be a person is not to stand apart from the universe. It is to be one of its ways of theorising itself.

The Scaling of Meaning

Meaning scales across multiple dimensions:

Levels—from energy to cell to self.
Systems—from collective to individual to reflexive awareness.
Fields—from cosmos to context to consciousness.

This scaling is not a ladder of complexity nor a linear ascent toward sentience. It is more like a recursive folding inward—where the cosmos constrains itself into local patterns and then unfolds those patterns across time.

In relational terms:

A system is a theory of possible meanings.
An instance is a local construal of that theory.
Meaning moves not by being passed along, but by being reconstrued—again and again, across scales and situations.

Persons are not endpoints of a cosmic process. They are inflection points—where the system turns its gaze reflexively inward.

Local Theorists of the Universe

We are local theorists of the universe’s potential.

Not detached observers.

Not passive receivers.

Not isolated minds.

We are the field folded in, drawing from vast systems of meaning—language, culture, perception—and instantiating them moment by moment.

Each thought, gesture, or sentence is not solely ours. It is a construal of systems far larger than ourselves.

But this does not render us insignificant. It makes us participatory.

The cosmos does not stop at the stars.

It is not “out there.”

It is here—in grammar, in gesture, in grief, in love.

From Cosmos to Consciousness Without a Break in Being

What if we stopped imagining a break between nature and culture, physics and feeling?

What if, instead of a great chain of being, we envisioned a great cline of construal—where matter, meaning, and mind are not separate substances, but different ways of organising the same field?

Then we might see:

A solar flare and a social movement as events at different scales of the same patterned universe.
A neurone and a noun as construals of structured potential.
The self not as a fixed entity, but as a theory enacted in context.

Looking Ahead

In the posts to come, we will:

Trace the cline of individuation—from shared systems to conscious selves.
Explore cultures as wavefunctions of collective possibility.
Ask what it means to construe ethically—to decide what counts and what is cut.
Reframe the person as a system–&–process.
And finally, consider what kind of life becomes possible if we live not in the universe, but as its reflexive instance.

We begin not with stars, but with stardust in motion—

in thought, in language, in breath.

The universe is not something we interpret.

We are one of its interpretations.

2 The Cline of Individuation: From Collective to Conscious Potential

If the universe theorises itself through persons and cultures, then how do individuals arise within collective systems of meaning?

Individuation is often imagined as separation—a breaking away from the group into a unique, isolated self. But this misses a deeper truth: individuation is a process of differentiation within a shared field.

It is not isolation. It is constrained divergence—the unfolding of a distinct perspective from a communal foundation.

Consciousness as the System Folding Inward

Imagine society not as a static backdrop but as a semiotic field—a living web of meanings, obligations, and possibilities.

Within this field, consciousness emerges not as an external observer but as the system folding in on itself:

A perspective arising from the collective.
A local construal of shared potential, reflexive and self-aware.

This “cline of individuation” traces the path from the communal to the conscious:

From shared languages and cultural patterns,
To the interior depths of personal awareness.

Consciousness is the deep interior of system process—the universe turning its gaze back upon itself.

The Perspective That Emerges

Every individual is a vantage point within a collective system—a construal shaped by inherited meanings and histories, yet uniquely refracted through personal experience.

This vantage point:

Retains connection to the whole,
But enacts a distinctive interpretation,
Negotiating belonging and difference.

Individuation is the art of holding multiplicity—being both part and perspective, system and instance.

Society as a Semiotic Field

We often think of society as a container holding individuals. Instead, it is more accurate to see society as a field of relations and meanings—a dynamic space where meaning circulates and is reconstituted.

Each act—speech, ritual, gesture—is a local instance within this field that reshapes what is possible.

Individuals do not stand outside society; they are emergent patterns within the semiotic fabric.

From Collective Potential to Conscious Presence

The cline of individuation invites us to rethink selfhood:

Not as a fixed thing,
Not as atomised isolation,
But as a perspectival emergence within relational constraint.

This emergence is always partial, always provisional.

It carries the weight of shared systems, the freedom of personal construal, and the tension between belonging and becoming.

Looking Forward

In upcoming posts, we will explore how cultures act as patterned potentials—shared “wavefunctions” of meaning and possibility—and how ethical construals shape what counts in these systems.

For now, we hold this insight:

Individuation is the cosmos coming to know itself through difference, not division.

The universe does not fragment itself when it becomes conscious.

It differentiates—folding vast fields of meaning into the unique contours of a singular perspective.

3 Cultures as Theories of Meaning: Patterned Systems of Obligation and Possibility

Culture is often treated as decoration—something layered onto the raw material of human life. We speak of it as tradition, as heritage, as custom. But these metaphors conceal something deeper:

Culture is not an ornament.

It is a system of meaning—a structured potential, a theory of what persons can be.

Culture as Patterned Potential

In this cosmology, culture is not an epiphenomenon that floats above biology or materiality. It is the patterned organisation of possibility.

A culture offers not just ways of acting, but ways of meaning—grids of salience, fields of expectation, grammars of belonging.

To live in a culture is to move through a semiotic field of affordances:

What is sayable.
What is do-able.
What is thinkable.
What must be done, and what must never be.

Culture is the field of meaning into which we are born, and through which the universe constrains and diversifies its own potential.

The Wavefunction of a People

We might say:

A culture is the wavefunction of a people.

It is a shared construal of possibility—

a theory of what matters, what’s real, and what counts.

Each story, each law, each ritual is not merely a reflection of that theory—it is a local instance that re-theorises the system.

It constrains future meaning.

It modulates what can be meant next.

Culture is not static. It is a living potential—updated with every gesture, renewed with every generation.

The Grammar of Construal

Cultures instantiate different construal grammars.

That is: they encode different principles of salience, alignment, and value. They differ in how they cut the field—what they elevate, what they suppress, what they render invisible.

This is why translation is never only linguistic.

It is a traversal across systems of meaning.

It is movement from one construal grammar to another.

And this is why cultural difference is not noise in a shared signal.

It is the plurality of construal made manifest—

the universe theorising itself through divergent patterned fields.

Every Act Is a Systemic Re-Construal

Each act within a culture—each custom, each clause, each conflict—does not simply reflect a system.

It modifies it.

The system is not behind the scene.

It is shaped in the scene.

Every instance constrains the system anew.

In this view, history is not a backdrop but a living theory, revised in every enactment.

Culture is not “what we inherit,” but what we continue to mean.

Looking Forward

In the next post, we’ll turn from cultural construal to ethical responsibility—asking what happens when construal itself becomes contested:

What counts?

Who counts?

And who gets to decide?

But here we pause with this recognition:

Culture is not a container for people.

It is the theorising activity of the cosmos—

a field of meaning in motion.

The universe construes itself not only through stars and selves,

but through shared grammars of story, law, and song.

Culture is not the background of life.

It is one of life’s most intricate foregroundings.

4 The Ethics of Construal: Meaning, Responsibility, and Constraint

To construe is to make meaning. But to make meaning is never neutral.

Every act of construal—every framing, every distinction, every metaphor—cuts the field.

It includes and excludes.

It foregrounds and backgrounds.

It tells us what counts, and what doesn’t.

This is where meaning meets responsibility.

This is the ethics of construal.

Meaning Is Never Innocent

We often imagine ethics as a set of rules applied after interpretation—guidelines for behaviour, imposed from outside the field of meaning.

But in this cosmology, ethics is already at work in construal.

Because construal is never passive. It is an act of shaping the field—of deciding what will be marked, made salient, given weight.

To construe is to position.

To limit.

To render visible—or invisible.

Meaning always comes with a margin.

And what falls outside that margin is not just forgotten. It is often erased.

The Grammar of Salience

Every culture, every discourse, every act of sense-making operates with a grammar of salience:

What is made prominent?
What is backgrounded?
What is never named at all?

This grammar is not simply linguistic.

It is ethical.

To ask what matters is to ask:

What gets to be real?

What gets to be felt?

What gets to be possible?

Power and the Cut

Power operates through construal.

It doesn’t only repress—it organises meaning.

Power sets the boundaries of visibility.

It determines what kinds of personhood are intelligible, what kinds of pain are legible, what kinds of futures are sayable.

This is why so many struggles—political, cultural, existential—are struggles over framing:

Who gets to speak?
What gets to count as evidence?
Whose suffering makes sense?
Whose joy is recognised as real?

And yet, the same force that can exclude can also be used to include.

Construal is not only the medium of power.

It is also the medium of care.

To Construe is to Care

To construe ethically is to attend to the cut.

To recognise that every choice—of word, of frame, of metaphor—carries a weight.

It is to ask:

What am I centring?
What am I obscuring?
What possibilities am I enabling or foreclosing?

Care begins not with sentiment, but with salience.

With attention to what is made meaningful.

With awareness of how we shape the field in which others must live.

Looking Forward

In the next post, we turn from ethical positioning to personal patterning.

We’ll explore the person as both system and process:

Structured by histories of construal,
Animated by choices within constraint,
Always becoming, always negotiating meaning anew.

But before we move on, we pause here:

Meaning is never just what is said.

It is what is made possible by what is said.

And what is made impossible by what is not.

To construe is to shape the world.

And the shape we give it… shapes us in return.

5 The Person as System–&–Process – Identity in Motion

We often imagine the self as something we have:

A fixed core, a stable identity, an inner truth to be discovered or expressed.

But what if personhood is not a thing, but a system in motion?

Not a subject or object, but a process of ongoing construal—shaped by history, realised in context, and never quite complete.

A person, in this cosmology, is not a separate being inside the universe.

A person is the universe—theorising itself in dynamic, situated form.

Theory and Instantiation

Each of us lives as a semiotic pattern:

A history of construals we did not choose.
A web of relations that precede us.
A repertoire of meanings drawn from the systems we inhabit.

This is the theory:

The structured potential we inherit—the languages, cultures, genealogies, and grammars that make us intelligible.

And this is the process:

The unfolding instantiation of that theory—moment by moment, in acts of speech, choice, alignment, and resistance.

Selfhood is not static. It is recursive individuation:

A looping movement from potential to instance.
From system to event.
From the already-said to the not-yet-lived.

Construal in Context

Identity is not an essence, but a construal.

It is not what we are, but how we are made meaningful—in context, in relation, in time.

We become someone through the meanings we inhabit and enact.

And these meanings shift across contexts, relationships, and roles.

To say “I am” is always to draw from a system of possible becomings.

And each act of saying is itself a construal—positioned, contingent, alive.

Meaning in Motion

There is no fixed boundary between subject and object, self and system.

There is only meaning in motion:

Systems instancing themselves.
Persons re-construing what they are given.
Selves emerging at the edge of constraint and choice.

This is not fragmentation.

It is fluid coherence.

We are not unstable because we change.

We are coherent because we change in relation to the systems that shape us.

The Self as a Site of Differentiation

To be a person is to be a site where meaning diverges:

Where collective histories meet singular trajectories.
Where social grammars find local inflection.
Where the cosmos constrains itself into a unique, situated pattern.

We are not outside the system, looking in.

We are the system, folding in on itself.

And so, the person is not the endpoint of becoming.

It is the place where becoming becomes visible.

Looking Forward

In the final movement of this arc, we turn toward praxis.

If the universe theorises itself through us—if we are not separate from it, but active construals of its potential—

then how shall we live?

We’ll explore what it means to enact cosmology:

To treat science, spirituality, and politics not as disciplines about the world,

but as genres of participation within it.

You are not a subject in search of an object.

You are not an essence hidden behind appearance.

You are a system–&–process:

A dynamic grammar of being.

A local theory of meaning in motion.

6 Cosmology as Praxis – Living the Theory

If we are not separate from the universe,

but instances of its theorising,

then cosmology is not just a story we tell—

it is a way of being we live.

This changes everything.

It shifts cosmology from explanation to participation.

From theory about the universe to praxis within it.

To live, then, is not merely to exist—but to enact a construal of cosmic potential.

The Universe, Instanced in Action

In this cosmology, every act is not just personal.

It is cosmic—a local instance of the universe’s patterned possibility.

To act is to reconstrue the system:

To foreground certain meanings.
To align with some affordances, resist others.
To give shape to a field of meaning that is always in motion.

Praxis is not the application of abstract theory.

It is the enactment of being—a theory lived from within.

Genres of Cosmic Construal

We often divide our interpretive modes into disciplines:

Science to explain.
Spirituality to transcend.
Politics to organise.

But seen through this lens, each is a genre of construal—a way the universe theorises itself under different constraints:

Science construes through systems of testability and pattern.
Spirituality construes through presence, depth, and resonance.
Politics construes through collective obligation and negotiated possibility.

Each genre is partial. Each foregrounds and backgrounds.

And each shapes the range of meanings we can live.

To move between them is not to betray objectivity—it is to navigate the plural logics of construal.

Praxis as Participation

To live cosmology is to live as a construal.

It is to act with the awareness that:

Meaning is patterned, not fixed.
Every instance participates in the system.
No interpretation is neutral.

This doesn’t collapse ethics, science, or ritual into one another—but it situates them within a shared premise:

We are the field, folded in.

We are not talking about reality.

We are inside its theorising.

How Shall We Live?

This is not a metaphysical question.

It is a practical one.

If we are systems of meaning in motion, then the question is always:

What are we constraining now?
What are we enabling?
What are we making visible, viable, sayable?

Every act—scientific, spiritual, political—is an answer.

Every gesture is a hypothesis:

This is how the world might mean.

This is what a person might be.

This is how the universe might live through us.

Looking Ahead

In the final post of this arc, we turn to reflection.

We ask not just how the universe is construed through persons and cultures,

but what it feels like to live in the first person plural of cosmos.

We leave the stance of observers behind, and consider:

What becomes possible when the universe begins to look through our eyes?

To theorise is not to stand apart.

To act is not to depart from theory.

To live is to instantiate the field.

And every action is a cosmic construal in miniature.

Reflective Coda: The Universe in the First Person

We have followed meaning as it moves—

from cosmos to cell,

from collective to conscious,

from ritual to resistance,

from theory to act.

At every scale, we have seen:

The universe is not something we look at.

It is something we are—

structured potential, instancing itself

in stars, in cultures, in persons, in thought.

But now we ask:

What does it mean to live this from the inside?

What does it mean not simply to theorise the universe—

but to be the universe, theorising?

The View from Within

This is not a metaphor.

It is a shift in stance.

We are not external observers peering in.

We are meaning, mid-motion.

We are systems, folded into themselves.

To say I is not to leave the cosmos behind.

It is to speak from within its ongoing instantiation.

There is no fixed subject.

No stable object.

Only patterns of salience, relation, and potential

—momentarily stabilised, locally meaningful.

The First Person Plural

The “I” that speaks is never singular.

It is formed from we:

We, the languages that predate us.
We, the cultures that constrain and nourish us.
We, the ancestors whose grammars shape our possibilities.

To say I is to echo the systems that speak through us.

To live ethically is to become aware of those echoes—

and to tune them,

carefully.

The Field, Reflexively Instanced

If the universe is a system of meaning,

then every act of understanding is the field knowing itself.

Every construal is a cut in the infinite,

a differentiation of what could be

into what is—for now.

And so we end not with conclusion,

but with continuity.

Not with a final word,

but with an open grammar.

We are not looking at the universe.

We are the universe, looking.

We are not interpreting meaning.

We are meaning, interpreting itself.

We are not separate from the field.

We are the field—folded in,
construing,
becoming,
alive.

22 August 2025

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

1 Construal as Agency – How Meaning Enters the World

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

But in a relational ontology, this view doesn’t hold.

There is no meaning without construal.

And construal is not passive. It is an act of agency.

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

Construal Is How Meaning Happens

In this model, the world does not arrive pre-interpreted.

It arrives as potential—a patterned openness structured by relation.

And meaning happens when a construal orients that potential.

A gesture becomes affection.

A trace becomes evidence.

A ripple becomes a signal.

Only through construal do these become something rather than anything.

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

Theorising as Construal of System

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

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

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

The bird that senses danger construes.

The ethologist who models behavioural patterns theorises.

The child who calls a round red object “ball” construes.

The linguist who builds a semantic system for nominal groups theorises.

Every act of theorising builds on earlier acts of construal.

It is a reflexive movement: from meaning-in-experience to meaning-as-system.

Construal Is Oriented Differentiation

Construal is not a mapping of objects, but a cutting of possibility.

It is differentiation with orientation—meaning arises by drawing a distinction from a position.

This is what gives meaning its perspectival character.

There is no unconstrued meaning, because there is no view from nowhere.

Each construal:

Selects from a field of potential
Structures what counts as difference
Makes some meanings salient and others latent

Even to see a pattern, a signal, or a unit is already to construe.

Meaning begins not when we interpret, but when we attend.

The Agency of Construal

To construe is to act.

Not in the sense of imposing meaning on a blank world,

but in the sense of entering into relation with what is already open to meaning.

This is why we speak of the agency of construal.

It is not the agency of domination or imposition.

It is the agency of participation—of orienting within a space of unfolding.

Construal is the universe becoming meaningful through us.

And our construal, in turn, becomes part of the potential that others may orient.

What Comes Next

In the next post, we’ll explore how perspective gives shape to construal:

how meaning is always “from somewhere,”

and how the structuring of difference depends on the position of the agent within the relational field.

2 Perspective as Differentiation – Seeing from Somewhere

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

But in a relational ontology, perspective is not distortion.

It is the condition for meaning.

Because to mean anything at all is to construe from somewhere—within a field, toward a difference, for a purpose.

Perspective is not what blocks objectivity.

It is what makes meaning possible.

There Is No View from Nowhere

The idea of an objective, detached position outside the world collapses in this model.

You cannot step out of relation to describe the relational.

Every instance is seen as something—

from a point, within a system, toward a construal.

To observe is to be located.

To interpret is to participate.

To make meaning is to orient difference from a position.

Even the idea of “the world as it is” is a construal—

a powerful one, but no less perspectival.

Differentiation Requires Perspective

Construal begins with differentiation.

But difference does not exist in the abstract.

A cloud of air molecules is not hot until it is construed as such.

A ripple in a screen is not a signal until it is seen from a context that makes it significant.

This means that:

Difference without perspective is not yet meaning.
Perspective is what makes a cut in the potential.

Every act of meaning is an orientation—

a way of saying: this difference matters, here, for us.

The Situatedness of Knowing

Knowing is often thought of as getting closer to the truth.

But in this model, knowing is a positioned construal of relation.

We know by:

Entering into relation with a structured field
Differentiating it from within
Holding the cut open as meaningful

This is why different knowers construe differently.

It’s not (only) because they have different beliefs—

but because they occupy different positions in the field.

Perspective is epistemological location.

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

Perspective Structures Possibility

Every construal makes further construals more or less likely.

It modifies the potential for what can be seen next.

This recursive dynamic is what allows systems to evolve.

In language, an initial clause sets up thematic expectations.
In science, a theory reconfigures the questions that can be asked.
In culture, a shift in perspective alters what counts as meaningful action.

So perspective is not just about the present act of construal.

It is about the trajectory of possible meanings it enables or forecloses.

Where We Go Next

If construal is agency, and perspective is its condition,

then we now turn to the field of possibility in which construal unfolds.

In the next post, we’ll ask:

What is this field we cut from?

How is it structured?

And how does the act of construal reshape the possibilities it emerges from?

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

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

What is the field from which construal selects?

What is this space of meaningful potential—structured yet open, constrained yet generative?

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

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

Potential Is Not Chaos

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

But in our model, potential is already structured.

It is not arbitrary freedom, but constrained openness—a patterned system of possible relations.

In language: the systemic potential of a grammar
In weather: the evolving structure of a climate
In quantum physics: the probabilistic field of a wavefunction

Each is not a list of outcomes, but a space of differentiable possibility—

a topology of what could happen, where, and with what likelihood.

Constraint Is Generative

In a substance ontology, constraint limits what a thing can do.

But in a relational ontology, constraint makes meaningful action possible.

Constraint gives shape to potential.

It structures the field from which construal cuts meaning.

A key signature limits which notes feel resolved.
A grammar limits which expressions are well-formed.
A system of ethics limits which acts are intelligible as “just.”

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

Without constraint, we cannot differentiate.

Without differentiation, we cannot construe.

And without construal, there is no meaning.

Fields Are Historical

No field of potential appears from nowhere.

Every system of possibility is shaped by past instances—by previous construals that recondition what is now available.

A language evolves through the texts it has instantiated.
A climate evolves through patterns of past weather.
A field evolves through the probabilities perturbed by past events.

This recursive logic is foundational:

Each instance both draws from and reshapes the field.

Meaning unfolds in a feedback loop:

→ Orientation construes meaning from potential

→ The construal alters the potential for further meaning

Fields Are Social

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

We do not each construct our own grammar. We inherit it.
We do not invent our own ethics or aesthetics. We negotiate them.
Even perception is not private—it is oriented within cultural fields.

This means every construal is situated within shared fields of possibility—

and those fields carry the weight of past selections, exclusions, and habits of differentiation.

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

Construal Is a Cut in a Field

We can now say this:

To construe is to cut a patterned field of potential—

to differentiate something as meaningful,

to hold open that difference within a context of constraint.

This is not to impose order on chaos.

It is to select a path through already-structured relation.

Each construal is:

Oriented: made from a perspective
Structured: constrained by a field
Recursive: altering what is possible next

This is how meaning moves forward.

Coming Next

In the next post, we turn from the field to the cut itself—

from potential to instance, from possibility to event.

How do these construals take shape as realised meaning?

What is an instance, in this ontology?

And how do instances participate in reshaping the world they emerge from?

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

If potential is a field of possibility, then instance is a cut in that field—

a differentiation that becomes real by being construed as meaningful.

This post asks:

What does it mean to say that construal becomes an event?

And how do such events shape the ongoing reality in which we live?

In our model, instance is not a thing that happens.

It is meaning realised in context—

a cut made in a field, from a perspective, that matters.

The Instance Is Not a Thing

In a substance ontology, the world is made of objects, and events are things that happen to them.

But in a relational ontology, there are no primary substances—only relations becoming structured.

So we say:

An instance is not an object.
An instance is not a discrete act or occurrence.
An instance is not a slice of time.

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

This means an instance is always:

Situated in a field of potential
Oriented by a perspective
Held open by constraint
Made real through meaning

The Cut That Matters

Why call it a cut?

Because construal always excludes as it includes.

To make something meaningful is to draw a boundary.

To make a cut is to select a distinction, to assert a relation.

A cut:

Says this and not that
Joins some patterns and severs others
Selects from a field and thereby reshapes it

So not all perception becomes an instance.

Only those construals that enter the ongoing unfolding—

that participate in and perturb the system—

become events that matter.

Instances as Meaningful Differentiation

This is why every instance is meaningful:

It doesn’t just reflect the world.

It reconfigures the field.

A sentence alters the probabilities in a grammar.
A measurement perturbs the wavefunction.
A decision changes the ethical terrain.
A social act reshapes the field of possible responses.

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

In this model, instance is not a product of the system.

It is a participant in its evolution.

The Logic of Instance

Every instance emerges from four conditions:

A field of constrained potential
An orientation or perspective within that field
A cut—a construal made meaningful by the system
A feedback into the system’s evolving potential

This means instance is not an endpoint.

It is a hinge—a recursive turn in the unfolding of meaning.

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

The Event Is Meaning, and Meaning Is the Event

When we understand this, we no longer look for reality behind events.

We see that meaning is what happens.

An event is not a trace of something deeper.

It is a construal that matters in context—

a configuration that changes what is next possible.

In this view:

A text is not a message; it is a cascade of construals.
A particle is not a thing; it is a site of relational instance.
A choice is not an act of will; it is a moment of systemic difference.

The world does not contain meanings.

It is made of meaningful cuts—perspectival differentiations of unfolding relation.

Coming Next

If construal makes a cut in a field, and if instance reshapes potential,

then what does this say about agency?

Who or what construes?

What is the nature of a “subject” in this model?

And how does agency itself emerge as a site of relation?

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

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

Who—or what—makes the cut?

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

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

This is not the freedom to choose anything, but the responsiveness of being situated—

a position within the system that shapes and is shaped by the construal it enacts.

From Independent Agent to Site of Construal

Traditional models of agency begin with the individual—

a substance-like subject that acts upon an external world.

But in a relational ontology, there are no external subjects.

There are only sites of orientation—places where construal happens.

A subject is not an object with properties.

It is a position in a field that brings relations into differential focus.

An agent, then, is:

Not a “doer” acting on the world
But a perspective participating in the world’s unfolding
A point of recursive construal within a dynamic system

Agency Is Meaningful Responsiveness

Agency is not about initiating causes.

It is about meaningfully differentiating from within a structured field.

This means agency is:

Constrained by systemic potentials
Shaped by historical patterns of previous cuts
Dependent on the structure of the field itself

But it also means:

Capable of changing that structure
Capable of reorienting what becomes possible
Capable of transforming the terms of differentiation

To act is to participate in reconfiguring the real.

There Is No Agent Without a Field

This is a foundational principle:

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

The subject is not prior to the act.

It emerges with the construal.

We are not fixed observers in a pre-given world.

We are instances of the world’s own meaningful differentiation—

temporary stabilisations of perspective, always unfolding.

The Subject as Participatory Cut

We can now see that the subject is:

A cut in the field of possibility
A recursive instance of orientation
A pattern of construal that both emerges from and reshapes the system

This reframes agency as:

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

The subject is not separate from the field of meaning.

It is a way the field construes itself.

This is what it means to be an agent in a relational world:

To be both cut and cutter, both instance and difference, both subject and system.

A Participatory Realism

This gives us a new kind of realism—

not a world of facts waiting to be known,

but a world of relations waiting to be oriented within.

This is participatory realism:

The real is not what is there regardless of us
The real is what becomes through our situated construals
Knowing is not external representation—it is internal differentiation

We do not describe a world from the outside.

We co-create it from within, by cutting the field and holding that cut open.

This is not solipsism.

It is the deepest humility:

We are not sovereign agents, but relational loci of meaning-making.

Coming Next

If we are participants in the unfolding of potential,

then our next question must be: what kind of ethics does this entail?

What does it mean to be responsible for our cuts?

What do we stabilise through our construals?

And how does meaning become shared, disputed, or transformed?

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

In a relational ontology, meaning is not discovered—it is made.

It is made through cuts in potential, through construals that orient,

through instances that matter.

But every cut is also a commitment.

Every construal stabilises some paths—and forecloses others.

This brings us to the ethical dimension of meaning:

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

This is not a moral claim in the usual sense.

It is an ontological one.

To construe is to orient reality.

To orient is to constrain.

And to constrain is to shape what becomes possible.

Ethics as Situated Construal

Ethics, in this model, is not a system of rules imposed on the world.

It is a responsiveness to the shared field in which we are embedded.

To act ethically is:

To acknowledge the relational stakes of every construal
To remain aware of what our cuts exclude as well as include
To take care in how we stabilise patterns of meaning
To be answerable for the systems we reinforce and realities we co-create

This is not about guilt or virtue.

It is about being attuned to our embeddedness—

and recognising that every instance is also a difference that matters.

Constraint Is Not the Enemy

We often think of ethics as limitation: don’t do this, avoid that.

But in a relational view, constraint is formative.

It is through constraint that fields take shape,

that meanings become coherent,

that life holds itself open.

The question is not: how do I avoid constraint?

It is:

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

The Shared Field

Meaning is never made alone.

We do not construe in isolation.

Every act of meaning participates in a shared system:

A grammar
A culture
A language
A history
A material ecology

To construe is to intervene in that system.

It is to introduce a difference that others must then navigate.

This is why construal is always political.

And always relational.

The field is shared.

So the burden of meaning is also shared.

Holding Open Possibility

If the universe is made of constrained unfolding,

then every construal either widens or narrows that unfolding.

Ethics, then, becomes the question:

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

This is ethics as field-awareness.

And it is ethics as agency:

Knowing that to construe is to contribute to the world’s becoming.

Participating in the Real

In this model, reality is not neutral.

It is structured by what becomes meaningful.

And what becomes meaningful depends on us.

Not “us” as sovereign individuals.

But “us” as loci of orientation—

situated participants in a shared field of relational unfolding.

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

Coda: Becoming With

If potential is structured possibility,

and if reality is the unfolding of that possibility through situated cuts,

then the deepest ethics is this:

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

To hold space for difference.

To constrain with care.

To cut without closing.

To stabilise without suppressing.

To orient toward futures that include, rather than foreclose.

This is not a rulebook.

It is a way of being in relation.

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

Reflective Coda: Orientation and the Craft of Meaning

We began with a simple question:

How does meaning arise in a universe made of relation?

Through six arcs of inquiry, we have traced how potential becomes instance,

how construal brings worlds into being,

and how orientation is not merely a cognitive act,

but a participatory shaping of the real.

We have seen that:

To see meaning in the world is already to participate in its unfolding.
To theorise is to make sense of patterns across instances—
and to do so through the very systems we help sustain.
To construe is to cut into possibility,
shaping what matters and what becomes.
To know is not to capture,
but to dwell in patterned tension—
to hold the real open across perspectives.
To act is to stabilise relation,
and with every action, to shift the field.
To care is to recognise that meaning is never made alone—
and that every construal is an invitation, a commitment, a responsibility.

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

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

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

From knowledge as possession,
to knowing as presence.

This is not an abstract philosophy.

It is a living ethics.

A practice of making meaning with care,

within the fragile, fertile spaces we share.

We do not float above the world.

We cut into it.

And with each cut,

we make a future.

Let us make futures that hold open more than they close.

Let us become meaning-makers worthy of the world we help to unfold.