1 What Is a Relational Ontology?
Ontology concerns itself with the question of being — of what exists and in what manner. It is not a question of what we know, nor of what we value, but of the fundamental presuppositions we bring to our engagement with the world. This series addresses such presuppositions explicitly, with a focus on what we will call relational ontology.
Traditionally, Western thought has been dominated by a substance ontology: a metaphysical stance that treats entities as primary and their relations as secondary. According to this view, the world is composed of discrete objects, each possessing intrinsic properties, and any relation between them is incidental or externally imposed.
By contrast, a relational ontology begins with the premise that relations are prior to relata. That is to say, it is not things that relate, but relations that bring things into being. “Things,” on this view, are not foundational elements of reality, but emergent phenomena: transient stabilisations within ongoing patterns of interaction. From this standpoint, reality is not composed of self-contained units but of events, processes, and participations. It is not the presence of substance that grounds being, but the ongoing actualisation of potential through relation.
Ontology and Everyday Assumptions
While the term may suggest abstract metaphysical speculation, ontology has direct and pervasive implications. It conditions the frameworks within which we conceptualise knowledge, identity, language, ethics, science, and more. Consider the contrast:
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If knowledge is construed as the accumulation of facts by a detached observer, then inquiry becomes a matter of acquisition. If, instead, knowledge is relationally constituted — a matter of participation — then inquiry becomes a practice of attunement.
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If the self is imagined as an autonomous, bounded entity, then sociality becomes secondary, even optional. But if selfhood is emergent within relation, then sociality is constitutive of subjectivity.
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If language is seen as a code for representing pre-existing objects, then meaning appears static. But if meaning is realised through relational instantiation, then language is an unfolding of interaction, not a mirror of the world.
These examples indicate the far-reaching consequences of one’s ontological commitments. A shift in ontology is not simply philosophical — it is transformative.
Toward a Participatory World
The position we wish to articulate in this series is that participation is prior to presence. What exists is not first a set of entities and only later their relations, but rather a field of unfolding potential, in which instances of meaning, action, and being are co-actualised through relation. This is a world not of fixed realities but of emergent configurations — not of static identities, but of mutual becoming.
This orientation is informed by several disciplinary commitments:
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A systemic functional linguistic account of meaning as relationally stratified and contextually instantiated;
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A neurobiological model of consciousness as selection within nested systems of coordination;
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A quantum theoretical framework in which observation constitutes, rather than merely records, phenomena;
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And an overarching commitment to understanding reality not as objective presence but as semiotic participation.
Looking Ahead
This first post offers an outline. The five that follow will articulate this ontological orientation in more detail. They will address the priority of relation, the ontological status of potential and instance, the world as participatory event, and the implications of grounding without foundation. A final post will draw these threads together in reflection.
For now, we will close with a proposition that frames what follows:
If there are no things prior to relation, then ontology is not a study of what is, but of how being is made possible through participation.
2 The Priority of Relation
At the heart of relational ontology lies a reversal: rather than beginning with entities and asking how they relate, we begin with relation itself. This reversal is not simply theoretical; it reconfigures how we understand existence, agency, and structure. It challenges us to see that relations do not connect pre-existing things — they bring things into being.
In this view, relation is ontologically prior to relata. That is to say, what we think of as “things” — bodies, selves, objects, identities — do not pre-exist the network of relations in which they participate. They are not the source of relation but its effect. This is not merely a re-description; it is a different metaphysical stance, one that refuses the assumption of atomism and posits instead a world constituted in and through ongoing interaction.
Emergence, Not Construction
To say that entities emerge through relation is not to say they are constructed in the sense of being artificial or illusory. The charge of “anti-realism” often levelled at relational perspectives mistakes emergence for fabrication. But relational ontology does not deny the reality of things; it denies their independent reality. It insists that what is real is real as a function of relation — and that to understand anything apart from the relations that make it possible is to misunderstand it fundamentally.
The Individual as Emergent Node
Take the example of the self. In a substance ontology, the self is a bounded individual, self-identical across contexts, capable of standing apart from its environment and engaging it at will. In a relational ontology, the self is a node in a field of relations — not reducible to that field, but not separable from it either. Its identity is not given once and for all but enacted through patterns of participation.
This view resonates with certain traditions in systems theory, cognitive science, and anthropology. But here we are framing it ontologically: not simply as a way the self behaves, but as a condition of its being.
Meaning as Relational Actualisation
The same applies to meaning. Meaning is not a property of signs, nor a correspondence between language and world. It is a relation — a triadic relation in which a sign functions for an interpreter in a given context. Systemic Functional Linguistics offers a particularly powerful model of this process, understanding meaning not as pre-existing but as instantiated in and through contextually motivated choices within a structured potential.
Meaning, then, is neither located in the signifier nor in the signified, but in the relation between potential and instance, between system and situation. It is a process of actualisation — always dependent, always situated.
Implications for Knowledge
When relation is given ontological priority, knowledge cannot be the apprehension of fixed truths about independent objects. Instead, knowing becomes a relational practice — an act of coordination, participation, and co-emergence. It is not that the world is unknowable, but that what we know of it is inseparable from how we come to know. This is not relativism. It is a call for reflexivity, for attentiveness to the ways in which knowing is always already embedded in relation.
A World Made of With
Relational ontology insists that we live not in a world of things, but in a world of with. We are never alone, never outside. We are in relation — and through relation, we become.
The next post will extend this line of thought by examining the ontological status of potential. If relational ontology begins with relation, what does it mean to speak of the potential from which instances emerge?
3 The Ontological Status of Potential
If relational ontology begins with relation, it must also account for that which can come into relation. This brings us to the concept of potential. What is potential, and how does it differ from — yet condition — the actuality of things?
In a substance ontology, potential tends to be treated as secondary or derivative: the possible is simply that which is not yet actual. In a relational ontology, by contrast, potential is a mode of being in its own right. It is not the negation of actuality, but the field from which actualisation becomes possible. This view requires a careful rethinking of both potential and instance, and of the relation between them.
Potential Is Not a Shadow of the Actual
To approach potential relationally is to reject the idea that the actual is more real than the possible. Instead, potential is what makes actualisation possible. It is not what things lack before they come into being; it is the structured horizon of becoming — the web of affordances, constraints, and systemic tendencies from which instances emerge.
In Systemic Functional Linguistics, this is the distinction between meaning potential and meaning instance: the potential is structured, not amorphous; and the instance is an actualisation, not an exception. The same applies at the ontological level: the potential is not an unformed void, but a differentiated field of possibilities shaped by patterns of past actualisations and the systems that make them available.
Instantiation as Ontological Process
The process by which potential becomes instance — instantiation — is not merely a linguistic phenomenon. It is an ontological principle. Actual entities are not static things but emergent outcomes: instances of relational actualisation. They do not stand apart from the field of potential; they express it. Each instance reconfigures the potential from which it emerged, just as each utterance in language shifts the probabilities within the meaning system for future utterances.
In this way, instantiation is not a linear unfolding from possibility to reality; it is a recursive process, a dynamic interplay between what has been and what may yet become.
The Temporality of Potential
Potential is inherently temporal. It is what could happen, not in some detached logical sense, but in the thick present of the unfolding world. It is always situated — conditioned by history, shaped by pattern, and open to contingency. In quantum physics, for instance, the wavefunction describes a field of potential outcomes, and measurement instantiates one among them. But the wavefunction is not “less real” than its collapse. It is a different mode of reality: a reality of openness and relation.
Similarly, in the relational ontology articulated here, potential is the mode in which relational configurations can take shape. It is not inert. It is active possibility.
From Possibility to Participation
To understand potential relationally is to recognise that possibility is not a neutral backdrop against which action occurs. It is a product of past actualisations and an invitation to future ones. It is not that we act upon potential; we participate in its unfolding. Thus, the shift from a substance to a relational ontology is also a shift from acting on the world to participating with it.
The instance is not a singularity but a node — a moment of coalescence that draws from, and returns to, the field of potential. And that field, in turn, is not fixed, but continuously reshaped through participation.
Looking Ahead
The next post will explore the consequences of this view for how we understand the world itself — not as a set of objects, but as a participatory event. If all beings are emergent from relation, and all relations unfold from a field of potential, then what is the world but the ongoing play of their co-actualisation?
4 The World as Participatory Event
If relational ontology gives ontological primacy to relation and recognises potential as a mode of being, then it follows that the world itself is not a static container filled with things, but a dynamic unfolding of participatory events. This view entails a radical reconfiguration of what we mean by “world.” The world is not a stage on which entities act, but the ongoing relational becoming of those entities — an event continually co-composed by its participants.
This is not a metaphor. It is a metaphysical claim: the world is not made of things, but of the relations that instantiate things in particular ways at particular times.
Against the Background/Foreground Divide
In substance ontology, the world is often conceived as a backdrop — an objective, external environment in which subjects and objects appear. This assumption underwrites many dualisms: mind/world, subject/object, figure/ground. But a relational ontology resists this division. There is no neutral background against which things stand out; what appears does so only through participation.
The world is always already involved. It is not a setting for events but their condition — not external to relation, but its expression. To exist is to participate in the event that is world-making.
Participation as Ontological Category
In this view, participation is not an epistemological feature (how we know the world), but an ontological one (what the world is). To be is to participate. This applies not only to human beings, but to all entities, forces, and processes — from cells to stars, from atoms to meanings. Nothing is outside relation. Nothing is outside the world-event.
Participation is thus the mode in which all actuality occurs. And crucially, it is non-isolable. No entity can be wholly disentangled from the relations through which it comes to be. Even attempts to define or delimit something — to draw a boundary — are themselves acts of participation, reconfiguring the potential for what can be seen, said, and done.
The World as Recursively Co-Actualising
If the world is an event of participatory unfolding, then it is not simply happening to us. We are happening with it. This “with” is not additive — it is generative. Our participation does not occur within a pre-given world; our participation is the world, or more precisely, a moment in its continual becoming.
This has profound consequences. It means the world is never finished. It is not the sum of all that exists, but the ongoing play of emergence, collapse, and reconstitution — a recursive negotiation between potential and instance, where each instance modifies the potential for future participation.
The Ethics of Co-Becoming
To frame the world as participatory event is also to reframe responsibility. If we are always already participants, then our task is not to seek a position of objective neutrality, but to cultivate attentiveness to the patterns we co-actualise. Knowing is no longer a matter of standing apart, but of leaning in — carefully, critically, and with care for what we bring into being.
This is not simply a philosophical point. It is a call to engage differently — with each other, with the more-than-human, with the systems and structures through which meaning and matter take shape.
Next: The Limits of Objectivity
The next post will confront a central implication of this view: if the world is participatory, what becomes of objectivity? Is it still possible to speak of knowledge that does not collapse into mere perspective? We will argue that the problem lies not in abandoning objectivity, but in rethinking what it can mean — not as detachment, but as accountable participation.
5 Rethinking Objectivity
The idea that the world is a participatory event invites a pressing question: what becomes of objectivity? If all knowledge is situated within relational unfolding, does this collapse truth into relativism? In a relational ontology, the answer is no — but only if we are prepared to rethink what objectivity means.
Objectivity is not abandoned. It is transformed. It ceases to be the view from nowhere and becomes a practice of accountable participation. The goal is not to escape relation, but to recognise and reckon with our place within it.
From Detachment to Situatedness
In substance-based ontologies, objectivity is often associated with detachment: the ability to observe without interference. But in a relational ontology, such detachment is impossible. Observation is always an act of participation. We do not merely receive data; we enact selections, set parameters, collapse potentials into actuals. This is not a failure of objectivity — it is its condition.
What shifts is the ideal. The aim is no longer to erase the observer, but to foreground the structure of participation: to trace how our perspective has come to be, what it opens up, and what it forecloses.
Epistemology Within Relation
Knowing is not a disembodied achievement. It is a mode of being-with. Every act of knowing is situated in a nexus of relations — historical, material, symbolic, affective. The question is not whether we can remove ourselves from these, but how we can move within them with greater precision, humility, and care.
This is what accountable participation means. It is not a denial of objectivity, but a commitment to an objectivity that begins with situatedness — one that asks not only what is true? but also how does this truth come to matter? and for whom?
Patterns of Recurrence and Inference
Importantly, relational ontology does not deny regularity, repeatability, or inference. Quite the opposite. Patterns emerge precisely through the recurrence of relational configurations. What changes is the status of such patterns: they are not features of a world out there, but expressions of the system’s actualisations over time. They can be tracked, modelled, and made increasingly robust — but they remain contingent upon the relations that produce them.
This is not relativism. It is realism — but of a kind that recognises the world as dynamically co-constructed rather than statically pre-given.
Reflexivity and the Practice of Objectivity
A relational approach demands reflexivity: a continual awareness of the conditions and consequences of our participation. This includes the disciplines we work within, the tools we use, and the metaphors we inherit. It is not enough to speak of “data” or “facts” as if they emerge unshaped. Every fact is the outcome of selection, framing, and interpretation. This does not make facts unreal; it makes them relationally real.
Objectivity, then, becomes a virtue of openness: openness to revising frames, testing assumptions, and acknowledging entanglements. It is a practice, not a position.
Toward a Relational Epistemology
In this light, epistemology itself must be rethought. Knowing is not the accumulation of representations, but the cultivation of capacities to participate meaningfully in a co-actualising world. It is not a conquest of the unknown, but an invitation to enter more deeply into the unfolding of relation.
The final post in this series will explore the implications of this view for what it means to know with — to understand not as possession, but as mutual emergence.
6 Knowing With — Toward a Relational Epistemology
If the world is constituted through relation, and objectivity is a practice of accountable participation, then knowing is not a private act of acquisition, but a shared process of co-becoming. In this final post, we articulate a relational epistemology: not knowing about, but knowing with.
To know is to enter into relation — to be changed by what one seeks to understand. This is not a failure of rigour; it is its fulfilment. In a relational world, epistemology becomes a mode of responsiveness: a way of living attentively in the presence of others, human and more-than-human, where every act of understanding is also an act of world-making.
Knowledge as Participation
In traditional models, knowledge is possession: one gains knowledge, accumulates facts, builds conceptual systems. But within a relational ontology, this metaphor no longer holds. Knowledge cannot be owned. It is not a static entity that sits in a mind or on a page. It is a process — a pattern of co-actualisation between knowers and knowns.
Knowing, then, is not separable from being. To know something is to become-with it, to let its potentials shape one’s own. Knowledge is not what I have about the world, but what we come to be together through our mutual engagement.
From Representation to Intra-Action
This shifts the function of knowledge from representation to intra-action — a term that underscores how entities do not pre-exist their interactions but emerge through them. Knowing is not the mirroring of a world already made; it is a participation in the making of the world. To know is to intervene, to co-compose, to respond.
This entails responsibility. What we bring into view is not neutral. It is a commitment — a participation in particular worldings, with their own inclusions, exclusions, and consequences.
Knowing-with as Ethical Practice
Relational epistemology is inseparable from ethics. If knowledge is participation, then all knowing is also a form of relating — and all relations carry ethical weight. What matters is not only what we know, but how we participate in the knowing: whether we make space for the other, whether we flatten difference, whether we listen or extract.
This is not a call to abandon analysis, but to deepen it — to let rigour and relationality inflect one another. Knowing-with is rigorous not because it pretends to be neutral, but because it strives to be reflexive, situated, and attentive to the difference that makes a difference.
Knowledge as World-Making
In this framework, knowledge becomes a form of world-making. Not because it invents reality from nothing, but because it selects, frames, and instantiates potential into particular actualities. Our categories, our questions, our models — all participate in shaping the world we inhabit and inherit.
This is not to say that anything goes. It is to say that everything matters. Each act of knowing is an intervention in the unfolding of relation. As such, the epistemic is always also the ontological and the ethical.
An Invitation
Relational ontology does not give us a stable platform on which to stand. It invites us into a practice of becoming-with — of living knowledgeably and responsibly in a world that is never merely given, but always in the making.
To take this seriously is not to despair over the loss of certainty. It is to recognise that we are always already involved, and to ask: what kinds of worlds do we want to participate in bringing forth?