The Grammar of Readiness: Ontological Implications of Potential as Inclined Ability: 6 Reflexivity as the Cosmos Knowing its Readiness

Consciousness is readiness reflecting on readiness.

With potential reframed as inclined ability, reflexivity emerges naturally. The cosmos does not merely lean; it can become aware of its own leanings. Reflexivity is the recognition of readiness within itself — the folding of potential back upon its own inclinations.

Biological and cognitive example:

An organism does not simply act; it anticipates, modulates, and refines its abilities in light of prior inclinations. Learning, memory, and planning are manifestations of readiness knowing itself, iteratively calibrating inclination across context-dependent abilities. The system inclines, observes the inclining, and adjusts. Reality learns to lean.

Cosmological example:

At higher orders of organisation, such as social or symbolic systems, reflexivity is amplified. A society’s potential inclines toward specific forms of coordination; through cultural, legal, and symbolic systems, it observes and regulates these inclinations. Inclination itself becomes a variable: the system modulates its readiness in response to the patterning of abilities already realised.

Implication:

Reflexivity is not an add-on or emergent epiphenomenon; it is the ontological consequence of inclined ability variation. As potential differentiates through context, the system becomes capable of recognising its own inclinations and guiding its unfolding accordingly.

Symbolic resonance:

Semiotic systems — language, law, mathematics — are instruments through which reflexivity is operationalised. They allow readiness to construe its own abilities and, in turn, refine inclination. Symbolic reflexivity is the cosmos becoming self-aware of its own grammar of leaning.

Through reflexivity, evolution ceases to be merely adaptive; it becomes coordinated, anticipatory, and self-modulating. The cosmos does not simply change; it learns to become more capable of becoming.