1. Framing the Problem
Accounts of meaning typically begin within the semiotic domain — with the relation between sign and meaning, expression and content, or symbol and referent. Yet this point of departure presupposes a prior condition: the possibility that experience can be construed at all. Meaning as such arises within an already-structured potential — one that is disposed toward pattern, correlation, and coherence.
This post examines that prior condition, which may be described as inclination: the structured readiness of potential to cohere. Inclination is not an event or a force, but a relational disposition — a leaning within potential toward actualisation.
2. Inclination and the Ontology of Potential
In the relational ontology developed throughout The Becoming of Possibility, potential is not understood as a store of latent entities awaiting realisation. Rather, it is a structured field of relational readiness: a set of possible construals that can be actualised through perspectival cut.
Within such a field, inclination marks the internal differentiation of potential — the moment at which possibilities begin to organise relationally. It is not a transition from non-being to being, but a perspectival modulation within being’s potential itself.
Inclination, then, is the first relational inflection within potential: the minimal bias that allows construal to occur without predetermining its content.
3. Pre-Semiotic Aboutness
Traditional semiotics assumes a relation between a sign and that which it represents. The notion of inclination, however, suggests an antecedent form of aboutness — a correlation that is not yet representational.
This pre-semiotic aboutness is a readiness for alignment. It is the world’s capacity to co-vary, to respond internally to its own differentiations. In this sense, meaning is not imported into matter; matter itself exhibits a structured responsiveness that makes meaning possible.
Inclination therefore names the ontological condition for semiosis: relation’s capacity to anticipate its own construal.
4. Inclination as Dynamic Tension
Inclination should not be equated with equilibrium or with the deterministic tendency of physical law. It is a form of tensional poise — a readiness that maintains multiple potential outcomes in structured relation.
The significance of inclination lies in its balance between openness and constraint. It is sufficiently determined to sustain coherence, yet sufficiently indeterminate to permit novelty. Meaning arises precisely at this boundary: where inclination is reflexively construed as possible coherence.
5. From Inclination to Construal
When inclination is reflexively construed — that is, when a potential relation is recognised as potential — it becomes semiotic. The transition from inclination to construal marks the emergence of meaning proper: not a change in substance, but a shift in the order of relation.
This shift is perspectival rather than temporal. It does not occur before or after semiosis but beneath it, as its ontological condition. The pre-semiotic lean is thus not prior in time but foundational in theory: it is the relational readiness that enables the symbolic to actualise as meaning.
6. Summary
| Concept | Description | Ontological Role |
|---|---|---|
| Potential | Structured field of relational readiness | Theoretical system of possible construals |
| Inclination | Minimal differentiation within potential; leaning toward coherence | Ontological condition for construal |
| Construal | Reflexive actualisation of inclination as meaning | First-order manifestation of semiotic reality |
Inclination is therefore not a primitive version of meaning but its enabling condition. Meaning, in turn, is inclination rendered reflexive.
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