3 Relational Ontology Encoded in Liora’s Fish of the Imagination

Liora’s encounter with the fish of the imagination is not just a whimsical adventure; it is a narrative enactment of relational ontology in action. Each element of the story illustrates core distinctions and dynamics fundamental to understanding phenomena, potential, and construal.

1. Structured Potential and Perspectival Actualisation

The river teems with fish that do not exist independently — they are structured potentials. Only when Liora reaches out and grasps them are they actualised as instances. This mirrors the relational ontology distinction between system (the potential field) and instance (perspectival actualisation).

2. Construal as First-Order Phenomenon

The shimmering forms, shifting colours, and mutable shapes of the fish are first-order phenomena — the lived, phenomenal experience that emerges from Liora’s interaction with potential. The story foregrounds construal: meaning arises in the dynamic interplay of perceiver and potential, not in the “fish” themselves as pre-existing objects.

3. Temporal and Perspectival Contingency

Some fish are held briefly; others slip away into the endless current. This illustrates that actualisation is temporal and perspectival: potential only becomes intelligible when engaged, and uninstantiated possibilities remain dormant, waiting for another perspective to actualise them.

4. Second-Order Construal and Translation

Liora’s act of collecting the fish into a crystal basin, observing their forms, and noting their climates of the mind is a second-order construal — akin to the artist translating perception into paint or words. Here, relational ontology demonstrates how experience can be communicated and reflected upon, without collapsing first-order phenomena into static representations.

5. Summary

The story dramatises three relational strata:

1. System / structured potential: the river teeming with fish, possibilities not yet actualised.

2. Instance / perspectival actualisation: each fish grasped by Liora, made intelligible in context.

3. Construal / first-order phenomenon: the lived, mutable experience that emerges in Liora’s mind, and can be translated, shared, or remembered.

Through this narrative, readers can viscerally apprehend what relational ontology articulates in abstract terms: reality is never a set of independent objects; it is a field of potential realised perspectivally, experienced phenomenally, and communicated relationally.

In short, the story makes concrete what relational ontology claims abstractly: the marvels of experience exist in the interplay of potential and perspective, not as pre-given entities waiting to be captured.