Likely Misunderstandings of Relational Ontology: Series Introduction

(Or: How to Get It Wrong, So You Can Get It Right)

Relational ontology is subtle, radical, and — unsurprisingly — easily misunderstood.

For centuries, readers trained in the representational habits of philosophy, science, and everyday thinking have approached it like a foreign language: trying to translate it into mind-first, world-first, or correspondence-based categories.

The result is predictable: triumphant rebuttals of strawmen, excited blog posts about “relativism” or “anti-science,” and a lot of misfired commentary.

This series exists to prevent that confusion.

It is a field guide for the enthusiastically wrong, clarifying exactly what relational ontology does and, perhaps more importantly, what it does not.

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Why This Series Matters

• Preempt misreadings: Avoid wasting time explaining what the ontology is not, by getting ahead of predictable critiques.

• Clarify fundamentals: Strengthen readers’ understanding of relational cuts, semiotic potential, and perspectival actualisation.

• Defend the framework: Make explicit how relational ontology differs from idealism, panpsychism, mentalism, relativism, solipsism, and anti-scientific readings.

• Sharpen discourse: Give readers language to discuss relational ontology with precision, without defaulting to representational metaphors.

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What You’ll See in This Series

The series is structured as seven posts, each tackling a common misunderstanding:

1. “But This Sounds Like Idealism, Doesn’t It?”

2. “Why Relational Ontology Is Not Anti-Science”

3. “Why Relational Ontology Is Not Idealism, Panpsychism, or Mentalism”

4. “Does Relational Ontology Deny Reality?”

5. “Relational Ontology Explains Error, Coherence, and Knowledge Without Representation”

6. “Why Relational Ontology Is Not Relativism”

7. “But Doesn’t Relational Ontology Collapse Into Subjective Solipsism?”

Each post carefully dissects a predictable misreading and clarifies the ontology’s position using relational, semiotic, and systemic reasoning — with attention to Hallidayan semantics, distributed meaning, and perspectival actualisation.

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How to Read This Series

• Not as a debate: This is not philosophy as argument, but philosophy as conceptual cartography.

• Look for patterns: Each post highlights how relational cuts operate across perception, science, and social systems.

• Notice the contrasts: Each misunderstanding is contrasted with what relational ontology actually posits, ensuring clarity and conceptual separation.

• Follow the thread: By the final post, you will have a cohesive map of relational ontology’s defences against every familiar strawman critique.

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A Note to the Curious

If you’ve ever felt that your intuitions about mind, matter, truth, or reality are being challenged by relational thinking, this series is for you.

It shows how and why relational ontology preserves coherence, reality, and knowledge, even while it refuses representation, intrinsic properties, and fixed metaphysical categories.

Misunderstanding is natural.

This series is your guide to getting it right.