In Post 1, we argued that semiosis is not a process of representing a world but the actualisation of reality itself. Meaning and reality are not two domains but one — differentiated only by the perspectival cut that makes an event appear as this meaning rather than any other.
Post 2 makes that cut explicit.
The Space of Potential Is Not a Hidden Depth
To think semiosis relationally, we must be precise about what “system” denotes. System is regularly misread as a repository of forms, a deep grammar, or a storehouse of features that precede instances. But relational ontology requires a different conception:
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System is not behind the instance.
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System is not before the instance.
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System is the structured space of what the instance could be.
System is the non-specific horizon that is always already implicit in every specific event. It does not operate causally, mechanistically, or deterministically. It is the configurational shape of possibility — the theory of the instance.
When we speak of options, paradigms, probabilities, or tendencies, we are already working with the metasemiotic conception of system: a structured potential whose organisation is abstract, not ontic.
This matters because:
Semiosis cannot be understood without this asymmetry between non-specific potential and specific actualisation.
The system is not “more real” than the instance; nor is the instance the only reality. Meaning happens in the shift between them.
The Cut Is Not Temporal
A frequent confusion arises when the system/instance relation is treated as a temporal sequence — first the system, then the instance. But nothing in semiosis requires chronological ordering. Temporality belongs to the construed domain of phenomena, not to the metasemiotic domain of relations.
Thus:
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The system does not “generate” instances.
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The instance does not “apply” system.
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Neither precedes the other as a cause.
Instead:
Just as a mathematical function does not precede its instantiations in time — but in logical generality — so too the system precedes the instance only as a space of possibility.
This has radical consequences:
The cut invents the world it discloses.
What the Cut Does: Actualisation
The cut is not a selection from an inventory; it is a bringing-forth. It makes a path through possibility. It enacts a particular organisation of relational potential. When viewed from the side of the instance, the cut appears as:
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a clause,
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a metaphor,
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a categorisation,
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a choice in transitivity or mood,
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a construal of some phenomenon.
But from the metasemiotic side, the same event is:
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the differentiation of one possibility from many,
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the enactment of a vantage,
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the formation of a phenomenal world.
Every instance is therefore:
a perspectival organisation of meaning-potential into a mini-world.
Not because it expresses a world, but because it is one.
Interdependence Without Representation
Halliday’s systemic functional architecture gives us a powerful way to articulate this: the system is a theory of the instance, and the instance instantiates the system. But from a relational perspective, we see something deeper:
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System depends on instances for its manifestation.
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Instances depend on system for their horizon.
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Neither is derivative of the other.
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Neither is representational of the other.
They are mutually implying poles of a single relational process.
This avoids two common errors:
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The representational fallacy: treating the instance as a “mapping” of the system.
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The substantialist fallacy: treating the system as a pre-existing structure independent of actualisation.
The relational alternative is simple:
System is the metasemiotic; instance is the semiotic; the cut is the semiosis.
Semiosis is the event of actuality — the moment in which possibility becomes world.
The Perspectival Nature of Meaning
The perspectival cut is not merely a technical device; it is what makes meaning meaningful. Every construed event is a meaning because it is not the entirety of possibility — it is one path carved through it.
A phenomenon exists only as this construed event against the background of what it is not.
Thus:
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There is no phenomenon without metaphenomenon.
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There is no event without the theory of possible events.
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There is no meaning without the surplus of other meanings it could have been.
Meaning is perspectival differentiation all the way down.
This is the core metasemiotic insight: semiosis is the making of perspectives. And perspectives are what worlds are made of.
What Comes Next
Post 3 will follow the cut into the heart of construal:
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