Misreading Relational Ontology II: 3 “But If Reality Isn’t Represented, How Do You Avoid Solipsism?”

(The Easiest Misfire)

This is the most predictable misunderstanding, and it always comes wrapped in the same performative worry:

“If everything is relational, then isn’t that just solipsism—like nothing exists except what we construe?”

No.

This objection only lands if one conflates construal with construction, and both with private mental activity—the very representational picture the ontology dismantles.

Here’s the simple relational correction:

1 Construal is Not Mental; It is Relational

Construal is the cut that configures a phenomenon — the perspectival shift from the potential of a system to an actualised instance.

It is not a mind creating the world.

It is world and perspective co-determining an event.

No world → no cut.

No perspective → no phenomenon.

But notice: neither side owns the process.

2 The World is Not “In Here”; It is the Potential that Constrains Cuts

The realist-materialist hears “relational” and thinks “subjective”.

But in this ontology:

• the system is the structured potential of what can be actualised

• that potential is not optional, invented, or alterable by whim

• construal is always a negotiation with the world’s potentials

This is not solipsism.

If anything, it is the end of solipsism, because solipsism is a representational error: the assumption that all we ever know is internal mental content.

The relational view says the opposite:

There is no interior kingdom of representations at all — only cuts through potentials, enacted at the interface of organism, environment, and semiotic system.

3 Solipsism is Impossible Once Representation is Abandoned

Solipsism requires a representational architecture:

• an inner “picture”

• a mind inspecting that picture

• a world whose existence becomes questionable because we supposedly never access it directly

But if meaning is not representational, then:

• there is no inner picture

• no epistemic veil

• no “problem of access”

• no metaphysical gap to bridge

You cannot fall into solipsism if there is no representational trapdoor beneath your feet.

4 The Relational Stance is Not About the Mind; It is About the World’s Mode of Being

The representationalist always smuggles in the implicit model:

• Reality = a warehouse of objects

• Knowledge = mental models of those objects

Reject that, and solipsism evaporates.

Reality becomes:

• structured potentials of systems

• actualised through cuts

• co-individuated with the perspectives that traverse them

This is not “the world depends on us”.

This is “phenomena depend on construal; potentials do not.”

5 Summary for the Realist Who Stopped Reading Four Paragraphs Ago

• No: the ontology doesn’t say “nothing exists”.

• No: it doesn’t say “the mind creates the world”.

• No: it doesn’t say “everything’s subjective”.

It says:

Reality is relational all the way down, and phenomena emerge at the interface of potentials and construal. No representation. No mental intermediaries. No solipsism.

A relational ontology is not “less real”.

It just refuses to take objects as metaphysical primitives and refuses to take mental representations as epistemic intermediaries.

The realist is welcome to return once the dizziness subsides.