Neuroscience often speaks of neurons as “encoding” information. Orientation, reward, motion, memory — neurons are said to carry these attributes as if they were letters in a codebook. On first glance, this seems precise, scientific, even elegant. But relational ontology calls this assumption into question: neurons do not encode, and patterns of activity are not messages.
The coding metaphor is seductive because it appeals to our semiotic intuition. We know how symbols work: they can be written, read, transmitted, and interpreted. Mapping this framework onto the brain suggests an immediately intelligible architecture: neurons as senders, synapses as channels, firing patterns as symbols, and the organism as a decoder. It promises order, predictability, and explanation. But it is precisely this metaphorical convenience that distorts reality.
Consider what neurons actually do:
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They respond to a local constellation of potentials, ion concentrations, neurotransmitters, and metabolic states.
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Their firing is contingent, probabilistic, and relational, not deterministically “representing” any external property.
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Patterns of activity are modulations of value: shifts in the relational field that sustain system viability, maintain responsiveness, and enable adaptive coupling with the environment.
When we say a neuron “encodes orientation,” we are projecting semiotic meaning onto value-driven coordination. Regularity in response patterns is not representation. It is systematic modulation, a relational adjustment to local and global constraints.
The neural coding metaphor repeats the same error we saw with ants and astrocytes: value mistaken for meaning. Just as a pupal chemical perturbation does not “signal sacrifice,” and an astrocyte does not “shape computation,” a neuron does not “carry information.” All three are events within relational systems, where the dynamics of potential actualisation govern outcomes. They are value-laden, not semiotic.
Why does this matter? Because metaphors shape practice. If we treat neurons as coders and decoders, research questions, experimental designs, and interpretations are filtered through an inappropriate semiotic lens. We start chasing codes instead of understanding relational dynamics. We misread coordination as communication, and we misread modulation as computation.
Relational ontology offers a corrective:
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Firing patterns are relational events, not messages.
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The brain is a field of potential, not a symbolic processor.
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Meaning arises only when semiotic systems (like humans) construe these patterns.
In short, the neural coding paradigm is a myth built from metaphor, a seductive story of computation and information that obscures the true dynamics of biological value. Recognising this allows us to see neuroscience clearly: not as a study of information processing, but as the study of living systems modulating potential, a relational performance in continuous, value-driven flux.
In the next post, we will step back and examine value without meaning in biological systems more systematically, connecting ants, astrocytes, and neurons under a single analytic lens: the discipline of seeing life as relational potential, not symbolic output.
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