1 Life Misconstrued: 7 The Ontology of Misreading: Why Science Collapses Value into Meaning

Across this series, we have traced a familiar pattern in biology and neuroscience: ants that appear to “sacrifice themselves,” astrocytes that seem to “shape computation,” neurons that supposedly “encode information.” Each of these cases illustrates a recurrent error — the imposition of semiotic meaning onto systems that only regulate value.

What underlies this error is what we call the ontology of misreading: the habit of treating metaphors as mechanisms, projections as facts, and value-driven dynamics as symbolic communication. The consequences are profound.

1. Conceptual distortion: When we treat biological regulation as computation, communication, or moral agency, we obscure what the system actually does.

2. Research misdirection: Experiments and interpretations become guided by the metaphors rather than the phenomena, privileging data that fits the narrative and marginalising observations that do not.

3. Public misunderstanding: Science journalism translates metaphorical convenience into apparent fact, shaping collective perception of life, mind, and agency.

The pattern is clear: the ontology of convenience — choosing metaphors that are narratively satisfying — inevitably produces an ontology of confusion. In ants, the convenience of “altruism” misframes chemical modulation as intention. In astrocytes, the convenience of “computation” misframes dynamic modulation as symbolic processing. In neurons, the convenience of “coding” misframes relational events as information.

Relational ontology offers a corrective. By distinguishing value from meaning, we preserve the integrity of both domains:

• Value: the dynamic, relational, viability-maintaining modulations of living systems.

• Meaning: the semiotic construal actualised by agents capable of symbolic interpretation.

Recognising this distinction allows us to read life on its own terms. Ant pupae are modulators of systemic potential, not heroes. Astrocytes are regulators of neuronal readiness, not co-processors. Neurons are actualisers of relational potentials, not carriers of messages. Meaning emerges only where semiotic systems can construe it — life itself is rich in value but largely devoid of meaning until it intersects with a construal-capable system.

The broader lesson for science, research, and communication is simple but radical: pay attention to the metaphors you inherit, and trace the cuts they make in your ontology. Metaphors can illuminate, but they can also mislead. To understand life as it truly is — a dynamic field of relational potentials orchestrating the actualisation of possibilities — we must read carefully, cut rigorously, and resist the seduction of convenience.

This series closes with a single guiding principle: see value where it exists, see meaning where it arises, and never confuse the two. Life is not computation. Life is not communication. Life is not altruism. Life is the becoming of possibility — a field of relational potential, modulated, constrained, and orchestrated, awaiting the semiotic cut that allows meaning to emerge.