2 Life Reconstrued: 5 Brain Without Computation: Regimes of Readiness, Not Representations

By now, Series 2 has laid out life as relational fields modulating value, organisms as horizons of possibility, and potential actualised through systemic coordination. It is time to revisit the brain — often misrepresented as a computer — and reconstrue it through the lens of relational ontology.

Brains do not compute. Neurons do not carry information. Synapses do not transmit codes. Yet, these metaphors dominate neuroscience and popular explanation. The error lies in treating patterns of relational modulation as symbolic representations. Relational ontology offers a more accurate framing: the brain is a field of potentialities organised into regimes of readiness.

Regimes of readiness describe how relational states of the brain configure the range of possible actualisations:

• Local modulation: Neural and glial dynamics shift the conditions under which neurons can fire, adjusting thresholds, probabilities, and interactions.

• Contextual coordination: These local modulations combine across networks, forming relational regimes that determine how the brain responds to stimuli — not what it “represents.”

• Behavioural outcome: What emerges as action, perception, or cognition is not symbolic processing but the actualisation of potential within a structured field of viability.

Consider alertness or sleep. These are not encoded “states” waiting to be decoded. They are global patterns of potential modulation that orchestrate neuronal and glial activity, influencing what actualisations are possible at any moment. Conscious experience emerges atop these relational regimes, but it does not originate symbolic content in the neuronal substrate itself.

This reconstrual shifts the focus from representation to relation. The brain is a dynamic lattice of potentials, continuously tuning itself to preserve systemic viability and readiness. The metaphor of computation, appealing as it is, obscures this relational sophistication, suggesting a symbolic architecture where only value-regulated potential exists.

Understanding the brain in these terms sets the stage for the next conceptual leap: identifying the threshold at which relational dynamics give rise to semiotic construal. Only by seeing the brain as a regulator of potential, rather than a computer, can we accurately trace the emergence of meaning without misattributing it to neuronal patterns.

In the next post, we will examine “Thresholds of Meaning: When Value Gives Way to Semiotic Actualisation”, connecting these regimes of readiness to the semiotic capacities that allow humans and other symbolic organisms to construe reality.