The General Ecology of Meaning: 2 Horizons and Semiotic Life

How meaning begins ecologically, before any system, organism, or mind “has” it

If movement 1 dismantled the myth of containerised meaning, movement 2 must answer the natural next question:

If meaning isn’t inside systems, where does it begin?

The answer is not metaphysical, nor psychological, nor computational.
It is ecological.

Meaning begins when a horizon of potential meets a world of affordances —
when a system capable of construal emerges within an already-structured ecology of possible distinctions.

This is semiotic life:
the becoming of meaning before any content crystallises.

A horizon is not a boundary — it is a field of potential distinctions

In relational ontology, a horizon is the range of possible construals available to a system.
Not the representations it stores, nor the categories it contains,
but the space of differences it could potentially cut.

A horizon is:

• structured but not predetermined

• constrained but not fixed

• open-ended but patterned

• perspectival but ecologically anchored

It is the system’s semiotic “breathable atmosphere.”

You don’t look through a horizon —
you construe within it.

Semiotic life begins before any particular meaning is actualised

Think of the horizon as a biological niche, but semiotic:

• it affords certain distinctions,

• excludes others,

• and co-evolves with the system inhabiting it.

Meaning begins not with content but with the possibility of making a distinction that matters.

Before the first phenomenon is actualised,
there is already a patterned field of possible construals.

This is the ecological womb of semiosis.

Meaning is born from the cut, not the content

A system does not “access” meaning.
It creates a phenomenon by cutting through its own potential and the world’s affordances.

This is what it means to actualise meaning:

• A cut is made.

• A phenomenon emerges.

• The horizon shifts.

• The ecology responds.

No phenomenon is unconstrued;
no construal is free-floating.

The cut is the event that activates a relational alignment:
system, horizon, field.

Horizons are not fixed: they evolve with every construal

Each construal slightly reshapes the horizon —
a minimal shift in the system’s potentials.
Not by adding content, but by reconfiguring relations.

A horizon is dynamic:

• constrained by biology, embodiment, training, context;

• expanded by novelty, interaction, co-individuation;

• narrowed by habit, saturation, rigidity.

Systems do not merely act within horizons.
Systems become through them.

Meaning is ecological because horizons are co-produced

A horizon is never the product of a single system’s capacities.

It arises through:

• the evolutionary ecology that shaped the organism

• the social ecology that shaped the culture

• the discursive ecology that shaped the language

• the interactional ecology that shapes the encounter

Meaning is ecological because:

No horizon is self-sufficient.
Every horizon is co-individuated.

Even the interiority of a mind is an ecological production:
a semiotic niche carved through ongoing participation in relational fields.

Semiotic life begins before minds, before organisms, before messages

Meaning emerges when:

• a horizon of possible distinctions,

• a world of ecological affordances,

• and a relational field of interaction,

come into dynamic alignment.

Not when someone thinks something.
Not when a system stores something.
Not when a symbol stands for something.

Meaning begins when a relational ecology allows a system to cut a phenomenon out of potential.

This is the birth of semiotic life.