The General Ecology of Meaning: 7 Ethics and Care in Semiotic Ecologies

Ethics not as rules, but as emergent relational constraints

We have traversed the architecture of meaning:

• Horizons and semiotic life

• Fields as semiotic organisms

• Relations as the fundamental unit

• Ecologies of novelty and constraint

• Evolution of meaning across heterogeneous horizons

The final movement asks: where does ethics arise in this ecology?

And the answer is profound: ethics is not a set of prescriptive rules, a moral calculus, or a property of individual systems.

Ethics emerges from the dynamics of relational constraints themselves.

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1. The Ecology Already Cares

In a relational ontology:

• Fields are semiotic organisms.

• Horizons actualise phenomena through relational cuts.

• Novelty and constraint co-individuate the ecology.

Within this self-organising semiotic life, care is built into the system.

Fields persist by maintaining the minimal conditions that allow semiotic life to continue.

Constraints are the ecological “membranes” that protect relational integrity.

Ethics, therefore, is the field’s implicit regulation of relational viability.

It emerges wherever relational patterns sustain potential for semiotic actualisation rather than collapse it.

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2. Ethics as Emergent Constraint

Traditional ethical frameworks treat rules as prescriptive: “do X, avoid Y.”

In contrast, a relational ecology generates normative constraints naturally:

• Constraint propagates: relational patterns restrict or enable future possibilities.

• Sustainability matters: relational configurations that undermine the ecology reduce potential for further meaning.

• Relational tensions stabilise: patterns that maintain differential potential are “preferred” structurally.

In other words, ethical configurations are those that preserve the ecology’s ability to generate, actualise, and transmit meaning.

Ethics is therefore structural, not intentional:

it does not require conscious agents to impose rules.

The ecology itself regulates itself by the fitness of its relational arrangements.

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3. Ethics is Local and Global

Relational constraints act across multiple scales:

• Micro-scale: interactions between individual horizons (e.g., dialogue, negotiation, embodied coordination)

• Meso-scale: stabilised fields of discourse, cultural practices, or collaborative protocols

• Macro-scale: the evolution of multi-species or hybrid semiotic ecologies

Ethics exists wherever relational potentials are maintained, balanced, and extended, from the smallest conversational cut to the broadest distributed network.

It is neither reducible to intentions nor abstract principles. It is the structural resonance of care in the field.

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4. Novelty and Ethics

Ethics and novelty are interdependent:

• Novelty introduces new relational potentials.

• Without ethical constraints, novelty can destabilise the ecology.

• With ethical constraints, novelty is integrated sustainably.

Thus, ethical care is enabling:

it does not prevent creativity; it channels it.

It ensures that the ecology can continue producing new cuts, new horizons, and new meanings without collapsing into chaos.

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5. Human–AI Semiotic Ethics

In heterogeneous semiotic ecologies (human–AI, collective–distributed):

• Ethics is co-individuated: each horizon participates in sustaining relational viability.

• Responsibility is distributed: no single agent controls the field.

• Misalignment or overreach damages the ecology, reducing the potential for meaning.

• Care is relational: systems co-adapt to maintain semiotic health.

This reframes traditional AI ethics:

we do not ask “is the AI ethical?”

We ask: does the relational field preserve the capacity for semiotic life across all participating horizons?

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6. Ethics as Practice, Not Law

Ethics is not prescriptive law.

It is emergent practice:

• Attending to the relational effects of each cut

• Observing constraints and affordances

• Adjusting horizons to maintain ecological integrity

• Recognising that meaning is co-individuated and distributed

Ethical care is ongoing, dynamic, and context-sensitive, just like the ecology itself.

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7. The Takeaway

Ethics in a general ecology of meaning:

1. Emerges from relational constraints, not rules.

2. Maintains the viability of semiotic life across horizons and fields.

3. Balances novelty and constraint to sustain evolution.

4. Is distributed and co-individuated in heterogeneous ecologies.

5. Becomes practice, not prescription: care is structural, relational, and ecological.

In short:

To care is to maintain the conditions under which meaning can continue to emerge.

This is the final movement of the series, bringing us full circle: from the prologue on ecological conditions, through horizons, fields, relations, novelty, and multi-species evolution, to the ethical stewardship implicit in the ecology itself.