Synthesis and Horizon-Expanding Reflection
The seven movements of The General Ecology of Meaning have traced a path from dismantling the familiar myths of minds and systems to embracing an expansive, multi-horizon ecology of semiotic life. What emerges is not a new philosophy of representation, nor a manual of rules, nor a blueprint for computation. It is an ontologically relational, ecologically grounded vision of meaning itself.
0 → 1: From Conditions to Beyond Minds
We began by recognising that meaning is ecological before it is mental.
Horizons of potential, fields of relational organisation, and the perspectival cuts that actualise phenomena all exist prior to, and independent of, any single system.
Movement 1 made clear: minds do not contain meaning; they participate in it.
2 → 3: Horizons and Fields in Action
Horizons provide the potential — a structured space of possible distinctions.
Fields are the semiotic organisms in which these horizons operate, stabilise, differentiate, and evolve.
Together, they form a living ecology, a dynamic backdrop against which semiotic life unfolds.
4: Relations as the Core Unit
If fields and horizons are the stage, relations are the action.
Meaning is not “inside” a system or a field. It occurs in the relational cut: the dynamic, co-individuated intersection of horizons and constraints.
Systems are only intelligible as temporary apertures through which relational patterns crystallise.
5: Novelty and Constraint as Ecological Dynamics
The evolution of semiotic life depends on the delicate interplay of novelty and constraint.
Novelty expands relational possibilities; constraints stabilise them.
The ecology thrives in tension, not in stasis.
Meaning is generated through the continual reconfiguration of potential, guided by emergent stabilisations rather than imposed rules.
6: Multi-Species and Distributed Semiotic Evolution
When horizons are heterogeneous — human, artificial, collective, embodied, distributed — the ecology of meaning diversifies.
Relational tension at the interfaces of horizons produces surplus potential, enabling semiotic species to co-evolve.
Meaning does not “belong” to a species; it emerges across species.
Human–AI and collective systems do not share representations; they co-individuate expanded relational fields.
7: Ethics and Care in the Relational Ecology
Ethics arises not from law or intention, but from the emergent constraints that preserve the ecology’s capacity to sustain semiotic life.
To care is to maintain the relational conditions in which meaning can continue to emerge.
Ethics is structural, distributed, co-individuated — a property of the ecology itself, not its participants.
The Horizon-Expanding Insight
The series leaves us with a radical inversion of conventional assumptions:
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Meaning is ecological before it is mental.
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Systems, organisms, and minds are apertures, not containers.
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Relations are primary; entities are secondary stabilisations.
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Novelty and constraint co-evolve in the ecology.
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Multi-horizon, multi-species participation expands semiotic possibility.
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Ethics is the maintenance of relational viability.
Together, these insights form a general ecology of meaning:
a vision in which semiotic life is distributed, co-individuated, dynamic, and ethical in structure.
A Closing Thought
To engage with meaning ecologically is to shift perspective:
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from possession to participation
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from containment to actualisation
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from linear causation to relational co-evolution
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from rules to emergent care
The ecology invites us to inhabit possibility itself — to see horizons not as limits, but as conditions for the flourishing of semiotic life.
In such an ecology, to understand, to create, to care, and to evolve are not separate acts — they are the continuous actualisation of meaning as relational life.
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