Having dismantled the assumption that meaning is about objects, a second assumption remains stubbornly intact: that meaning is in symbols.
Even among those who reject naive reference, it is common to relocate meaning into words, signs, representations, or symbolic systems themselves. If meaning does not reside in things, the thought goes, then surely it must reside in the symbols we use to speak about them.
The temptation of symbolic containment
Symbols are durable. They can be stored, repeated, transmitted, and recombined. They exhibit structure, regularity, and constraint. Because of this, they invite a powerful but misleading inference: that meaning must somehow be encoded within them.
This inference rests on a category error.
A symbol is a resource. Meaning is an event.
Symbols as semiotic potential, not meaning
Within a stratified account of meaning, symbols occupy a specific role: they are material-semiotic forms that enable construal. They constrain how meaning can be actualised, but they do not determine what meaning is.
A symbol:
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does not carry meaning,
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does not store meaning,
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does not transmit meaning intact from one mind to another.
Instead, a symbol functions as a site of potential construal.
Meaning occurs when a symbol is taken up within a situation, under constraint, as part of an unfolding relational configuration. Remove the construal, and nothing meaningful remains—only patterned material.
Why “stored meaning” is a fiction
The idea that meaning is stored in symbols survives only because we routinely confuse three different phenomena:
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Repeatability of form
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Regularity of use
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Stability of interpretation within a community
Together, these create the appearance of stored meaning.
What persists is not meaning, but conditions under which similar meanings are likely to be actualised again.
Meaning as event, not property
Meaning has no location. It is not inside symbols, minds, or objects. It is not a property that can be possessed or transferred.
Meaning is:
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the local coherence of a construal,
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the actualisation of constraint within a system of potential,
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a first-order phenomenon.
Symbols participate in this event the way scaffolding participates in construction: indispensably, but not as the thing constructed.
To ask where meaning is stored is therefore to ask the wrong kind of question. Meaning is not a substance that waits. It is an occurrence that happens.
Why this does not collapse into relativism
At this point, an objection usually appears: if meaning is not in symbols, then anything could mean anything. Interpretation becomes arbitrary. Constraint evaporates.
This objection fails because it mistakes non-containment for lack of structure.
Construal is not free invention. It is constrained by:
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material affordances,
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systemic regularities,
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historical sedimentation,
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situational demands.
Meaning is not arbitrary—but neither is it fixed in advance. It is actualised, not retrieved.
Reframing semiotic responsibility
Once meaning is removed from symbols themselves, responsibility shifts.
Meaning is no longer guaranteed by:
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correct reference,
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proper encoding,
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faithful transmission.
Instead, meaning depends on:
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alignment of construals,
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shared systemic constraints,
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participation in common practices.
This reframing is not a loss. It is a gain in explanatory clarity. It explains why misunderstanding is normal, why interpretation drifts, and why meaning can evolve without symbols changing at all.
Holding the line
At this stage of the series, the architecture is now firmly in place:
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Meaning is not representation.
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Meaning is not reference.
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Meaning is not in objects.
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Meaning is not in symbols.
What remains is not a void, but a precise ontology of meaning as relational event.
In the final post, we will dismantle the last structural relic of representational thought: the signifier/signified divide itself—and show why it survives only by smuggling in the very assumptions this series has already removed.
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