Toward a Mythos of Meaning: 3 The Emergence of Symbolic Horizons

In Post 2, we identified construal as the semiotic event, the reflexive cut that transforms relational potential into symbolic value. Post 3 examines how individual cuts scale into horizons—structured networks of symbolic potential that can coordinate, constrain, and project meaning across a relational ecology.

This is the birth of symbolic horizons.

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1. From Relational Alignment to Symbolic Distinction

Semiotic events are local, perspectival, and contingent. A single construal stabilises a small horizon, but symbolic systems require coherent alignments across many events.

A symbolic horizon emerges when:

1. Relational alignments repeat and stabilise.

2. Construals become distinguishable from one another, forming patterns of differentiation.

3. These distinctions propagate across potential alignments, creating a semiotic field larger than any single instance.

In short: symbolic horizons are stabilised patterns of differentiable construals.

They are not properties of objects, nor of social groups, nor of individuals—they are patterns of relational potential actualised as semiotic possibility.

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2. Horizons as Semiotic Ecologies

Once semiotic events are aligned and patterned across space and time, they form semiotic ecologies:

• Nodes = stabilised construals

• Pathways = repeated alignments and potential modulations

• Boundaries = soft, dynamic, and perspectival, not rigid or pre-given

These horizons enable:

• cross-event coherence,

• the emergence of structured context,

• recursive potential for further semiotic growth.

They also create the scaffolding for complex meaning-making: narratives, argumentation, cultural conventions, and symbolic systems that extend far beyond any single construal.

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3. Takeaway

The emergence of symbolic horizons is the transition from local semiotic events to systemic semiotic structure:

• Semiotic events are first-order construals.

• Symbolic horizons are patterned alignments of these events, realised as potentials through semantic systems.

Horizons are soft, relational, and recursively extensible—the basis for all higher-order semiotic systems, from language to myth, culture, and eventually the evolution of possibility itself.

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In the next post, we will examine how symbolic affordances evolve, tracing the conditions under which semiotic potential expands, drifts, or collapses.