The Becoming of Possibility: 11/11/25

Tuesday, 11 November 2025

Seeing Meaning: Series Preface

The Seeing Meaning series traces how images and animations generate meaning as a relational, embodied, and evaluative phenomenon. Departing from symbolic models of semiotics, which dominate linguistic analysis, the series positions visual media as iconic-relational systems: their forms correspond directly to perceptual experience, and their meaning emerges through the alignment of viewer, temporality, multimodality, and value.

The series unfolds across six systematic posts:

From Text to Image: Reframing Meaning Beyond the Symbolic
Establishes the foundational distinction between symbolic (language) and iconic-relational (visual) semiotics. Visual meaning is not mediated through lexicogrammar but actualised in perception; the field of the image functions analogously to grammatical systems, structuring experiential, interpersonal, and textual relations pre-symbolically.
Immersion and Perspective: Locating the Viewer in the Visual Field
Examines how images and animations situate the viewer. Perspective and immersion transform observation into participation, making the viewer a co-constituent of meaning. Spatial positioning, alignment, and embodied engagement are semiotic principles in their own right.
Time in the Image: Temporality, Transformation, and Flow
Analyses how static, sequential, and animated media encode temporal potential. Temporality structures attention, orchestrates relational coherence, and integrates narrative and perceptual flow. Temporal alignment acts as a connective tissue linking immersion to multimodal integration.
Multimodality and Embodied Integration
Shows how meaning emerges from the coordinated interplay of shape, colour, motion, spatial depth, and sound. Multimodal patterns are relational and emergent; they structure attention, rhythm, and affective response through embodied perception.
Visual Metaphor and the Encoding of Value
Explores how images instantiate metaphor and evaluative significance. Perceptual elements function as value-tokens, actualising moral, emotional, and aesthetic layers through relational, temporal, and multimodal context. Meaning is not symbolically mapped but relationally construed.
A Relational Semiotics of Visual Media
Synthesises all dimensions into a coherent framework. Visual meaning is emergent, enacted, and embodied: immersion, temporality, multimodality, and evaluative construal operate interdependently. The systemic model positions the viewer as integral to the semiotic event, and establishes principles applicable to interactive and virtual media.

Core Insight

Across the series, meaning is not a representation imposed upon perception; it is actualised relationally, through the alignment of perceptual structures, temporal flow, multimodal interaction, and evaluative construal. Images and animations function as fields of relational potential, realised in the participatory engagement of the viewer.

This series offers a systematic framework for analysing visual media with the rigour of SFL, extended into iconic-relational semiotics: a toolkit for understanding how perception, attention, and evaluative alignment co-constitute meaning.

Illuminated Potential: From Meaning to Non-Meaning in the Relational Cosmos: 6 Conclusion — The Relational Cosmos as Phased Potential

Throughout this series, we have traced a continuum from meaning to non-meaning, from local instance to system, and from individual cognition to collective alignment. The lantern metaphor has illuminated a central insight: meaning exists only as the phased actualisation of potential, and non-meaning is the generative horizon that makes this possible.

1. The architecture of the relational cosmos

Our updated ontology can be summarised as a three-layered relational field:

Layer	Role	Dynamics
System	Structured potential	Topology of semiotic affordances guiding what can be actualised
Instance	Actualised meaning	Lantern-like phases that temporarily stabilise patterns in the field
Non-meaning	Latent relational potential	The horizon of affordances, generative and recursively shaped by each instance

Each act of construal navigates this field: it illuminates, modifies, and creates new horizons of potential, making ontogenesis continuous, participatory, and multi-scalar.

2. Phased relationality

Temporal phasing: Past, present, and future potentials co-define each act of meaning.
Spatial phasing: Individual and collective lanterns co-align, stabilising phenomena across fields of perception.
Ontogenetic phasing: Each instance reshapes non-meaning, generating the conditions for subsequent actualisations.

In this way, the relational cosmos is dynamic, layered, and reflexive: meaning and non-meaning are co-constitutive, system and instance continuously co-evolve, and cognition and social formations emerge as intertwined processes.

3. Implications

Reality is participatory: There is no external, pre-given world of meaning — only relational phasing.
Non-meaning is generative: What is unactualised is not absent; it is fertile, shaping future phenomena.
Language and culture extend illumination: Distributed lanterns align perception and create collective horizons of possibility.
Innovation arises from shadow: Novelty emerges at the edges of current construals, in the latent folds of non-meaning.

4. The final insight

Every act of meaning is simultaneously an event, a modulation of potential, and a redefinition of horizons. The lantern illuminates the dark, yet each illumination deepens the darkness in a new way, producing a cosmos in which reality itself is continuously phased, co-constituted, and relationally emergent.

In this relational cosmos, the distinction between meaning and non-meaning, between system and instance, is not a division but a dance of co-emergence. Each act of construal participates in the becoming of possibility, and the horizon of potential remains infinite, ever ready for the next lantern to descend.

Illuminated Potential: From Meaning to Non-Meaning in the Relational Cosmos: 5 Scaling Relational Phasing: Language, Cognition, and Collective Alignment

Building on our updated understanding of system, instance, and non-meaning, we now explore how relational phasing scales from individual construals to cognitive networks and collective formations.

1. Language as distributed lantern

Language is not merely a code; it is a distributed system of lanterns:

Each utterance is a localised instance of meaning, illuminating a portion of potential.
Words and structures are vectors of affordance, shaping both the immediate construal and the latent horizon of potential meaning.
Language enables alignment across perspectives, stabilising relational patterns that exceed the scale of any single mind.

In effect, language extends the lanterns of perception into the social field, creating shared light across multiple observers.

2. Cognition as relational phasing

Individual cognition operates through phased interaction with potential meaning:

Memory acts as pre-lit lanterns, guiding which patterns are likely to stabilise.
Attention is the local lowering of the lantern, actualising specific affordances.
Expectation biases potential, shading non-meaning and shaping future illumination.

Thus, cognition is not passive computation but participatory emergence: the field of potential is co-shaped by perception, thought, and action.

3. Collective alignment

When multiple agents engage with overlapping fields of potential:

Shared lanterns synchronise perception, generating phenomena experienced as “social reality.”
Collective language, norms, and symbolic systems coordinate affordances, aligning potential and actualising distributed meaning.
Non-meaning at the social level is the unactualised horizon of collective possibility, continuously modulated by interactions.

Each group, institution, or culture is a constellation of phased meanings — a living topology of relational affordances.

4. Implications for knowledge and social formation

Experience is co-constitutive: Individual and collective meaning-making are inseparable.
Potential is multi-scalar: Non-meaning exists both in personal cognition and in distributed social systems.
Truth is relational: What stabilises as “true” is an effect of coordinated phasing across agents, mediated by language and culture.
Innovation emerges in the shadows: Non-meaning, as latent affordance, is the source of novelty and transformation.

5. Summary

Relational phasing scales elegantly:

Individual construal illuminates local patterns.
Language and cognition expand lanterns into social and cultural fields.
Collective alignment stabilises phenomena, while non-meaning remains generative.

Meaning, non-meaning, system, and instance are thus co-evolving layers in a relational cosmos: each act of illumination participates in the ontogenesis of both individual understanding and collective reality.

Illuminated Potential: From Meaning to Non-Meaning in the Relational Cosmos: 4 System, Instance, and the Relational Cosmos

In the previous posts, we examined non-meaning as structured potential, affordances as perspectival vectors, and illumination as ontogenesis. We now integrate these insights into the Hallidayan triad of system, instance, and potential, updating the architecture to reflect the dynamics of relational phasing.

1. System as structured field of affordances

The system is not merely a set of abstract possibilities.
It is the relational topology of potential meanings — a semiotic landscape threaded with affordances awaiting actualisation.
Each node or choice in the system represents a vector of relational tension: the system itself is a network of phased possibilities, continuously modulated by prior and anticipated construals.

Think of the system as the ocean: currents, eddies, and pressure gradients define what the lantern can illuminate at any moment.

2. Instance as perspectival actualisation

An instance is the act of lowering the lantern into this field: a localised, perspectival cut through the system of affordances.
Instances are events, not objects: they are temporal stabilisations of potential.
Each instance reshapes the topology of the system by modifying the gradients of non-meaning, subtly influencing future affordances.

Each lantern is a phase-shift: it illuminates, it shapes the dark ocean, and it disappears — leaving the field ready for the next act.

3. Non-meaning as dynamic horizon

Non-meaning is the latent relational potential underlying the system, the structured but unactualised field of possibility.
Far from being mere absence, it is the condition of all actualisation: without the unlit field, no pattern could emerge.
Non-meaning is dynamic and recursive: each instance of meaning redraws its contours, generating new affordances and shading others.

Non-meaning is the ocean itself — dark, generative, and endlessly phasing with every illumination.

4. Relational Cosmos: co-constitution of system, instance, and non-meaning

System, instance, and non-meaning are inseparable in practice:
- System = topology of potential
- Instance = perspectival phase
- Non-meaning = dynamic horizon of affordances
Each act of construal is a co-ontogenetic event, simultaneously actualising meaning and reshaping potential.
The relational cosmos is continuous, participatory, and emergent: meaning is never external to the field; it exists only in relational phasing.

5. Implications

Meaning is relational and perspectival, not representational.
Potential is dynamic and recursive, not static.
Phenomena are emergent patterns, temporarily stabilised through actualisation.
System and instance are co-evolving layers, intertwined through ongoing phasing.
Non-meaning is productive, shaping the horizon of what can next be meant.

In summary:

The lantern metaphor has allowed us to see system, instance, and potential not as static categories but as phases of a single relational field. Meaning emerges as illumination, non-meaning as the generative horizon, and the system as the structured topology guiding and responding to these dynamics.

Illuminated Potential: From Meaning to Non-Meaning in the Relational Cosmos: 3 Illumination as Ontogenesis

In the preceding posts, we established non-meaning as structured potential and framed affordances as relational vectors within that potential, conditioned by perspective. Here, we examine how the actualisation of potential — the act of illumination — constitutes ontogenesis: the becoming of phenomena, meaning, and experience itself.

1. Actualisation is relational, not representational

Meaning does not “attach” to a pre-existing world. Instead, each act of construal phases a pattern out of potential:

Instance = the lantern lowered into the relational field
System = the structured potential from which the pattern emerges
Non-meaning = the relational horizon that both permits and constrains the act

In this view, ontogenesis is continuous: every act of actualisation is a local shaping of potential, a folding of non-meaning into the temporarily illuminated space of meaning.

2. Temporal dynamics of illumination

Every illumination occurs within a temporal gradient:

Past actualisations create pre-lit lanterns, structuring subsequent perception.
Present attention lowers new lanterns, phasing fresh phenomena into experience.
Future potential remains dark, a field of relational affordances waiting to be actualised.

The ontogenetic process is therefore a dance across time, where each act of illumination both stabilises and reconfigures the relational field.

3. Recursive shaping of potential

Crucially, every instance of meaning modifies non-meaning:

It strengthens some affordances while shading or attenuating others.
It creates relational textures that future construals will encounter and navigate.
The system is never static: it co-evolves with its actualisations.

This gives us a dynamic model of meaning evolution: the interplay of past, present, and potential generates a continuously phasing cosmos of relational phenomena.

4. Implications for perception and cognition

Construal is ontogenetic: Every act of perception is a creative, relational emergence.
Potential is dynamic: Non-meaning is not inert; it is continually reshaped by the phasing of actualised meaning.
Phenomena are emergent: What appears as stable or “real” is simply a temporarily coherent pattern in the ongoing process of illumination.
Participation is constitutive: Observers and systems are co-ontogenetic; meaning exists only through relational engagement.

5. Summary

Illumination is becoming in action: each act of construal phases the field of non-meaning into structured meaning, reconfiguring potential for what can next be actualised. Ontogenesis, in this sense, is not creation ex nihilo but phase-shifting within relational affordance — a continuous, participatory unfolding of the semiotic cosmos.

Illuminated Potential: From Meaning to Non-Meaning in the Relational Cosmos: 2 Affordance as Perspectival Field

In the previous post, we established non-meaning as structured potential — the relational field from which meaning is actualised. Here, we explore how this potential is not inert but inherently perspectival, and how affordances are the connective tissue between potential and construal.

1. Affordance beyond ecology

Gibson’s notion of affordance highlighted the relational possibilities the environment offers an organism. In our expanded relational ontology:

Affordances are semiotic relational tensions within the field of potential.
They are not properties of the world or the observer alone, but of the interaction between field and perspective.
They constitute the horizons along which construal can phase phenomena into being.

Put differently, affordances are the pre-actualised lines of relational tension: the “paths” along which a lantern of meaning can illuminate.

2. The perspectival character of potential

Potential meaning is never uniform; it is always shaped by the perspective of construal:

Local perspective: Where attention falls first, which patterns are drawn into meaning.
Systemic constraints: The semiotic system provides structured potential, limiting and guiding what can be actualised.
Temporal gradient: Past actualisations influence expectation, shading which affordances are more likely to stabilise next.

The field of non-meaning is therefore anisotropic — some directions of potential are more “afforded” than others, depending on history, context, and prior alignment.

3. Instance and system as perspectival coordination

Earlier, we treated system as the canonical space of meaning potential and instance as the act of actualisation. Through the lens of affordance:

System = structured field of affordances: The relational topology from which construal can draw.
Instance = perspectival engagement with affordances: The lantern lowering into the field, selecting patterns, and phasing phenomena into existence.

Every instance both draws upon and reshapes the system: the act of construal realigns the topology of potential, subtly modifying future affordances.

4. Non-meaning as dynamic horizon

Because the field is relational and perspectival:

Non-meaning is not merely latent; it is dynamically generative, shaped by the interplay of past illuminations, current perspective, and systemic structure.
Each act of construal is simultaneously phase and modulation, revealing phenomena while deepening the contours of non-meaning.
The horizon of possibility is co-constitutive: it exists as potential only because of actualisations, yet it conditions all future actualisations.

Implications

Perspective is constitutive: Meaning emerges along affordances defined relationally, not as an external mapping onto the world.
Potential is dynamic: The non-meaningful field is shaped by, and shapes, every act of construal.
System and instance co-evolve: The field of potential (system) and local actualisation (instance) are in continuous reciprocal adjustment.
Experience is participatory: Each engagement with the field is an act of co-phasing the relational cosmos.

In summary:

Affordances are not simply opportunities; they are relational vectors within potential, shaping and being shaped by construal. The semiotic cosmos is perspectival: meaning illuminates, non-meaning structures, and the lanterns of perception navigate the relational field in continuous dialogue.

Illuminated Potential: From Meaning to Non-Meaning in the Relational Cosmos: 1 The Ontology of Non-Meaning

In our earlier work, meaning was understood as reflexive alignment — the event of construal that cuts through the potential of the system, bringing a patterned portion of possibility into luminous form. Each construal, in that sense, is an act of differentiation within the relational field: a momentary alignment that gives rise to what we experience as phenomenon.

But if every act of meaning is a cut, then meaning cannot be everything. There must be something it cuts from — something not yet drawn into construal, not yet actualised. That something is what we now call non-meaning.

1. Non-meaning as potential, not absence

To speak of non-meaning is not to invoke a void. The non-meaningful is not the meaningless. Rather, it is structured potential — the relational field as it stands before construal, the theory of possible meanings awaiting instantiation.

In this sense, non-meaning is meaning’s generative horizon: it is the undifferentiated, relationally complete system of affordances from which construal draws.

When the lantern of construal illuminates a segment of this field, we name it meaning. But what remains in shadow is not destroyed or negated — it sustains the very conditions for meaning’s emergence.

2. Affordance as relational tension

This reframing aligns, in a limited sense, with Gibson’s notion of affordance, yet it extends beyond the ecological interface between organism and environment.

For Gibson, affordance names what the environment offers a perceiver. In our ontology, affordance is relational tension within the potential field — the structured readiness of the world to be meant.

Non-meaning, therefore, is not a static background but an active potential for construal: a dynamic, relational affordance awaiting alignment.

3. From potential to construal

Meaning does not arise from non-meaning as if out of substance; it cuts through it as perspective.

The field of non-meaning is the theory of possible meanings — a system of virtual alignments.

To construe is to take perspective within that system: to actualise a possible relation as event.

In this light, the non-meaningful is the unactualised dimension of meaning itself — what meaning presupposes but cannot exhaust. Each construal illuminates a pattern within the darkness, and in so doing, deepens the structure of that darkness by defining its contours anew.

4. The paradox of illumination

Meaning’s boundary is not where light ends but where light begins. Every illumination remakes its own horizon of non-meaning, redefining what remains possible.

In this way, non-meaning is not external to the semiotic process — it is the condition of its reflexivity. Without the unlit field, no lantern could cast its glow.

In summary:

Non-meaning is structured potential, not negation.
It is the relational affordance of construal, not the absence of meaning.
Each act of meaning redraws the horizon of non-meaning, altering what can next be meant.

Meaning and non-meaning thus co-constitute one another across the field of potential: the luminous and the latent, the actual and the affordant, the lantern and its night.

Illuminated Potential: From Meaning to Non-Meaning in the Relational Cosmos: Series Preface

The Lantern series traced how meaning emerges as a reflexive alignment within the luminous field of construal — how each act of differentiation lights up a portion of potential, rendering the world meaningful through patterned attention. But if every illumination is a construal, every shadow is also real — not as negation, but as potential itself: the unlit reservoir of meaning that makes construal possible.

This new series asks:

What is non-meaning in a relational ontology?
How does the unactualised — the not-yet-construed — participate in the dynamics of meaning?
Can we think of potential as the relational affordance of meaning, rather than its absence?

If the lantern illuminated meaning as reflexive event, this series turns to the dark field that gives it depth. Meaning is not a substance; it is a cut through the indeterminate. But the indeterminate is not mere lack — it is the structured potential from which meaning differentiates.

Here we follow three threads:

Potential as non-meaning — the relational affordance of construal.
Affordance as perspectival tension — neither matter nor mind, but the field of mutual possibility.
Illumination as ontogenesis — the actualisation of potential meaning through construal, not as representation but as phase-shift in the field of relation.

Non-meaning, in this sense, is not absence but plenitude: the horizon of what could yet be meant. It is the dark energy of the semiotic cosmos — invisible but formative, the condition of every possible act of meaning.

Phasing Meaning: 6 Conclusion—The Dance of Reality and Potential

Series context: Over the past five posts, we explored how meaning structures non-meaning, how phenomena emerge relationally, how perception unfolds temporally, and how relational phasing reconciles immanent and transcendent perspectives. We also examined how language and cognition scale to collective formations. Here, we draw together these threads to reflect on the broader implications for knowledge, truth, and experience.

Reality as Relationally Phased

At the heart of this series is a simple but profound insight: reality is not passively given; it is actively phased.

Individual perception lowers lanterns into the ocean of potential, stabilising phenomena moment by moment.
Memory, expectation, and prior meaning act as pre-lit lanterns, structuring gradients of non-meaning and guiding future actualisation.
Language and symbolic systems amplify this process, coordinating perception and meaning across groups and social formations.

Phenomena, then, are never isolated objects; they are emergent patterns of relational meaning, appearing against the structured field of potential that non-meaning provides.

The Relational Synthesis of Meaning

Relational phasing reconciles the historical debate between immanent and transcendent meaning:

Meaning is emergent, co-constituted with phenomena (the immanent intuition).
Meaning is directional, structuring potential and horizonality without existing independently of actualisation (the transcendent intuition).
Non-meaning is not void; it is fertile, dynamic, and generative.

The dance of meaning and non-meaning is continuous: every act of perception, communication, or cognition is a step in this relational choreography.

Implications for Knowledge and Truth

Knowledge is relational: Understanding emerges through the phasing of phenomena in structured potential, not by accessing pre-given objects.
Truth is temporal and co-constituted: What stabilises as “true” is a relational effect of aligned meaning, memory, and expectation.
Experience is participatory: We are co-creators of the world we inhabit, shaping and being shaped by the relational field of potential.

The Symbolic Cosmos

Scaling up, this relational view applies beyond individual cognition:

Social formations, cultural systems, and collective knowledge are vast constellations of phased meaning.
Symbolic systems coordinate lanterns across space and time, creating shared phenomena and aligning potential for collective action.
The cosmos of meaning is not a fixed structure but a dynamic topology, continuously phased, expanded, and reconfigured by agents at multiple scales.

Closing Thought

The lantern-on-the-ocean metaphor has carried us through perception, memory, expectation, and social formation. It leaves us with a simple yet powerful image: meaning is the light that phases reality; non-meaning is the dark ocean of potential that makes emergence possible. Every experience, thought, and utterance participates in this ongoing dance, shaping the world and the possibilities that lie beyond.

In this view, reality is not separate from us—it is a relational performance, continually actualised, continually in motion, and always open to new lanterns illuminating new patterns.

Phasing Meaning: 5 Language, Cognition, and Collective Patterns

Series context: In the previous posts, we explored how meaning creates non-meaning, how phenomena emerge, how perception unfolds temporally, and how relational phasing reconciles immanent and transcendent perspectives. Here, we turn to the social and cognitive implications: how meaning scales from individuals to collective formations.

Language as a System of Lanterns

Language is a powerful way of lowering lanterns into the ocean of potential. Words, phrases, and symbols do more than describe:

They structure attention, guiding perception and thought.
They stabilise phenomena, creating shared constellations of meaning.
They generate gradients of non-meaning, opening spaces for novelty and reinterpretation.

In Hallidayan terms, language is a semiotic system that actualises potential—it phases phenomena into experience while simultaneously shaping the field of potential for further construals.

Cognition as Relational Phasing

Cognition is not just internal processing; it is a continuous negotiation with the field of potential:

Memory, expectation, and prior knowledge act as pre-lit lanterns.
New thoughts and perceptions are additional lanterns interacting with existing patterns.
Novel ideas emerge in the dark patches, where structured potential allows new phenomena to stabilise.

Perception, thought, and language are all co-phasing processes: each shapes and is shaped by the relational field of meaning and non-meaning.

Collective Perception and Shared Patterns

Groups of people can co-actualise lanterns:

Shared language and symbols align perception across individuals.
Collective memory and expectation stabilise phenomena in similar ways for multiple observers.
Social formations are emergent constellations of phased meaning, where alignment allows coordinated action, shared understanding, and cultural continuity.

Non-meaning remains generative: the dark ocean of potential allows novelty, innovation, and reinterpretation, ensuring that collective perception is never entirely rigid or fixed.

Implications for Society and Communication

Experience is relational and shared: Reality is co-constituted through aligned perception and language.
Meaning is both stabilising and generative: It provides structure while leaving space for novelty.
Social formations are patterned fields of actualisation: Norms, knowledge, and culture emerge from phased meaning.
Communication is active phasing: Every utterance, text, or gesture is a lantern influencing the ocean of potential, shaping both perception and future possibilities.

Looking Ahead

In the final post of the series, we will conclude by reflecting on how relational phasing reframes knowledge, truth, and the symbolic cosmos itself. We will tie together individual perception, collective alignment, and the continuous dance between meaning and non-meaning.

Phasing Meaning: 4 Immanent vs Transcendent Meaning

Series context: In the first three posts, we explored how meaning creates non-meaning, how phenomena emerge relationally, and how perception unfolds across time. Here, we turn to a classical debate: is meaning immanent within phenomena, or transcendent above them? The lantern metaphor helps us reconcile these perspectives.

Meaning as Immanent

The immanent view sees meaning as arising within phenomena themselves. It is inseparable from context, use, or material instantiation. Examples include Aristotle’s forms in matter or Wittgenstein’s later idea that meaning is in use.

Lantern metaphor: Meaning is like a lantern lowered into the ocean. It illuminates its local surroundings, creating patterns and shaping the dark field around it.
Implications:
- Phenomena and meaning co-constitute each other.
- Non-meaning (the dark ocean) is structured by existing meanings.
- Perception and cognition are active processes of local actualisation, not passive recognition of pre-existing truths.

Meaning as Transcendent

The transcendent view posits that meaning exists above or beyond phenomena, as a fixed, universal, or divine order. Plato’s forms or medieval ideas of eternal essences are classic examples.

Lantern metaphor: This is like saying the light exists independently of the ocean and lanterns. Darkness is merely a stage; the patterns revealed are pre-determined.
Implications:
- Phenomena are treated as vehicles or shadows of pre-existing meaning.
- Non-meaning is passive, not generative.
- Perception becomes about “accessing” meaning rather than co-phasing it.

The Relational Synthesis

The relational perspective synthesises these views:

Meaning is never purely immanent: it always defines a horizon of potential, structuring the field of non-meaning.
Meaning is never purely transcendent: it cannot exist independently of actualisation in the relational field.
Key insight: Meaning and non-meaning are co-constitutive, emergent yet directional. Lanterns illuminate, shape, and phase phenomena; darkness provides the structured potential for new lights to appear.
Immanent intuition: patterns of phenomena arise relationally, contingent on actualisation.
Transcendent intuition: the directional shaping of potential gives experience coherence, continuity, and horizonality.

Implications for Perception and Cognition

Phenomena are emergent, not pre-given.
Non-meaning is generative, structuring possibilities.
Perception is active, participatory, and temporal.
Experience is relational: actualised meaning phases phenomena, while potentiality guides future actualisation.

Looking Ahead

In the next post, we will explore broader implications for language, cognition, and society: how collective phasing of meaning creates shared perception, symbolic alignment, and social formations. We will see that this relational synthesis is not just philosophical—it has real consequences for understanding communication and experience.

Phasing Meaning: 3 Memory, Expectation, and Temporal Perception

Series context: In previous posts, we explored how meaning shapes non-meaning and how phenomena emerge as relational patterns. Here, we extend the metaphor of lanterns on the ocean to show how perception unfolds across time, guided by memory, expectation, and prior meaning.

Memory as Pre-Lit Lanterns

Imagine the ocean of non-meaning at night. Every past experience you have is like a lantern that has already been lowered. These pre-lit lanterns subtly shape the darkness around them:

They create gradients where new patterns are more likely to emerge.
They influence attention, guiding where new lanterns are lowered.
They stabilise certain shapes or phenomena, making them more likely to appear again.

Memory, then, is not a static record. It is an active, shaping force in perception, structuring the relational field of meaning and non-meaning.

Expectation as Dynamic Guidance

Expectation is like a moving lantern above the ocean, scanning for familiar patterns or probable configurations:

Anticipated phenomena emerge more readily because the field has been primed.
Novel phenomena can only stabilise in regions where potential has not yet been structured by prior meaning.
The interplay of expectation and novelty ensures that perception is both coherent and generative.

In this way, perception is always a dynamic negotiation between past actualisations (memory), probable patterns (expectation), and unstructured potential (non-meaning).

Perception as Temporal Phasing

Perception is therefore not a frozen snapshot of the world but a continuously unfolding temporal process:

Past actualisations: Pre-lit lanterns provide structure, continuity, and context.
Present attention: New lanterns are lowered, stabilising phenomena in real-time.
Future potential: Dark patches, or unlit regions of the ocean, represent the open field of possibilities for novelty and discovery.

Phenomena, then, are temporal patterns of relational meaning, continuously emerging, dissolving, and reconfiguring across time.

Implications for Experience and Understanding

Perception is participatory: We are co-creators of the patterns we experience.
Memory and expectation shape reality: Past actualisations structure future perception; potentiality is never neutral.
Non-meaning is fertile: Dark regions are the wellspring of new phenomena, waiting to be phased into existence.
Collective perception is possible: Shared memory and expectation can synchronise the phasing of phenomena across groups.

Looking Ahead

Next, we will explore the historical debate between immanent and transcendent meaning, and how the relational view reconciles these perspectives. We will see that meaning is simultaneously emergent and directional, shaping phenomena and potential without existing independently from actualisation.

Phasing Meaning: 2 Phenomena Are Emergent, Not Pre-Given

Series context: In the first post, we introduced the lantern-on-the-ocean metaphor to show how meaning creates its own shadow, and how non-meaning is structured potential. Here, we extend that metaphor to explore phenomena themselves—what we see, hear, and sense—and how they emerge relationally.

The Traditional Assumption: Phenomena as Separate

Many classical views treat phenomena—objects, colours, shapes, sounds—as pre-existing and independent of meaning. The visual field is imagined as a neutral stage; perception is thought to passively “register” what is already there. In this view, meaning is overlaid on a pre-given world.

But relational ontology challenges this assumption. Phenomena do not exist independently of the patterns of meaning that bring them into focus. They are emergent stabilisations, temporary islands of intelligibility in the ocean of potential.

Lanterns and the Phasing of Phenomena

Returning to our ocean metaphor:

Each lantern you lower into the water represents a local act of meaning actualisation.
The light reveals shapes—rocks, ripples, shadows—but these shapes do not pre-exist the light.
Move the lantern, and the patterns shift, merge, or vanish. Phenomena appear, disappear, and reconfigure dynamically.

Perception is thus an active, participatory process: you do not merely see the world; you phase it into existence. Phenomena are co-constituted by attention, prior knowledge, and the relational field of meaning and non-meaning.

Multi-Scale Patterns

Phenomena stabilise at multiple scales:

Local scale: Immediate perception—details of a leaf, the curve of a face, a fleeting shadow.
Global scale: Patterns emerge across the visual or social field—landscapes, group formations, symbolic constellations.
Temporal scale: Past actualisations (memory) and expectations act as “pre-lit lanterns,” influencing which phenomena stabilise next.

At each scale, phenomena are relational patterns: they exist because of contrast with non-meaning, the structuring of prior lanterns, and the interaction of multiple points of illumination.

Implications for Understanding Experience

Perception is active, not passive: Seeing, hearing, and sensing are acts of phasing meaning across potential.
The world is relational, not given: Phenomena do not pre-exist our construal; they are continually actualised.
Non-meaning is generative: Dark patches are not voids—they are fertile potential for future phenomena.
Collective experience emerges from shared phasing: Groups stabilise similar constellations of phenomena, creating socially aligned perceptions.

Looking Ahead

Next, we will explore how temporality shapes perception: how memory, expectation, and prior meaning act as pre-lit lanterns, guiding the phasing of phenomena across time. We will see that experience is a dynamic interplay of past, present, and potential future, a dance of lanterns and shadows across the ocean of non-meaning.

Phasing Meaning: 1 How Lanterns Shape the Ocean of Experience

Series Preface: This post begins a series exploring how meaning structures reality, perception, and potential, using a relational ontology approach. We will trace how phenomena emerge, how perception unfolds, and how non-meaning—the spaces of potential—co-constitutes our experience.

Meaning Creates Its Own Shadow

Imagine a dark ocean at night. Into this ocean, you lower a lantern. The lantern illuminates the water around it, revealing shapes, ripples, and eddies. Yet the light does more than reveal—it defines the darkness around it. The illuminated patches stand against shadow, and the shadow itself becomes intelligible only because there is light.

In this simple metaphor lies a profound insight: meaning creates the domain of non-meaning. Each act of meaning—each word, symbol, or construal—does not float freely; it shapes the horizon against which other potential meanings may emerge. Non-meaning is not an empty void, but a structured field of possibilities, sculpted relationally by existing meaning.

Lanterns, Shadows, and the Relational Field

In Hallidayan terms, each lantern is like an instance of a system actualised in a particular context. Meaning is local, contingent, and relational, but it also has directional force: it structures what is possible, what can appear next, and what remains in shadow. The dark ocean—the field of non-meaning—is the complementary space, the potential that makes new meaning possible.

Perception works the same way. What we see, hear, or sense does not exist independently “out there” as pre-given phenomena. Instead, phenomena emerge relationally, as first-order patterns phased from the interplay of meaning and non-meaning. A tree, a face, a landscape—they stabilise in perception only because they contrast with what is not-tree, not-face, not-landscape.

The Co-Constitution of Meaning and Non-Meaning

This leads to a radical but simple principle: meaning and non-meaning are co-constitutive.

Meaning cannot exist without a horizon of potential, otherwise there is nothing to differentiate it from.
Non-meaning cannot exist independently, because it is intelligible only as the structured field shaped by actualised meaning.
Phenomena, perception, and experience are temporary stabilisations in this ongoing dance between light and dark, actualisation and potential.

In other words, when we speak, perceive, or act, we are not merely revealing a pre-existing world; we are phasing it into existence, creating patterns of intelligibility while simultaneously defining spaces for future novelty.

Why This Matters

Thinking of meaning this way reshapes how we understand perception, cognition, and communication:

It rejects the idea of a “neutral” world separate from human construal.
It highlights the dynamic, temporal, and relational character of experience.
It prepares the ground for exploring collective phenomena: shared patterns of meaning, social formations, and symbolic alignment.

Looking Ahead

In the next post, we will explore how phenomena themselves emerge from this relational field, and how perception is an active process of phasing patterns from potential into actuality. We will see that seeing, hearing, and knowing are not passive acts—they are dances of lanterns across the ocean of experience.

The Semiotic Geometry of Networks: Series Codicil: Geometry as Construal

Series Codicil: Geometry as Construal

The series closes with a single conceptual lens:

The geometry of a network is itself a semiotic act. Branching divides, nesting contains, and cycling loops, but all geometries constrain, enable, and transform potential. Meaning is not only realised through choice, but enacted through topology.

By attending to geometry, we reveal how readiness, alignment, and emergent action are encoded in the shape of relational networks. This makes system networks far more than linguistic tools: they are frameworks for modelling how meaning, potential, and action interrelate across scales and domains.

Mapping SFL Expansion Types to Network Geometries

SFL Expansion Type	Network Geometry	Relational/Semiotic Effect
Entry Condition (Enhancement)	Nested Networks	Inner nodes are enabled by their containing frame; potential is structured as context-dependent and inherited. Enhances the scope or applicability of lower-level options.
Conjunction (Extension)	Branching Networks	Multiple parallel paths actualised simultaneously; potential is extended horizontally without exclusion. Represents co-occurring possibilities or combined instantiations.
Disjunction (Extension)	Branching Networks	Mutually exclusive paths; potential is divided into alternatives. Construes differentiation and perspectival choice.
Delicacy (Elaboration)	Branching & Nested Networks	Adds finer distinctions or refinements to a node; deepens or elaborates potential. Operates vertically (nested layers) or horizontally (branches), increasing specificity.
Feedback/Recurrence (optional extension from SFL lens)	Cyclic Networks	Re-entry of potential; readiness is sustained or recalibrated. Construes reflexivity, learning, and emergent adaptation over time.

Analytic Insight

Branching = differentiation + parallel extension: disjunction and conjunction map naturally onto how the network splits potential.
Nesting = enhancement + inherited readiness: entry conditions constrain and enable contained nodes.
Delicacy = elaboration: operates wherever finer granularity of potential is needed.
Cyclic structures = feedback loops: not formalised in classical SFL expansion types, but capture the semiotic function of sustained and reflexive potential.

This mapping allows you to read system networks both geometrically and functionally, showing how shape and expansion jointly construe meaning and readiness.

The Semiotic Geometry of Networks: 5 Geometric Integration — Toward a Topology of Meaning

We have explored three fundamental network geometries:

Branching — the logic of differentiation (either/or),
Nesting — the logic of inclusion (both/within),
Cycling — the logic of recurrence (both/again).

Each geometry construes potential differently, highlighting different aspects of meaning, readiness, and actualisation. But real systems rarely adhere to a single form. Meaning emerges where branching, nesting, and cycling interact, producing hybrid topologies that capture complexity, adaptability, and reflexivity.

1. Networks in combination

In practice, networks integrate geometries:

Branching within nesting: decisions operate within context, each choice framed by its containing layer.
Nesting within cycles: contexts persist and evolve as cycles loop through repeated instantiations.
Cycles within branching: feedback and recurrence reshape the probabilities of alternative paths, creating dynamic differentiation.

These interactions produce rich, multi-dimensional construals, where potential is neither fixed nor linear, but continually redistributed, actualised, and reframed.

2. Toward a semiotic topology

When geometries combine, we move from diagrammatic representation to topology of meaning:

Topology as relational field: the structure of the network encodes potential, constraints, and temporal flow.
Topological integration: branching provides axes of choice, nesting embeds these choices in context, and cycling allows the system to iterate, adapt, and learn.
Meaning as spatialised potential: the network’s geometry is simultaneously functional, relational, and semiotic.

This semiotic topology captures the dynamics of action and readiness across multiple scales and domains — linguistic, biological, social, and physical.

3. Conceptual payoff

Integrating geometries reveals the deep semiotic power of system networks:

Differentiation (branching) enables selective choice and perspectival cuts.
Inclusion (nesting) provides relational context and inherited readiness.
Recurrence (cycling) sustains continuity, feedback, and emergent adaptation.

Together, these geometries constitute a framework for modelling how potential is realised, how readiness aligns, and how complex systems constrain, enable, and transform themselves.

4. Implications for relational ontology

From a relational ontological perspective:

Networks are not mere maps — they are semiotic fields in which potential, inclination, and ability are distributed.
Geometry itself construes meaning: how we arrange nodes, edges, and loops shapes how reality can be actualised.
Hybrid topologies allow flexible, adaptive, and scalable construals, capturing the interplay of choice, context, and feedback.

In short, system networks are topologies of readiness and relation, where geometry and potential co-constitute meaning.

5. Closing reflection

The Semiotic Geometry of Networks series has shown that:

Branching, nesting, and cycling are distinct but complementary geometries, each with its own logic of potential.
The integration of these geometries produces complex, adaptive, and reflexive networks.
System networks, read topologically, become unifying frameworks for understanding meaning, action, and emergence across domains.

By attending to geometry, we shift our perspective: the network ceases to be merely a tool for representing choice and becomes a lens for seeing how meaning itself is shaped, sustained, and transformed.