Foundations of the Ontology of Meaning: 1 Epistemological Assumptions

The Ontology of Meaning rests on a subtle but decisive set of epistemological commitments. Before we examine collectives, construals, and first-order meaning in detail, it is necessary to make these commitments explicit. Without them, readers risk importing assumptions that have already been removed — assumptions about representation, about pre-given objects, or about knowledge as correspondence.

These epistemological assumptions do not define meaning itself. They define the conditions under which meaning can be discerned and discussed without collapsing back into the metaphysics we have left behind.

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Knowledge is perspectival

First, knowledge is always perspectival. It arises from a particular cut into a field of potential. There is no neutral vantage point, no view from nowhere, no purely objective standpoint from which meaning can be read off. All discernment is situated, conditioned, and relational.

This does not render knowledge arbitrary. Perspectival knowledge is constrained by the structure of the field itself, by prior cuts, and by the need for coherence across successive construals. The field of potential imposes limits. Perspectives are not free-floating; they are structured by possibility.

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First-order phenomena versus second-order theory

A core epistemic distinction underpins all subsequent analysis:

• First-order phenomena are the events themselves: the actualised coherence that constitutes meaning.

• Second-order theory is the attempt to describe, categorise, or systematise those events.

It is crucial to maintain this distinction. Most philosophical and semiotic confusion arises when theory is smuggled back into the phenomenon. Observation and description are not the same as the event observed.

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Observation presupposes cuts

To discern anything at all, some cut must have occurred. Observation is not a passive act. It is always constrained by relational alignment: certain possibilities are actualised, others excluded, and the observer’s position is part of that pattern of constraint.

This is why epistemology in this framework is participatory without being anthropocentric. It does not require minds, symbols, or cognition. It requires only that something — any system — actualises a cut, stabilises certain relations, and allows those relations to be discerned.

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Knowledge without representation

Finally, knowledge is not representation. It does not stand in for pre-existing entities. It does not point, label, or map. The temptation to interpret knowledge as correspondence is a metaphysical hangover.

Instead, knowledge emerges when a system of potential is constrained, stabilised, and cohered. What is known is the pattern of constraints actualised, not a thing “out there” or a content “in here.” This is why epistemology in this ontology is relational, constrained, and perspectival.

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Why these assumptions matter

Making epistemological assumptions explicit achieves several goals:

1. Prevents smuggling in old metaphysics
   Readers are warned that representation, objectivity, and reference cannot do explanatory work.

2. Establishes a stable analytic framework
   Cuts, constraints, and coherence become the tools of discernment, not rhetorical devices.

3. Licenses later posts
   Ontological assumptions, methodological principles, and implicit axioms will build on these foundations.

In short: before we ask what meaning is, we must first establish how it can be known. Only once the epistemology is clear can we move confidently to the ontological assumptions that define what exists and how it can participate in meaning.