Having established that meaning is construal, we can now ask a deeper question:
What does it mean for meaning to operate before objects exist?
This post explores how objects themselves emerge through repeated relational activity.
Objects as emergent
Objects are not pre-given entities waiting to be represented.
They become distinguishable through repeated patterns of construal.
Through attention, differentiation, and relational practice, phenomena acquire stability and recognisability — they emerge as objects.
Meaning, therefore, is not about attaching to objects.
It is what allows objects to appear at all.
Stabilising phenomena
Repeated construal stabilises certain features while others recede.
Some differences are amplified; some similarities are grouped.
These patterns are not arbitrary.
They emerge from the interplay of attention, context, and practice.
The “object” is the outcome of this stabilisation process.
Objects are perspectival
Because objects emerge from relational activity, they are perspectival.
Different participants may stabilise different objects from the same phenomena.
No object exists independent of the construals that sustain it.
This explains why disputes over what an object is are never merely factual: they reflect different relational structuring of possibility.
Implications for communication
If objects are emergent, then meaning cannot be thought of as transferring pre-existing content.
Communication is not about passing symbols that correspond to independent objects.
It is about coordinating construals, negotiating shared intelligibility, and maintaining the stability of phenomena across participants and time.
Emergence of possibility
Before objects exist, meaning already structures a field of what can happen, what can be recognised, and what can be imagined.
This field is the space of possibility.
Objects, in this sense, are stabilised possibilities, made recognisable through construal.
Looking ahead
Understanding meaning before objects sets the stage for the next post:
Post 5: Why Meaning Cannot Be Stored — which challenges the assumption that meaning resides in symbols, texts, or minds, and shows how meaning is always emergent and evental.
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