On Relation Without Representation: 4 Objects as Stabilised Relational Effects

If meaning is not fundamentally about anything, a familiar worry immediately arises: what becomes of objects? If meaning does not point to a pre-given world of things, does the world dissolve into indeterminacy? Are objects reduced to illusions, projections, or convenient fictions?

The answer is no. Objects are not denied — they are explained.

What a relational ontology rejects is not the existence of objects, but their ontological primacy. Objects are not the foundation upon which meaning is built. They are the outcome of relational processes that stabilise over time. They are effects, not primitives.

To see this, we need to revisit what an object appears to be. An object presents itself as:

• bounded,

• persistent,

• re-identifiable across contexts,

• and available to reference.

These features feel basic. Yet none of them are given outright. Each is an achievement.

Boundaries arise where relational contrasts stabilise. Persistence arises where patterns are successfully reiterated. Identity arises where variation remains constrained within recognisable limits. Re-identifiability arises where coordination across instances succeeds. In every case, what appears as an object is the result of ongoing relational maintenance.

Objects are therefore not self-subsisting entities that relations later connect. They are relational condensations — regions of relative stability within a field of structured potential. Their apparent independence is a function of how successfully they are sustained, not a metaphysical guarantee.

This also explains why objects can tolerate variation without losing their identity. A chair can be painted, repaired, moved, or partially broken and still count as the same chair. What persists is not a substance, but a pattern of relational constraints that continues to hold across changes. Objecthood is not all-or-nothing; it is graded, context-sensitive, and historically sedimented.

From this perspective, the success of reference is no longer mysterious. Reference works not because words latch onto metaphysical atoms, but because systems have learned to coordinate around stable relational effects. When relational patterns are sufficiently robust, they can be treated as if they were independent things. This “as if” is not an error — it is a pragmatic achievement.

Crucially, this account avoids both extremes that dominate debates about objects. On one side lies naive realism, which treats objects as simply given. On the other lies constructivist scepticism, which treats them as mere projections. A relational ontology rejects both. Objects are neither given nor invented; they are maintained.

They exist because systems can sustain them.

This maintenance is not passive. It requires constraint, repetition, and successful articulation across contexts. When these fail, objecthood degrades. We encounter ambiguity, vagueness, breakdown, or transformation. The world does not disappear — but its stabilisations shift. Objects are resilient, but not invulnerable.

Seen this way, the world’s apparent solidity is no longer puzzling. It is the visible surface of deep relational work. Stability is not evidence of metaphysical substance; it is evidence of systemic success.

This also clarifies why representational accounts cling so tightly to objects. Once relational stabilisations have sedimented, they feel foundational. Meaning appears to depend on them. But this reverses the order of explanation. Objects do not make meaning possible; meaning — understood as relational intelligibility — makes objects possible.

Objects are what meaning looks like when it holds.

In the next post, we will turn to a question that now demands attention: why, if representation is derivative, does representational thinking persist so stubbornly? Why does the reflex to treat meaning as about objects reassert itself even after its foundations have been displaced?

Understanding this persistence will allow us to explain representation itself — not as a mistake, but as a powerful, sedimented habit of relational systems.

That is where we go next.