In the previous post, value systems were located on the side of inclination: they weight readiness, exert pressure, and generate obligation without meaning.
We now turn to the second dimension of readiness: ability.
This post shows how meaning systems act — not by compelling action, but by enabling what can be done semiotically.
Ability is not permission
Ability is often confused with permission, entitlement, or social approval.
This is a mistake.
Ability does not guarantee uptake.
It does not protect against sanction.
It does not compel others to respond.
Ability names a different kind of potential: the capacity to construe, articulate, and negotiate meaning.
Meaning enables articulation
Meaning systems provide resources for:
making distinctions,
construing experience,
articulating relations,
re-framing situations.
These resources do not tell actors what they should say.
They make it possible to say something at all — and to say it this way rather than that.
Meaning expands the space of articulability.
Ability is relational
Semiotic ability is not housed inside individuals.
It is distributed across:
shared practices,
available semiotic resources,
histories of interaction,
anticipated uptake.
An utterance that is possible in one field may be unintelligible in another.
Ability exists only in relation to a field of others.
Meaning without compulsion
Meaning systems do not exert pressure in the way value systems do.
They do not incline actors toward action.
They do not generate obligation.
They enable options — some of which may never be taken up.
This is why meaning can be rich while social life remains constrained.
Failure without deficiency
When actors are unable to articulate a construal, this is often treated as ignorance or incapacity.
Within this framework, it is more accurately understood as misaligned ability:
the resources are unavailable,
the field does not support articulation,
the practice has not yet been cultivated.
No internal lack need be assumed.
Why this matters
Locating meaning systems on the side of ability allows us to:
explain freedom without voluntarism,
explain creativity without intention,
preserve openness under constraint,
avoid turning meaning into a mechanism of control.
Meaning enables without obligating.
Looking ahead
With inclination and ability now distinguished, we can examine how constraint arises when they do not align.
The next post will show how frustration, silence, coercion, and conflict emerge from misaligned readiness — without invoking rules, norms, or representations.
Post 4: Constraint as Misaligned Readiness — Why Pressure Is Not a Rule will take up this task.
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