In the previous episode, we introduced semiotic scaffolding: coordination regimes that host construal without interpreting, representing, or generating meaning. Scaffolding sets the conditions, but does not instantiate the semiotic.
Episode 4 marks the ontological hinge: here, construal enters the system. Meaning does not grow out of coordination; it appears through a perspectival cut actualising phenomena. The scaffolds ensure this is possible, but the act itself is distinct and irreversible.
The Ontological Leap
Coordination stabilises patterns. Scaffolds maintain them. But meaning requires a perspectival operation:
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Cut: A selection within the potentialities of a system
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Actualisation: A phenomenon comes into being as a phenomenon
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Persistence: The phenomenon is maintained long enough to interact with other phenomena
This is not a quantitative increase in complexity. It is a qualitative ontological shift: the system moves from barely functional order to symbolically interpretable order.
In short: scaffolds host, construal actualises. Without scaffolds, construal collapses; without construal, scaffolds remain mute.
Minimal Conditions for Construal
For a semiotic system to arise, three conditions must converge:
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Stabilised Coordination: Pre-existing value systems provide regularised patterns that can be consistently referenced.
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Repeatable Differentiation: The system produces distinctions that can be reliably taken up by a perspectival operation.
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Perspectival Cut: An agent (or system) actualises one of these distinctions as a phenomenon for itself.
Without all three, construal cannot occur:
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Coordination alone: meaningless, operational only
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Repeatable differentiation without cut: latent potential, inert
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Cut without scaffold: ephemeral, non-propagating
Construal Is Not Coordination
This is the moment where many theories stumble. Even after scaffolds exist, it is tempting to conflate the act of construal with coordination:
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Error: “The system interprets its own patterns”
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Correction: Construal is a distinct operation. It does not reduce to regulation, feedback, or homeostasis.
Construal brings first-order meaning into the world. Coordination simply maintains the space in which this meaning can persist. These are interdependent but non-collapsible operations.
From Individual to Shared Semiotic Systems
Once construal enters, semiotic systems can interact—but only under coordinated scaffolding:
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Individual phenomena can be aligned across agents via shared scaffolds.
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Repetition stabilises instances for potential communication.
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Differences in perspective are possible, but propagating meaning requires scaffolds to support persistence.
Illustrative Example: Proto-Social Communication
Imagine a small social collective:
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Agents move and act according to strict coordination rules (e.g., synchronising steps or distributing resources).
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Certain patterns recur reliably—scaffolds for action.
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An agent actualises one of these patterns as a phenomenon for itself—e.g., recognising a signal as “danger nearby.”
From this small, fragile interaction arises the first rudiments of shared semiotic space—not guaranteed, not emergent by accumulation, but possible under precise conditions.
Implications
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Semiotic systems are built on scaffolds but are not reducible to them.
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Meaning is fragile: its existence is contingent on both coordination and perspectival cut.
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Communication and social symbolic systems are possible only where reliable scaffolds and repeated construals coincide.
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This explains why symbolic meaning is rare and valuable, yet fully grounded in relational systems.
Looking Ahead
Episode 5 will explore hybrid systems, where coordination and semiotic operations interact robustly:
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How do scaffolds support multiple, interacting semiotic phenomena?
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How can construals propagate and align across agents without collapsing value into meaning?
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What patterns of entanglement produce stable semiotic systems, social communication, and shared symbolic meaning?
Episode 4 sets the ontological hinge; Episode 5 will build the architecture of hybrid semiotic systems, where scaffolds and construals co-exist dynamically.
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