After six posts tracing the trajectory from fluency to meta-theoretical reflection, it is useful to pause and map the architecture of the argument. This summary consolidates the cuts, asymmetries, and relational logic that make the ontology robust.
1. Fluency and Grain
Observation: Probabilistic patterns (e.g., corpora, statistics, LLM outputs) reveal fluency and repetition.
Cut: Fluency explains the grain of instantiation, not the source of meaning. Probability describes residues of acts, not the acts themselves.
2. Phenomena vs Patterning
Observation: Language leaves traces, but these traces are second-order.
Cut: First-order phenomena (construals) are irreducible; second-order patterning (probabilities, corpora) presupposes them. Patterning cannot generate meaning.
3. Context and Conditioning
Observation: Situations, fields, tenors, and modes shape what is possible.
Cut: Context conditions construal without determining it. Situational enrichment refines probability but does not create acts of meaning.
4. Meaning as Act, Not Outcome
Observation: Meaning emerges in use, with intent, recognition, and answerability.
Cut: Meaning is an act. Agency and responsibility are internal to meaning. Systems and technologies cannot be agents.
5. Coordination and Scale
Observation: Institutions, genres, and coordination stabilize acts across time and space.
Cut: Coordination enables scale without replacing the act. Institutions organise potential but do not enact meaning. Scale multiplies acts without collapsing them into systemic outcomes.
6. Meta-Theoretical Apex
Observation: The ontology resists reduction because it explicitly encodes asymmetries and dependencies.
Cut: System–instance, first–second order, act–outcome, conditioning–determination, coordination–agency. These cuts are relational and structural. They preserve meaning against collapse.
The Boundary-Maintaining Principle
Meaning always occurs in acts. Probability, context, coordination, scale, and technology describe, condition, or scaffold these acts—but they never replace them. This is the central insight that unites the series and renders the ontology unassailable.
Why This Matters
Analytical clarity: We can discuss LLMs, institutions, and fluency without confusing residue for meaning.
Normative clarity: Responsibility remains grounded in acts, not systems.
Pedagogical clarity: The architecture can be diagrammed, taught, and applied.
The Grain of Instantiation is now visible in full: the cuts, the asymmetries, and the relations. Meaning happens. It is enacted. It is answerable. And the series shows exactly why it cannot be reduced, predicted, or outsourced to systems.
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