What Understanding Is Once Totality Is Gone: 6 Explanation as Second-Order Meaning

The previous posts have traced explanation from its dissolution of totality (Post 1), through orientation within possibility (Post 2), constraint-sensitivity (Post 3), independence from representation (Post 4), and intersubjective understanding (Post 5). We now arrive at the culmination: explanation as a second-order system operating over phenomena and meaning itself.

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1. Explanation Organises Distinctions, Not Reality

Post-totality thinking reframes explanation as a relational and symbolic operation:

• It does not “contain” reality, nor mirror it.

• It organises distinctions and relational patterns that are intelligible under particular cuts.

• By structuring first-order phenomena and meaning, explanation becomes second-order meaning: a system about systems.

Key insight: Explanation is an operation over instantiated phenomena, symbolic structures, and relational networks — not an inventory of being.

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2. Constraints as Semiotic Generators

Constraints define not only what is intelligible, but also what can be symbolically stabilised:

• Explanations make distinctions salient through symbolic encoding.

• They generate patterns that can propagate across observers.

• Constraint-sensitive, symbolic organisation allows explanation to function without totality.

In effect, constraints and symbolic systems together create the intelligible space within which understanding can operate.

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3. Relational and Second-Order Orientation

Second-order meaning highlights the inherently relational nature of explanation:

• First-order phenomena instantiate patterns under cuts.

• Explanation abstracts over these patterns without claiming completeness.

• Understanding is therefore navigation across structured meaning, not mirroring of all phenomena.

This relational and second-order perspective preserves the discipline of orientation central to post-totality thought.

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4. Implications for Meaning

• Explanation stabilises distinctions across agents, cuts, and symbolic systems.

• Meaning propagates without collapsing into psychology or coordination.

• Explanation guides reasoning and navigation within the space of possibilities, while respecting the incompleteness inherent in post-totality ontology.

In short, explanation is a symbolic, relational, and generative practice: second-order meaning that organises first-order phenomena without ever claiming total comprehension.

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5. Series Coda: The Discipline of Understanding

This series has established that:

1. Explanation is not total.

2. Understanding is orientation, not possession.

3. Explanation is constraint-sensitive and perspectival.

4. It operates across observers, systems, and symbolic structures.

5. Explanation functions as second-order meaning, organising phenomena without claiming completion.

By situating explanation as a relational, second-order, symbolic practice, we complete the philosophical arc from post-totality critique to a fully articulated understanding of explanation and understanding itself.

The next step — which we will reserve for a Quillibrace–Blottisham–Elowen dialogue coda — is to performatively illustrate these ideas, showing, in comic relief and pedagogical style, why attempts at final explanation are doomed and how second-order understanding preserves orientation, meaning, and intelligibility.