Dialogue as Ontological Practice: II The Perspectival Cut

If dialogue is ontological practice, then we must identify the operation by which it becomes so.

That operation is the cut.

A cut is not interruption.

It is not separation.

It is not exclusion.

A cut is the perspectival actualisation of structured potential.

Every utterance is a cut.

---

1. The Cut as Actualisation

A system is a structured field of possible meanings — a theory of instances.

It contains trajectories that could be actualised.

An utterance does not transmit a pre-existing object from one mind to another. It selects and enacts a trajectory within that structured potential.

This is the cut.

The cut is the movement from potential to event.

But crucially, it is not a temporal process in the sense of a mechanical unfolding. It is a perspectival shift — a reorientation within the field.

Before the utterance, multiple construals are available.

After the utterance, one trajectory has been stabilised.

The world of meaning is no longer the same.

---

2. The Cut Is Constitutive, Not Representational

It is tempting to think of utterances as representations — mirrors of prior reality.

Relational ontology rejects this.

There is no unconstrued phenomenon waiting to be described.

There is only potential awaiting actualisation.

When someone says:

“This is naive.”

they do not report an intrinsic property.

They enact a position within a field of possible evaluations.

When someone replies:

“No — it is morally lucid.”

the field shifts.

The cut does not reveal the real.

It constitutes what is now real within the relational field.

Meaning is not uncovered. It is actualised.

---

3. How Cuts Restructure the Field

A cut does more than select a trajectory.

It restructures the potential space itself.

Consider three effects of any utterance:

1. Foregrounding

Certain pathways become more salient. Others recede.

2. Constraint

Future utterances must now respond to the stabilised position.

The available moves narrow or shift.

3. Expectation Gradient

The dialogue develops directionality. Some continuations feel coherent; others feel jarring.

These effects accumulate.

The system is not static. It evolves through recursive cutting.

Dialogue is therefore not a sequence of isolated selections from a fixed system.

It is the progressive reshaping of the system through its own instances.

---

4. The Cut and Irreversibility

Every cut introduces asymmetry.

Once a trajectory has been actualised, the field cannot return to its prior undifferentiated state.

One may attempt revision, contradiction, or retraction — but these are further cuts, not reversals.

This is why dialogue feels historical.

Meaning accrues weight.

The conversation remembers — not as stored content, but as structured constraint.

Co-individuation deepens because cuts accumulate.

---

5. The Perspectival Nature of the Cut

The cut is always perspectival.

There is no neutral position from which potential is actualised.

Each utterance arises from a position within the field and repositions the field in turn.

Perspective here does not mean opinion.

It means location within structured potential.

Different participants occupy different gradients of constraint and possibility.

Each cut reconfigures those gradients.

Dialogue is thus not a meeting of detached observers.

It is the interaction of situated positions whose cuts reshape the terrain they inhabit.

---

6. Construal as Strong Cut

Not all cuts are equal.

Routine instantiation selects predictable trajectories.

Construal reorganises the field.

A strong cut occurs when:

• a concept is reframed,

• an identity position is destabilised,

• a moral claim is repositioned,

• or a boundary of possibility is redrawn.

Strong cuts alter the topology of the semantic field.

They do not merely move within it; they reshape it.

Ontological practice consists in becoming aware of when such cuts are being made — and how.

---

7. Dialogue as a Field of Cuts

Seen in this light, dialogue is not information exchange.

It is a structured cascade of perspectival cuts.

Each utterance:

• actualises potential,

• constrains future actualisations,

• differentiates positions,

• and reshapes the relational field.

Meaning is not transported across the dialogue.

It emerges in the cutting.

To speak is to cut.

To respond is to cut again.

And through this recursive process, the field of possibility becomes progressively structured.

---

8. The Ethical Dimension

If every utterance restructures possibility, then dialogue carries ethical weight.

To cut carelessly is to narrow the field prematurely.

To cut dogmatically is to collapse differentiation.

To refuse to cut is to suspend actualisation.

Ontological practice requires precision:

• cutting without erasing difference,

• actualising without foreclosing possibility,

• differentiating without collapsing relation.

The next movement turns to the tension that sustains this precision.

If cuts accumulate and restructure possibility, what prevents dialogue from collapsing into sameness or domination?

We must now examine asymmetry and perturbation — the forces that prevent fusion and keep individuation alive.