Civilisation as Semiosis: 2 Living in Construals — Why Symbolic Animals Inhabit Semiotic Worlds

Once meaning became reflexive, the symbolic animal’s life was forever altered. Existence was no longer merely a matter of interacting with a pre-given environment; it was the ongoing negotiation of construals—interpretive acts that both shape and inhabit the semiotic worlds around them. To live as a symbolic animal is to live within meaning, not merely among objects or events.

The Semiotic Horizon

Every encounter is filtered through a web of prior construals. A gesture, a sound, a pattern in the environment carries significance only because the organism can construe it in relation to other signs. These constellations of meaning form a semiotic horizon: the field of possibilities within which action, anticipation, and reflection occur.

From a relational-ontological perspective, the horizon is not fixed. Each construal partially actualises potential, bringing forth a reality that is contingent, perspectival, and inherently relational. The symbolic animal does not merely navigate this world; it continuously co-individuates it through semiotic engagement.

The Architecture of Construals

Several dynamics underlie this semiotic life:

1. Nested Meaning – Signs refer not only to objects or events but to other signs, creating layers of interpretive depth.

2. Temporal Projection – Construals are anticipatory: the symbolic animal interprets the present in light of past patterns and possible futures.

3. Inter-subjectivity – Semiotic worlds are inherently social. Meaning is stabilised, negotiated, and transmitted among conspecifics, forming the scaffolding of culture and civilisation.

This architecture ensures that no symbolic animal exists in isolation. Each life is embedded in a dense network of semiotic relations, constantly expanded, contested, and refined.

Construals as Lenses and World-Builders

To inhabit a semiotic world is simultaneously to perceive and to construct it. Construals act as lenses: they focus attention, shape expectations, and structure experience. They are also world-builders: each interpretive act brings forth patterns, norms, and possibilities that were latent in the relational field.

In this sense, living as a symbolic animal is always a negotiation with potential: each construal is a cut, a selective actualisation, through which the organism participates in the ongoing emergence of meaning itself. The semiotic world is neither static nor given; it is the product of countless interlaced acts of construal, an evolving horizon in which life unfolds.

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This post naturally sets us up to explore how these construals scale into shared reality, leading directly to institutions, norms, and social facts—the terrain of Post 3, “How Meaning Builds Reality”.