We never simply encounter the world; we always encounter it as something.— Hans-Georg Gadamer
In the previous post we examined a simple but disorienting idea: experience does not require a hidden observer. The familiar image of consciousness as an inner spectator watching mental events turns out to be an assumption rather than a discovery.
But once the spectator disappears, an important question remains.
If there is no internal observer witnessing experience, how do phenomena appear at all?
What produces the perspective from which the world becomes present?
To answer this question we need to introduce a concept that lies at the centre of relational ontology: construal.
Encountering the World as Something
Experience is never neutral.
When we perceive the world, we do not encounter a collection of raw sensory data waiting to be organised. Instead, the world already appears as something.
The phenomenon is not simply present; it is present in a particular way.
This is what we mean by construal. Construal is the relational process through which phenomena become intelligible as particular kinds of things.
It is not an additional step applied to experience after perception occurs. Rather, it is the very process through which phenomena become present in the first place.
Systems and Possibilities
Relational ontology understands the world not as a collection of objects with fixed intrinsic properties but as networks of relations that organise possibilities.
A relational system does not determine a single outcome. Instead, it structures a range of possible ways events may unfold. Within such a system, many different phenomena could potentially arise.
What we call an instance is the actualisation of one possibility among many.
Experience therefore involves a continual movement from potential to actualisation. The relational configuration of a system makes certain phenomena possible, and construal brings one of those possibilities into presence.
Phenomena appear because possibilities become actualised.
The Role of Construal
Construal is the mechanism through which this actualisation occurs.
Through construal, relational systems organise the conditions under which phenomena become present from particular perspectives. The same relational field may support multiple possible construals, each of which actualises a different phenomenon.
A simple visual example makes this clear. Consider a drawing that can be seen either as a vase or as two faces looking at one another. The lines on the page remain unchanged, yet the phenomenon shifts depending on how it is construed.
The difference lies not in the physical stimulus but in the relational organisation through which it is interpreted.
Construal therefore determines which possibility within a system becomes phenomenally actualised.
Perspective as Relational Organisation
This is where the notion of perspective becomes crucial.
A perspective is not an observer standing behind experience. It is the relational configuration that makes particular construals possible.
Every organism inhabits a distinctive network of relations: sensory capacities, bodily orientation, environmental interactions, patterns of attention. These relations organise the possibilities through which phenomena can appear.
The world therefore becomes present differently for different forms of life.
What appears as food to one organism may appear as danger to another. What appears as colour to one species may appear as ultraviolet patterning to another.
Phenomena are not universal objects waiting to be perceived. They are actualisations of possibility within particular relational perspectives.
Consciousness Reconsidered
Once construal is understood in this way, the mystery of consciousness begins to change shape.
Instead of asking how physical processes generate subjective experience, we can ask a different question:
How do relational systems organise the conditions under which phenomena become actualised?
Consciousness is not a substance added to matter, nor a mysterious property emerging from neural complexity. It is the ongoing actualisation of phenomena through construal within relational systems capable of sustaining perspectives.
Wherever such relational organisation exists, phenomena can appear.
The Emerging Picture
Three steps of the argument should now be visible.
First, the classical picture of consciousness relies on the idea of an inner theatre in which experiences occur.
Second, that picture assumes a hidden observer who witnesses those experiences.
Third, once the hidden observer disappears, phenomena can be understood as arising through construal within relational systems that organise possibilities.
Experience, in other words, is not something that happens inside a mind.
It is the actualisation of phenomena from within a perspective.
What Comes Next
At this point an important consequence begins to emerge.
If phenomena arise through relational perspectives, then different organisms will inhabit different phenomenal worlds. Each form of life will actualise its own field of possible experience according to the relational systems through which it engages its environment.
In the next post we will explore this idea more fully.
The world, it turns out, may not contain a single unified domain of experience. Instead it may contain a vast multiplicity of phenomenal worlds — each actualised through the relational perspectives of different forms of life.
And once we recognise this multiplicity, the notion of a single universal consciousness begins to look increasingly implausible.
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