The Symbolic Animal: 2 Worlds as Construals

The symbolic animal does not inhabit a pre-given world.

Its world is always already semiotic, structured by the web of meanings it and others continuously enact.

A city is not simply bricks, asphalt, and air.

It is:

• the silent agreement that red lights mean stop,

• the promise that money will be accepted,

• the history embedded in street names and building facades,

• the anticipation of how strangers will behave, and how friends will respond.

Each layer is a construal, a semiotic projection actualised in behaviour, expectation, and interpretation. Reflexive semiosis allows symbolic animals to inhabit these layers simultaneously, to navigate and reshape them in real time.

Consider a simple act: crossing the street.

• A wolf sees only danger and opportunity.

• A human reads traffic lights, watches for cars, considers pedestrian norms, remembers past near-misses, and imagines future consequences.

The street becomes more than street. It is a network of possible worlds, each actualised moment by moment through construal.

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1. Construals as the fabric of reality

In this framework, “world” is not a noun—it is a dynamic pattern of semiotic activity.

• Objects exist as meanings. A chair is not simply a chair; it is a chair for sitting, for blocking passage, for storing things, for negotiation. Its reality is functional, relational, semiotic.

• Time is semiotic. Past events are recalled, annotated, narrated; future events are imagined, anticipated, constrained by meaning, not just by physics.

• Relations are semiotic. Social hierarchies, expectations, and obligations are not “out there”; they exist only through active construal.

Thus, the symbolic animal inhabits a world continuously actualised through meaning. Reality is a process, not a stage. It is co-constructed with every act of attention, interpretation, and reflection.

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2. The horizon of shared construal

Meaning is not private. Reflexive semiosis allows for overlapping networks of construals.

• Language, rituals, norms, art, and laws stabilise certain patterns, creating shared semiotic terrains.

• These terrains are not fixed; they evolve as individuals and groups reinterpret, challenge, and rebuild them.

In other words, the symbolic animal lives not only in its own construals but inside the semiotic worlds co-constructed with others. These shared worlds are the stage on which history unfolds, institutions solidify, and possibilities multiply.

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3. Construals and action

Worlds as construals are actionable realities.

Every meaning projected becomes a constraint and an affordance:

• A street sign signals a route and a rule.

• A social norm defines possible and impossible behaviours.

• Scientific models shape experimentation, technology, and engineering.

The symbolic animal acts within and upon these construals, altering the world by altering meaning. Reflexivity amplifies this: the animal can reflect on its own construals, test them, and change them. Reality is malleable because meaning is active.

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The stage is set. The symbolic animal does not merely live in the world; it weaves, navigates, and transforms it. Each act of meaning is an act of world-making.

In the next part of the series, we will explore how these construals stabilise into institutions, creating durable semiotic structures that shape collective existence, and how symbolic animals inhabit them without ever being fully bound.

For now, remember:

The symbolic animal is not in a world—it is a world.