At this stage, the account of meaning has become fully social.
Meaning is no longer located in:
- patterns of structure,
- individual behaviour,
- or abstract norms.
Instead, it is located in:
practice—the organised field of shared activity in which participants act, respond, and coordinate.
Meaning becomes:
participation.
1. The Completion of the Turn
The appeal of “practice” is that it integrates everything previously separated:
- structure is embedded in activity,
- behaviour is norm-governed,
- norms are socially maintained.
Nothing is left outside.
From this perspective:
meaning is not in any component,but in the whole form of life.
This appears to close the explanatory gap entirely.
2. Participation as the Final Candidate
To participate in a practice is to:
- act within a shared field of activity,
- respond appropriately to others,
- sustain patterns of coordinated behaviour,
- and inhabit normatively structured roles.
At this level, it seems reasonable to say:
meaning is nothing over and above participation itself.
3. The Strength of the Social Whole
Practice is compelling because it is:
- holistic,
- dynamic,
- irreducibly social.
It avoids:
- atomism (individual minds alone),
- abstraction (rules without life),
- and mechanism (structure without activity).
It appears to provide:
meaning in its lived form.
4. The Critical Question
But the question remains unchanged:
does participation introduce construal?
That is:
- does being inside a practice
- participating in coordinated activity
- governed by norms and roles
produce:
the relation in which something is taken as something?
Or does it merely describe:
organised activity within which construal is still absent?
5. Coordination Without Semiosis
Participation secures:
- alignment of action,
- responsiveness between agents,
- continuity of shared activity.
But coordination is still:
- behavioural organisation,not:
semantic relation.
Agents can:
- successfully participate,
- maintain shared practices,
- follow norms and adjust to others,
without anything being:
construed.
6. The Social Is Not Automatically Semantic
A persistent assumption appears here:
if activity is shared, it is meaningful.
But “shared” only establishes:
- distribution across agents,
- not semantic content.
A coordinated system can exist:
- without any element being taken as anything.
Sociality increases:
- complexity of interaction,not:
presence of construal.
7. The Illusion of Lived Meaning
Practice feels like it must contain meaning because:
- it is embodied,
- continuous,
- and experientially rich.
But richness of activity is not:
- semantic structure.
It is:
organised participation.
The feeling of meaning arises from:
- immersion in coordination,not from construal itself.
8. The Re-description at the Social Level
Once again, substitution occurs:
- behaviour becomes participation
- normativity becomes shared practice
- structure becomes social organisation
But nothing in this transformation introduces:
the “as”-relation.
What has changed is:
- scale and integration,not ontological type.
9. Why Practice Fails Where Others Fail
Practice is the most complete candidate so far because it includes:
- structure
- use
- normativity
- interaction
And yet:
it still does not yield construal.
Because all of these remain within:
- organised activity,not semantic relation.
Closing Formulation
Practice organises what we do together in time.
It integrates behaviour, norms, and structure into shared activity.
But participation, however rich or socially embedded,does not produce construal.Coordination is not aboutness.
And no form of shared activity,however complex or integrated,suffices for meaning.
The fourth substitution is now exposed:
- structure → use → normativity → practice
Next, we reach the final consolidation point:
the attempt to make meaning emerge from the whole system of use.
Where the collapse becomes explicit.
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