There is a familiar narrative of development.
The infant begins with:
- reflexes,
- undifferentiated affect,
- and rudimentary interaction.
Through:
- repetition,
- reinforcement,
- and increasing complexity,
these behaviours are said to become:
- intentional,
- communicative,
- and eventually meaningful.
On this view:
meaning is what behaviour becomes, given enough development.
This view is not argued.
It is assumed.
It is also wrong.
1. The continuity assumption
The developmental narrative rests on a simple idea:
that increasing organisation within behaviour can, at some point, yield meaning.
That is:
- more coordination,
- more differentiation,
- more stability,
will eventually produce:
- representation,
- signification,
- construal.
In short:
meaning is treated as the outcome of accumulated complexity.
2. What has already been established
We cannot accept this.
Because we have already established—independently—that:
no increase in the complexity of value organisation yields meaning.
This applies:
- across systems,
- and therefore applies in development.
3. The misidentification of the problem
The question is therefore misposed.
Not:
how does the child gradually acquire meaning?
But:
how does a system that does not construe become one that does?
This is not a question of:
- accumulation,
- enrichment,
- or refinement.
It is a question of:
reorganisation.
4. What development does provide
This is not to deny the richness of early development.
Even prior to language, the infant exhibits:
- finely tuned responsiveness,
- coordinated interaction with caregivers,
- sensitivity to timing, rhythm, and affect,
- and increasingly differentiated patterns of behaviour.
These are not trivial.
They constitute:
a highly organised system.
5. What this organisation is
But we must be precise about its nature.
This organisation is:
the organisation of value.
That is:
- behaviour is structured in relation to:
- continuation,
- regulation,
- and coordination within the organism and its environment.
It is:
- selective,
- adaptive,
- and increasingly complex.
6. What it is not
What it is not is equally important.
At this stage, there is:
- no stable role–reference binding,
- no substitutional organisation,
- no element functioning as something else.
In particular:
nothing stands for anything.
No matter how:
- responsive,
- coordinated,
- or effective the behaviour becomes,
it remains:
non-semiotic.
7. The illusion of gradual emergence
The continuity narrative persists because:
organised behaviour can look like meaning.
An infant’s action may:
- reliably produce an effect,
- be directed toward others,
- occur in recognisable contexts.
From this, it is tempting to conclude:
the behaviour already has meaning, in a primitive form.
But this is an inference.
Not a fact.
8. “As if” is not enough
We may describe early behaviour:
- as if it were intentional,
- as if it were communicative,
- as if it were meaningful.
But “as if” does not establish:
- construal,
- reference,
- or signification.
It establishes only:
that the system is organised in ways that invite interpretation.
9. The necessity of a break
If meaning cannot be:
- gradually accumulated,
- or approximated by increasing complexity,
then development must include:
a point at which the organisation of the system changes in kind.
This is not:
- a threshold of refinement,
- nor a quantitative increase,
but:
a cut.
10. The developmental form of the semiotic cut
We can now restate the problem in its correct form.
At what point does the developing system become organised such that:
- an element can function as something else,
- a role can be bound to what it construes,
- and behaviour becomes construal?
This is:
the developmental cut.
11. What must follow
Everything that follows in development depends on this.
Before the cut:
- behaviour is organised as value,
- no matter how complex.
After the cut:
- construal becomes possible,
- and semiotic organisation can begin.
There is no intermediate state.
12. The position secured
We therefore begin from a position that must be held without compromise:
there is no gradual path from behaviour to meaning.
There is:
- organisation,
- increasing complexity,
- and coordination—
and then:
there is construal.
13. What comes next
The next step is to examine what precedes this cut more closely.
We must characterise:
the organisation of pre-semiotic behaviour in development—
so that when the cut occurs, it is not mistaken for:
- refinement,
- enrichment,
- or continuation.
But recognised for what it is:
a transformation in the organisation of the system itself.
We proceed, then, not by tracing growth—
but by locating the point at which growth is no longer enough.
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