On Meaning as Possibility: 5 Myth, Music, and Meaning: Feeling the System at Work

So far, this series has established three core claims:

• System is primary.

• Instantiation is perspectival.

• Possibility is the ontological primitive of meaning.

This post approaches the same claims from a different angle: experience. It asks:

Where do we already inhabit the world as if system-first ontology were true?

The answer: almost anywhere where relational coordination matters most.

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1. Myth as a window onto system

Myth is often treated as a residual narrative form. Its significance for system-first ontology lies in its ability to make the system visible without reducing it to rules or procedures.

• Myths do not explain or transmit meaning.

• They enact a structured space of relational potential.

Characters move within a world whose affordances and tensions are already in place. Actions are intelligible because the system of relations constrains and enables them, not because the narrative imposes a goal.

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2. Liora at the edge of possibility

Consider Liora again. She is not at the start of a path or sequence. She inhabits a space shaped by relational potentials:

• Some possibilities invite engagement.

• Others are foreclosed.

• Some are risky, some unthinkable.

Her choices are intelligible because she is operating within a structured system of relations, not following steps or fulfilling stages. Each action:

• Reveals the system’s constraints and affordances.

• Alters what is possible next.

• Reconfigures the relational space she inhabits.

This is instantiation in action: a perspectival cut through relational potential.

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3. Music

Music provides a clear example of value realised without semantic content:

• Musical systems do not transmit referential meaning.

• They do not carry messages or point to external states.

And yet they matter profoundly. Why? Because music is a social and aesthetic coordination system:

• Tones and rhythms create tensions and resolutions.

• Expectations form and shift in interaction with others (performers or listeners).

• Performances reveal relational patterns rather than execute a plan.

Listeners experience coherence, affect, and resonance — value — without reference or representation. Music does not carry meaning; it enacts possibilities for social and emotional alignment.

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4. Creativity as exposure, not goal-directedness

Across myth, music, and art, creativity is risky — not because it might fail a goal, but because it exposes a particular construal of relational potential:

• To create is to say: this is how the system might be inhabited or felt.

• The system offers possibility, not certainty.

Creative acts invite dialogue, resonance, and recognition rather than closure or correctness. Risk resides in engagement with the system, not in reaching an endpoint.

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5. Ethics as system-attunement

System-first ontology has ethical implications:

• Value emerges from relational coordination, not from compliance with norms.

• Ethical action is attentiveness to the system one inhabits and reshapes.

• Every act affirms, forecloses, or transforms relational potential.

Responsibility lies in careful construal, not in alignment with an external trajectory.

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6. Domains where system-first is already at work

Language, pedagogy, art, music, and social interaction instantiate system-first principles:

• Meaning operates within structured possibility.

• Creativity is perspectival engagement with relational potential.

• Coordination is realised as value, not as meaning.

System-first ontology is descriptive, not prescriptive: it renders visible the principles that govern what already happens wherever shared systems are inhabited.

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7. The open horizon

In a system-first ontology:

• No system is exhausted.

• No potential is fully captured.

• No trajectory is fixed.

There is only:

• Ongoing construal.

• Shared accountability.

• Continuous emergence of possibility, whether in meaning or in value.

The series has not led you to a conclusion; it has made visible the space you already inhabit: irreducible, generative, and unfinished — the space where possibility lives.

On Meaning as Possibility: 4 Pedagogy without Teleology: Teaching in a Space of Possibility

If system is primary and instantiation is perspectival, then pedagogy cannot be organised around movement toward predefined endpoints.

This post draws out the educational consequences of a system-first ontology and makes a simple but far-reaching claim:

Teaching is not the management of progress.

It is the exploration of possibility.

1. Why teleology enters pedagogy so easily

Pedagogy is particularly vulnerable to teleological thinking.

The moment learning is described as:

• development,

• progression,

• acquisition,

• or mastery,

it becomes tempting to imagine learners as moving along a path toward a goal that exists in advance of their activity.

From there, it is a short step to:

• stages,

• benchmarks,

• alignment,

• and normative trajectories.

But none of these are pedagogical necessities. They are theoretical inheritances from process-based models of meaning.

Once those models are abandoned, pedagogy must be reconceived.

2. Learning as re-construal, not advancement

In a system-first frame, learning is not movement toward something new. It is a re-construal of what was already possible.

Students do not travel through meaning. They come to see the system differently.

This means that:

• learning is not additive,

• competence is not cumulative,

• and understanding is not a state that can be reached once and for all.

Each act of learning is an instantiation: a fresh perspective on a shared semiotic system.

What changes is not the system itself, but the learner’s relation to it.

3. Authority without direction

Teleological pedagogy often treats authority as directional:

• the teacher knows where the student is meant to go,

• and instruction is the art of getting them there.

In a system-first pedagogy, authority takes a different form.

The teacher’s authority lies not in foreknowledge of outcomes, but in expert navigation of the possibility space.

This includes:

• knowing which distinctions matter,

• recognising productive construals,

• and identifying where interpretations stretch or collapse the system.

Authority here is epistemic, not managerial. It does not pull learners toward an endpoint; it helps them orient themselves within the system.

4. Assessment without endpoints

Once teleology is removed, assessment must be rethought.

If learning is exploration rather than progression, then assessment cannot be about measuring distance travelled or proximity to a goal.

Instead, assessment asks:

• How does this construal relate to the system?

• What distinctions does it mobilise?

• What possibilities does it open or foreclose?

Judgement is no longer about correctness relative to a target, but adequacy relative to the system.

This does not make assessment arbitrary. It makes it more demanding.

The system, not the rubric, becomes the ultimate reference point.

5. Creativity without transgression

Teleological pedagogies often frame creativity as deviation:

• going beyond the expected,

• breaking the mould,

• or subverting the norm.

In a system-first pedagogy, creativity is neither deviation nor rebellion.

Creativity emerges when learners:

• recombine existing distinctions,

• inhabit unexpected regions of the possibility space,

• or make latent affordances visible.

Creative work is judged not by how far it departs from a model, but by how productively it re-construes the system.

6. Risk, disagreement, and learning

Without endpoints, disagreement ceases to be a problem to be managed.

Disagreement becomes a pedagogical resource.

Because the system is shared, learners can:

• test construals against one another,

• argue about adequacy,

• and refine distinctions through conflict.

Risk here is not the risk of failure to arrive, but the risk of exposing one’s construal to the system and to others.

This is a deeper, more epistemic risk — and a more productive one.

7. What pedagogy is for

A system-first pedagogy does not promise closure.

It does not aim to produce finished knowers or completed competencies.

Its task is simpler and more demanding:

• to keep the semiotic system alive,

• to expand learners’ access to its possibilities,

• and to maintain accountability between system and instance.

Pedagogy, on this view, is not about getting somewhere.

It is about learning to inhabit meaning.

8. Looking ahead

So far, this series has remained largely within the terrain of theory and education.

But system-first ontology is not confined to linguistics or pedagogy.

In the final post, we will turn to narrative, music, and myth — not as illustrations, but as domains where system-first thinking can be felt rather than argued.

That is where we turn next.

On Meaning as Possibility: 3 Possibility and Culture: Meaning-Potential as Ontological Primitive

If instantiation is a perspectival cut, then system cannot be understood as a catalogue of meanings, nor as a structure that sits behind instances explaining them.

System must be understood as possibility.

This post makes the core ontological move of the series explicit:

What is primary is not meaning, but meaning-potential.

From this perspective, culture, language, creativity, and disagreement all appear in a new light.

1. From meaning to meaning-potential

It is tempting to treat systems as repositories of meanings — as if language or culture were stocked with semantic items waiting to be deployed.

But this framing is already too concrete.

Meanings do not exist independently of their construal. What exists prior to instantiation is not meaning, but the conditions under which meaning can occur.

A semiotic system is therefore best understood as:

• a structured space of distinctions,

• a field of affordances and constraints,

• a topology of possible construals.

Meaning is what appears when this space is apprehended from the perspective of actuality.

System-first ontology thus replaces the question

“Where does this meaning come from?”

with the deeper question

“What makes this meaning intelligible at all?”

2. Culture as a historically sedimented possibility space

When system is understood as meaning-potential, culture can no longer be treated as a background variable or a contextual container.

Culture is the highest-order semiotic system: a historically evolved space of possible meanings within which language itself has emerged and continues to function.

This space is:

• socially shared, not individually owned,

• historically sedimented, not synchronically complete,

• probabilistic, not deterministic.

Cultural systems do not prescribe what must be meant. They shape what is likely, recognisable, contestable, and meaningful.

Every situation is a construal of culture — not a selection from it, but an actualisation of its possibilities under particular conditions.

3. Constraint as generative, not limiting

One of the most persistent myths about systems is that they constrain creativity.

From a system-first perspective, the opposite is true.

Constraints do not limit meaning; they make meaning possible.

A space with no constraints has no internal structure. Without structure, there are no distinctions. Without distinctions, nothing can count as meaningful difference.

Creativity, therefore, is not:

• transgression of system,

• escape from constraint,

• or movement beyond structure.

Creativity is recombination within a structured possibility space.

What appears as novelty is not the absence of system, but the productive reconfiguration of its affordances.

4. Evolution as reorganisation of possibility

If system is meaning-potential, then semiotic evolution cannot be understood as the accumulation of meanings.

It must be understood as the expansion, contraction, and reorganisation of possibility spaces over time.

This applies across scales:

• in the evolution of language,

• in the historical transformation of cultures,

• in the development of specialised discourses,

• and in the emergence of new genres and practices.

New meanings matter not because they are new tokens, but because they reshape what can now be meant.

Evolution, on this view, is not directional. It has no inherent telos. It is a history of shifting affordances — of what becomes thinkable, sayable, and contestable.

5. Disagreement as evidence of shared system

A system-first ontology radically reframes disagreement.

If meaning were transmitted or aligned, disagreement would signal failure: miscommunication, misalignment, or breakdown.

But if meaning emerges from shared possibility spaces, disagreement becomes evidence of system, not its collapse.

To disagree meaningfully, participants must:

• share distinctions,

• recognise alternatives,

• and orient to a common semiotic space.

Disagreement shows that the system is sufficiently rich to sustain multiple construals of the same potential.

Far from threatening coherence, disagreement is one of the strongest indicators that a semiotic system is alive.

6. Culture without closure

Because possibility is primary, culture cannot be closed.

There is no complete inventory of meanings, no final map of distinctions, no endpoint at which the system is finished.

Cultural systems persist precisely because they remain open to re-construal — not infinitely open, but structurally generative.

This openness is not a weakness to be corrected. It is the ontological condition of meaning itself.

7. Looking ahead

If system is meaning-potential and instantiation is perspectival, then pedagogy cannot be about alignment with endpoints, nor assessment about measuring progress toward completion.

In the next post, we will explore what follows for teaching, learning, and evaluation once teleology is removed from the theory altogether.

What does pedagogy look like when its task is not to move students somewhere, but to help them explore the space they already inhabit?

That is where we turn next.

On Meaning as Possibility: 2 Instantiation Clarified: Perspective, Not Process

If system is primary, instantiation must be rethought from the ground up.

This post makes one central claim:

Instantiation is not how meaning moves.

Instantiation is how system appears.

Much confusion in theories of meaning arises not from disagreement about systems themselves, but from a persistent tendency to smuggle movement, sequence, or development into what is fundamentally a matter of perspective.

Clarifying instantiation is therefore not a technical refinement. It is an ontological necessity.

1. The mistake: treating instantiation as a process

Instantiation is often described as if it were something that happens:

• meanings move from system to text,

• abstract potential is actualised step by step,

• general resources are progressively specified,

• or cultural patterns are enacted through stages.

These descriptions differ in detail, but they share a common assumption: that instantiation is a trajectory.

Once this assumption is in place, a series of further commitments follow almost automatically:

• directionality,

• ordering,

• progress,

• and eventually evaluation relative to endpoints.

But none of this is entailed by the system–instance relation itself.

The problem is not that these metaphors are imprecise.

The problem is that they reintroduce temporal logic into a relation that is not temporal at all.

2. Instantiation as a perspectival cut

In a system-first ontology, instantiation names a relation of construal, not a relation of production.

System and instance are not two things linked by a pathway. They are the same semiotic reality viewed from different vantage points.

• From one perspective, meaning is construed paradigmatically: as potential, as a network of distinctions and affordances.

• From another perspective, meaning is construed phenomenally: as an event, a text, a situation, an experience.

Instantiation is the cut that makes one of these perspectives salient.

Nothing moves.

Nothing unfolds.

Nothing is executed.

The system does not become the instance.

The instance is the system, apprehended as actual.

3. Why instantiation is not semogenesis

A common source of confusion is the conflation of instantiation with semogenesis.

Semogenesis concerns the emergence and evolution of meaning systems over time: phylogenetic, ontogenetic, and logogenetic processes through which semiotic potential expands, reorganises, and stabilises.

Instantiation is not this.

Instantiation does not describe how systems develop, change, or grow. It describes how a system is made visible as meaningful in a particular construal.

To treat instantiation as semogenesis is to mistake:

• a perspectival relation
  for

• a developmental one.

This mistake leads directly to the idea that meaning must travel from potential to actuality, rather than simply be apprehended as actual.

4. Stratification is not instantiation

Another crucial distinction must be restored here: the distinction between stratification and instantiation.

Stratification concerns levels of symbolic abstraction within a semiotic system. In language, this includes:

• semantics,

• lexicogrammar,

• and expression systems.

These strata are related by symbolic recoding: wording symbolises meaning; expression symbolises wording. Stratification is about how meaning is organised symbolically, not about how meaning comes into being.

Instantiation, by contrast, concerns system and instance — a relation that cuts across strata, not between them.

Every instance of meaning is simultaneously:

• semantic,

• lexicogrammatical,

• and expressive.

Instantiation does not move meaning between strata. It construes the whole stratal complex from the perspective of actuality.

Confusing these relations leads to the idea that:

• strata “make meaning,”

• instantiation proceeds through levels,

• or meaning is assembled incrementally.

All of these are category errors.

5. Context and instantiation: co-appearance, not traversal

The same logic applies to context.

In a Hallidayan frame, instantiation operates:

• within language (system ↔ text), and

• within context (culture ↔ situation).

But these are not two separate instantiation processes. They are the same perspectival cut, apprehended across different semiotic systems.

A text and a situation do not come into being sequentially. They co-appear as mutually constraining construals of meaning-in-context.

There is no moment at which culture “enters” language, nor any stage at which situation is progressively specified. Culture is construed as situation in the same act by which system is construed as text.

Instantiation is therefore co-actualisation, not transmission.

6. What changes when instantiation is clarified

Once instantiation is understood perspectivally, several consequences follow immediately:

• Meaning is not directed toward completion.

• Variation is not deviation from a path.

• Creativity is not movement beyond structure.

• Disagreement is not misalignment between levels.

Instead:

• each instance re-construes the system,

• each construal slightly reshapes what the system is taken to be,

• and system remains accountable to what actually happens.

There is no endpoint against which instances are measured — only the ongoing tension between potential and phenomenon.

7. Looking ahead

If instantiation is perspectival, not procedural, then system must be understood as something more than a descriptive inventory.

In the next post, we will argue that system is best understood as a space of possibility: historically sedimented, socially shared, and continuously reconfigured by the very instances through which it is apprehended.

This is where a system-first ontology fully reveals its stakes.

Not meaning first.

Possibility first.

On Meaning as Possibility: 1 Manifesto for System-First Ontology

This series begins from a simple but far-reaching claim:

System is primary. Instance is perspectival.

This is not a methodological preference, a political stance, or a pedagogic convenience. It is an ontological commitment about what must already be in place for meaning, interpretation, disagreement, or creativity to be possible at all.

To take system seriously is not to privilege abstraction over experience, nor structure over agency. It is to recognise that without system, nothing could count as an instance in the first place.

1. System is not an explanation of instances

A persistent misunderstanding in theories of meaning is the assumption that systems exist in order to explain instances. On this view, the system sits behind or above particular acts of meaning, generating them, constraining them, or accounting for their form.

This series rejects that framing entirely.

System does not explain instances.

System is the condition of intelligibility for anything to be recognisable as an instance at all.

Without a system of potential distinctions, there is no way to identify:

• what counts as a choice,

• what counts as variation,

• what counts as difference,

• or even what counts as the same thing again.

System is therefore logically prior, not temporally prior. It does not come “before” instances in time, and it does not cause them. It is simply what must already be in place for instances to be meaningful, describable, or disputable.

2. System is meaning-potential, not meaning-in-waiting

In the Hallidayan tradition, system is understood as meaning potential. This phrase is often repeated, but rarely taken to its full ontological consequence.

Meaning potential does not mean:

• meanings waiting to be selected,

• options queued up for activation,

• or structures lying dormant until used.

It means something stronger and more radical:

System is the space of possible meanings within which any actual meaning can appear.

This space is not empty. It is structured, constrained, historically sedimented, and socially shared. But it is not itself an event, an act, or a performance. It is a condition of possibility.

What is primary, then, is not meaning, but the possibility of meaning.

This is why a system-first ontology does not begin with texts, utterances, practices, or actions. It begins with the structured potential that makes such phenomena intelligible as phenomena at all.

3. Instantiation is a perspectival cut, not a process

Once system is understood in this way, instantiation must be reconceived.

Instantiation is not:

• a movement from system to instance,

• a process of descent,

• a trajectory through levels,

• or a developmental pathway.

Instantiation is a shift in descriptive vantage.

It is the system viewed as actualised in a particular construal. The system does not move. The system does not unfold. The system does not travel anywhere.

What changes is the perspective from which the system is apprehended.

From one vantage, we see meaning as potential: a network of distinctions, affordances, and constraints.

From another vantage, we see meaning as phenomenon: a particular utterance, text, action, or event.

These are not two different things. They are two ways of construing the same semiotic reality.

Instantiation, in this sense, is not temporal, causal, or directional. It is perspectival.

4. System-first is not anti-agency

A common anxiety about system-first thinking is that it diminishes agency, creativity, or responsibility. This anxiety arises only if system is misconstrued as a mechanism that governs or determines action.

But a system-first ontology says the opposite.

Agency is not prior to system.

Agency is made possible by system.

To act meaningfully is to act within a space of distinctions that others can recognise, contest, or reinterpret. Creativity is not the breaking of rules, but the recombination of possibilities within constraint. Disagreement is not a failure of shared meaning, but evidence that a shared system is in play.

Far from erasing agency, a system-first ontology explains how agency can be intelligible, consequential, and socially legible at all.

5. Why this series, and why now

This series is an attempt to articulate a fully positive account of system-first ontology: one that does not define itself against rival metaphors, polemics, or misreadings, but develops its own internal coherence and reach.

Over the coming posts, we will explore:

• instantiation as perspectival construal,

• culture as a historically sedimented possibility space,

• pedagogy without teleology or stages,

• and the extension of system-first thinking beyond language, into music, myth, and social meaning more broadly.

The aim is not closure or completion. There is nothing to climb, finish, or arrive at.

A system-first ontology does not promise endpoints.

It opens a horizon.

And it begins from this simple commitment:

Meaning does not come first.

Possibility does.

Liora and the One Who Climbed

I. The Ladder on the Plain

Liora first met the ladder at dawn, rising from a plain that looked unfinished, as though the world had paused mid-thought.

A figure was already climbing.

They moved with discipline, measuring each rung, pausing to look back and record what they saw. Their hands were calloused, not from labour, but from conviction.

“You’ll want to start lower,” they called down to Liora.
“Clarity takes preparation.”

“Where does it go?” Liora asked.

“Upstream,” the climber said. “Toward what really explains things.”

Liora watched as villages became dots, dots became tendencies, and tendencies became silence.

She did not climb. She waited.

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II. The Companion of Maps

They met again later, in a city built vertically. The climber lived high, among balconies and plans.

“I reject the street mystics,” the climber told her. “They think meaning is just what happens locally. Chaos dressed up as freedom.”

Liora nodded. “And the ladder?”

“The ladder is necessary,” the climber said. “Without it, how would we know what matters?”

Liora walked with them through corridors of abstraction: charts, schemas, clean lines that promised responsibility.

Yet every time they descended — to eat, to sleep, to argue with a neighbour — the climber grew uneasy.

“The ground is misleading,” they said. “It feels important because it’s close.”

Liora said nothing. She watched where their eyes lingered despite themselves.

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III. The Cut in the Field

Beyond the city lay a vast field — not grass, not light, but possibility humming without direction.

“This is where meaning begins,” the climber said, planting the ladder firmly. “We must rise above it to see it properly.”

Liora stepped forward instead.

The field condensed into a moment: a word said too soon, a gesture misunderstood, a laugh that changed the room. Meaning gathered — not because it had arrived, but because this was where attention fell.

The climber froze.

“But how do you generalise from that?” they asked.

“You don’t start there,” Liora replied. “You return there.”

The ladder trembled, unsure of its footing.

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IV. The Book That Followed

They found the book together — the one said to contain all meanings.

The climber climbed to reach it. Liora opened it where it lay.

Blank pages.

“It must be read correctly,” the climber insisted.

“It must be read after,” Liora said, closing it gently.

She read conversations, breakdowns, repairs. The book listened.

When they returned, the pages had filled — not with laws, but with traces.

The climber stared. “It’s changed.”

“Yes,” said Liora. “Because it’s accountable.”

For the first time, the climber did not climb.

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V. At the Edge of Readiness

At the edge of the world, the ladder stood unused.

The climber ran a hand along it. “I thought without this, everything would dissolve.”

Liora felt the ground beneath them — vibrating, leaning, alive.

“Nothing dissolves,” she said. “It responds.”

She stepped forward.

The world did not complete itself.
It answered.

The climber did not follow immediately. But they watched — not from above, not from below — from beside.

And the ladder, faithful but no longer necessary, slowly learned to rest.

5. Liora at the Edge of Readiness

At the edge of the world, Liora paused. There was no threshold, only a thickening of attention.

The elders had told her the universe was a structure. Others said it was a struggle. Still others said it was a lesson.

She listened instead.

Beneath her feet, the ground vibrated — not with movement, but with readiness. Every step she might take was already humming, waiting to be cut into being.

She stepped.

The world did not complete itself.

It answered.

Liora laughed, because now she knew:

meaning does not arrive from above,

nor emerge from below.

It happens with.

4. The Book That Learned to Read

Liora discovered a book said to contain all meanings. Scholars climbed toward it, adding footnotes as offerings.

When she opened it, the pages were blank.

“You must read me correctly,” the book said.

“I don’t know how,” Liora replied.

“Then read something else.”

She read conversations, glances, silences. She read arguments that didn’t end and songs that changed halfway through.

When she returned, words had appeared in the book — unstable, shimmering, responsive.

“What are you?” she asked.

“I am what remains accountable,” said the book. “I do not precede what you read. I follow it.”

Liora placed the book back on the shelf, face outward, so it could keep watching.

3. The City of Upper Floors

The city was famous for its views. Every building rose in tiers, and the higher you lived, the more seriously your words were taken.

At the top lived the Planners. They spoke of patterns, trajectories, outcomes. From below, their voices sounded wise.

Liora lived at street level. She watched people negotiate doorways, misunderstand each other, invent new gestures when old ones failed.

One day she was invited upstairs.

From the balcony, the street looked orderly. Predictable. Legible.

“Now you see,” said a Planner. “This is what it really is.”

Liora shook her head. “No,” she said gently. “This is what it looks like from here.”

That night she returned to the street and began teaching children how to look across rather than up.

Slowly, the city grew more doors than floors.

2. The Cut

Liora stood before a vast, shimmering field — not land, not sky, but possibility itself. It pulsed softly, as though waiting.

“How do I enter?” she asked.

“You don’t,” said the field. “You cut.”

She hesitated. “Will I damage you?”

“You will make me visible.”

She stepped forward.

At once, the field became a moment: a cry, a gesture, a phrase half-spoken. Around it, meaning condensed — not because it had travelled there, but because this was where the cut had fallen.

Behind her, the field remained whole.

Ahead of her, the moment unfolded.

Liora understood then: the world does not move toward instances.

Instances open the world.

1. Liora and the Ladder That Would Not End

Liora found the ladder at dawn, standing in the middle of a plain that had no reason to be flat.

It rose upward into cloud, rung after rung identical, polished by generations of hands.

“Where does it go?” she asked the air.

“To clarity,” the air replied. “To certainty. To the place where meaning is decided.”

Liora climbed. Each rung promised a wider view, and indeed the land below grew smaller, neater, easier to name. Villages became dots. Rivers became lines. Lives became patterns.

But something strange happened: the higher she climbed, the quieter the world became. No wind. No voices. No resistance.

At last she realised the ladder had no top — only less world.

She climbed down.

When her feet touched the ground again, the plain bloomed with sound. The ladder remained, but now she saw it clearly: not a path, but a habit.

She walked away sideways, and the ladder forgot her.

Key Takeaways: Ladders, Instantiation, and Epistemic Awareness

This mini-guide distills the main lessons from our posts on instantiation, ladder logic, and the persistence of epistemic privilege.

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1. Instantiation is perspectival, not sequential

• Texts and instances do not climb a ladder toward system-level abstraction.

• Each instance is a cut across semiotic potential, producing meaning in context.

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2. Stratification is symbolic, not generative

• Strata (phonology, lexicogrammar, semantics, context) realise each other, but do not themselves create meaning.

• Treating all strata as “meaning-making” (Martin’s error) confuses stratification with semogenesis.

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3. Ladders are optional, not necessary

• Ladder logic emerges when epistemic authority is prioritised upstream, not from Halliday’s model.

• It is portable, appearing even when stratified context or genre is rejected.

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4. Epistemic awareness is crucial

• Name the ladder when it appears.

• Decide consciously whether to retain, relax, or collapse it.

• Awareness preserves interpretive flexibility, analytic accountability, and pedagogical openness.

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5. Pedagogy without ladders

• Encourage instance-first observation.

• Treat variation as informative, not deviant.

• Let system-level abstractions be retrospective, accountable, and descriptive, not directive.

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6. Perspective over trajectory

• Semiotic potential unfolds relationally, probabilistically, and contextually.

• Meaning emerges, it is not prescribed.

• Stepping off the ladder allows analysis, pedagogy, and theory to respect the relational and perspectival nature of semiotic systems.

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Bottom line: Ladders travel only because we allow them to. Recognising them is the first step toward responsible, flexible, and reflective semiotic practice.

Coda: Epistemic Awareness, Ladders, and the Work of Analysis

This series has traced a subtle but persistent phenomenon in linguistic theory and pedagogy: the upstream imperative, the invisible ladder that shapes how we observe, construe, and teach meaning.

We began by examining instantiation, showing how misreadings — such as Martin’s ladder — can impose a directional logic onto what Halliday presents as a perspectival cline. We saw that ladders:

• Travel independently of other theoretical commitments,

• Can be adopted selectively, and

• Persist even when stratified context or teleological genre is rejected.

The ladder is not just a model; it is an epistemic posture. It privileges the abstract over the instance, the system over the local construal, and teleology over probabilistic enactment.

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1. Martin and the ladder

Martin’s reconstruction of instantiation misreads Halliday in two crucial ways:

1. Treating all strata as meaning-making, conflating stratification with semogenesis,

2. Interpreting instantiation as a vector between modules, rather than a perspectival cut across semiotic potential.

This produces a ladder that moves from abstract system to concrete instance — a trajectory that Halliday’s model never requires.

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2. Lukin’s provocation

Lukin’s work illustrates the portable logic of the ladder: although she rejects localist accounts of agency, her analysis still retains a laddered relation between system and instance, in which abstraction carries epistemic priority:

• Analysis still favours instance-first abstraction as epistemically superior,

• System-level principles are implicitly treated as authoritative,

• Teleological assumptions about agency and knowledge slip in, even without genre or register as organising categories.

Her example demonstrates that rejecting stratified context does not inoculate a theory against epistemic privilege or directional bias.

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3. Lessons for analysis and pedagogy

From these threads, three guiding principles emerge:

1. Observe before abstracting: let first-order meaning, context, and instance inform system-level generalisations.

2. Name the ladder: recognise when analysis or teaching privileges upstream epistemic authority.

3. Choose consciously: retain, relax, or collapse the ladder — but do so deliberately, aware of the epistemic consequences.

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4. Restoring Hallidayan balance

Stepping off the ladder is not abandoning structure. Rather, it restores the perspectival and relational nature of instantiation:

• Context remains semiotic potential, enacted but not traversed.

• System is retrospective, accountable to instances.

• Meaning emerges in the interplay of system, instance, and situation, without a preordained vector.

This balance safeguards interpretive flexibility, analytic accountability, and pedagogical openness.

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5. Closing thought

The ladder will travel as long as we unthinkingly prioritise abstraction over construal. Recognising its persistence — in theory, analysis, and teaching — is the first step toward more reflective and responsible engagement with semiotic systems.

Halliday’s architecture is robust precisely because it allows meaning to emerge. Ladders are optional. Perspective is essential.

Reflection: Ladder Logic and the Responsibility of Analysis

The case study shows us something subtle but powerful: the ladder is not a theoretical necessity — it is a habit of thought, an epistemic posture. It travels from theory into pedagogy, from analytic framework into interpretive practice, shaping what is noticed, how it is noticed, and what counts as a legitimate observation.

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1. Analytic implications

Recognising the upstream imperative changes the way we approach research:

• Observation before abstraction: begin with the instance, the situated text, or the embodied interaction. Let patterns emerge, rather than assuming they exist upstream.

• Variation as data, not deviation: differences between texts, contexts, or readings are evidence of semiotic potential, not failures to align.

• System as accountable, not prescriptive: abstract structures describe tendencies, not teleologies. They remain accountable to the semiotic phenomena they model.

By suspending the ladder, analysis becomes exploratory and responsive, rather than prescriptive and hierarchical.

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2. Pedagogical implications

Recognising the ladder’s travel into teaching is equally consequential:

• From compliance to engagement: students shift from following a stepwise pathway to observing, construal, and negotiation of meaning.

• Agency restored: learners are invited to make interpretive choices rather than reproduce an upstream vector.

• Assessment reframed: success is judged by understanding, not by conformity to an assumed plan.

Pedagogy guided by awareness of the ladder encourages interpretive flexibility and epistemic humility.

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3. Ethical and epistemic awareness

The persistence of ladder logic is not a neutral occurrence. It carries epistemic authority, which can privilege certain forms of explanation, analytical habits, or political positions. Recognising this authority allows analysts and teachers to make conscious choices:

• Preserve the ladder with full awareness of its consequences, or

• Relax it, redistributing interpretive power toward the instance and context.

Either choice is valid — but consciousness of the ladder is necessary to avoid reproducing epistemic hierarchies unconsciously.

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4. Takeaway

Ladder logic persists not because of theory but because of felt epistemic need. It shapes observation, construal, and teaching — often invisibly.

By recognising where the ladder travels, and by deliberately choosing when and how to engage with it, we open space for:

• Analysis that respects semiotic potential,

• Pedagogy that fosters interpretive agency, and

• Theoretical reflection that is accountable to both system and instance.

In short, seeing the ladder allows us to step off it — without abandoning structure, and without constraining meaning.

Seeing the Ladder in Action: A Case Study in Epistemic Priority

The previous post identified the upstream imperative as the invisible force that sustains ladder logic, even when stratified context or teleological genres are rejected. Here, we take a closer look at how it manifests in practice, both in analysis and in pedagogy.

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1. The analytic scenario

Imagine a classroom or research workshop where students are tasked with analysing a short text:

• The text is multimodal, contextualised, and rich in first-order meaning (actions, social interactions, gestures).

• The instructor provides a Hallidayan framework, highlighting system, instance, and context.

Two possible approaches emerge:

1. Upstream-oriented approach (ladder logic active):

   • Students are told: start with system; instance is derivative.

   • Analysis focuses on the abstract system first (e.g., transitivity patterns, metafunctional distributions).

   • Variation, multimodality, or contextual subtleties are treated as “exceptions” or “noise.”

2. Perspectival approach (Hallidayan alternative):

   • Students are invited to observe first-order interactions and construals.

   • System emerges as a retrospective abstraction, accountable to what actually occurs in the instance.

   • Variation is informative, contextual meaning is foregrounded, and agency is distributed.

Observation: the upstream imperative naturally produces a ladder — hierarchy, directionality, and the prioritisation of abstract explanation over situated meaning.

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2. Pedagogical consequences

When ladder logic is active:

• Tasks become procedural rather than exploratory.

• Success is measured by alignment with system-first analysis, not by interpretive insight.

• Students internalise the vector: knowledge must be approached from above, not through engagement.

By contrast, the Hallidayan perspective encourages:

• Engagement with semiosis as it unfolds.

• Reflexive awareness of analytic choices.

• Recognition that meaning emerges in context, not merely through formal abstraction.

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3. The subtle power of the ladder

Even when explicit instructions do not require it, ladder logic can appear:

• In the questions students ask: “What system-level pattern am I supposed to find?”

• In the examples chosen by instructors: preference for prototypical or canonical cases.

• In the metrics of success: stages, checklists, or stepwise procedures.

The ladder travels because epistemic privilege has migrated from theory into practice.

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4. Recognising and relaxing the ladder

The first step to counteracting this effect is awareness:

• Name the upstream imperative.

• Compare system-first and instance-first approaches side by side.

• Encourage interpretive flexibility: let instance and context guide the abstraction.

A small shift — asking students to describe before abstracting — is often enough to collapse the ladder, allowing semiotic potential to take centre stage.

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5. Takeaway

This case study shows that the ladder is not only a theoretical artefact but a pedagogical force. Its persistence shapes observation, construal, and evaluation.

By observing where the ladder appears, teachers and analysts can choose to either maintain it — with full awareness of its epistemic consequences — or relax it, letting first-order meaning lead the way.