After Representation: Preface

Where Representationalism Enters Linguistics and Semiotics: A Diagnostic Excavation

This series is not written as a corrective history. It does not aim to replace existing accounts, adjudicate intellectual winners, or recover an allegedly lost purity of thought. Its purpose is diagnostic.

The concern here is not who was right, but where certain explanatory habits entered, hardened, and began to feel inevitable. In particular, the series traces how representationalism comes to organise what counts as an explanation of meaning, often without being named or argued for.

Representationalism is treated neither as an error nor as a doctrine. It is approached as an orientation: a way of carving up phenomena such that meanings are taken to stand for something else, and explanation is therefore compelled to appeal to causes, origins, intentions, or ends. Once this orientation is in place, teleology and causation follow as symptoms, not as optional theoretical additions.

The historical movement traced here is therefore selective and structural rather than comprehensive. Moments are chosen not for their prominence, but for the specific commitments they install. Alternatives are noted not to valorise them, but to show that other paths were available — and that the dominance of representation was contingent, not necessary.

This is an excavation rather than a refutation. Its aim is to make visible the ground on which contemporary theories still stand, so that departures from representational explanation can be recognised as ontological shifts rather than local revisions.

---

Series Aim

This series traces how representationalist assumptions come to organise linguistic and semiotic thought, not as an explicit doctrine, but as a background orientation that shapes what counts as explanation. The task is diagnostic rather than revisionist: to locate where and how representation becomes structural, and what alternative paths were available but largely foreclosed.

The argument proceeds historically, but not as intellectual history for its own sake. Each stop identifies a specific commitment—about signs, meaning, mind, or reference—that installs representational explanation and thereby invites teleology and causation.

Teleology as Symptom, Not Explanation

1. The Recurring Problem

Certain concepts have a habit of resurfacing even when they have been carefully excluded. Teleology and causation are among the most persistent. They reappear not because an argument has failed, but because a background assumption has remained untouched.

Whenever meaning, action, or systemic coherence is discussed, explanatory pressure seems to push inexorably toward questions of why this happened and what it was for. These questions feel natural, even unavoidable. Yet their apparent inevitability is itself a theoretical artefact.

The recurrence of teleology and causation is not evidence of their ontological necessity. It is evidence of a representationalist inheritance that continues to structure how explanation is expected to work.

2. Representation and Explanatory Debt

Representation carries obligations. If an event, form, or meaning is taken to stand for something beyond itself, then explanation must answer two further questions:

• What produced this representation?

• What purpose does it serve?

The first question installs causation; the second installs teleology. Neither is optional once representation is treated as basic. They are not independent explanatory tools, but structural consequences of assuming that phenomena point beyond themselves.

In this sense, teleology and causation are not neutral concepts. They arise only after a prior decision has been made about what kind of thing meaning is.

3. Directionality as a Hidden Commitment

Representational accounts quietly impose directionality in three distinct but related ways:

1. Temporal direction: earlier states are taken to generate later ones.

2. Intentional direction: actions are taken to aim at outcomes.

3. Semantic direction: meanings are taken to refer to something other than themselves.

Once these directions are assumed, explanation must move along them. One must trace causes backward, purposes forward, and references outward. Teleology and causation merely name the routes that explanation is now compelled to follow.

4. Why Teleology Is a Symptom, Not an Explanation

Teleology appears to explain coherence by appealing to ends or goals. But this explanation works only because representationalism has already done the real work. The goal explains the action only if the action is already understood as oriented toward representing or achieving that goal.

Seen this way, teleology is not explanatory at the ontological level. It is a symptom of a deeper commitment: the assumption that systems, actions, or meanings are fundamentally about something else.

Remove that assumption, and teleology loses its footing.

5. A Relational Alternative

A relational ontology of meaning does not begin with representation. It begins with structure.

• Systems are understood as structured spaces of possibility.

• Actualisation is not a process driven by causes, but a perspectival cut within that space.

• Meaning is not transmitted or aimed; it is construed.

• Stability is not goal maintenance, but the persistence of admissibility conditions.

Within such a framework, nothing needs to be for anything else, and nothing needs to produce an outcome in order for coherence to be intelligible.

Change does not require a cause; it requires a different cut.

Stability does not require a goal; it requires constraints that continue to hold.

6. Explanation Without Teleology or Causation

This is not an abandonment of explanation, but a re-grounding of it.

Instead of asking:

• What caused this?

• What was it for?

Explanation asks:

• What was admissible?

• What distinctions were enacted?

• What relations persisted across cuts?

These questions do not point beyond the phenomenon. They remain immanent to the structure within which the phenomenon appears.

7. The Source of Persistent Unease

The sense that something is missing when teleology and causation are absent is itself diagnostic. It signals an expectation that explanation must always move outward: toward origins, ends, or referents.

A relational ontology refuses that movement. Not by denial, but by showing that coherence, intelligibility, and persistence can be accounted for without it.

Teleology and causation, on this view, are not fundamental features of reality. They are strategies for coping with representation once representation has been assumed.

8. What This Makes Possible

Once teleology is recognised as a symptom rather than an explanation, several long-standing problems loosen their grip:

• Error no longer requires deviation from a correct representation.

• Misalignment no longer requires failure to reach a shared goal.

• Design no longer requires directing outcomes, only shaping possibility.

What remains is not a thinner ontology, but a more exact one: one that locates explanation in relation, admissibility, and perspectival cut, rather than in causes and ends.

Teleology fades not because it has been refuted, but because it is no longer needed.

Ontology and Theory of Meaning: Clarifying the Distinction

Meaning is often discussed as if it were a single phenomenon, yet two very different kinds of accounts can be offered: ontologies of meaning and theories of meaning. While they are related, they operate at distinct levels and serve different purposes.

---

Ontology of Meaning

An ontology of meaning is concerned with what meaning is, in its most fundamental sense. It specifies the relational structure, potentiality, and conditions of existence for meaning itself. It addresses questions such as:

• What kinds of meaning events are possible?

• How do different instances of meaning relate to each other?

• How can meaning be actualised without reference to representation or convention?

Ontologies describe the space of possibility within which meaning occurs. They are meta-structural: they do not explain how meaning is encoded, interpreted, or communicated within specific systems, but rather outline the relational and structural conditions under which meaning can exist at all.

Illustrative Example: Cuts and Admissibility

In a relational ontology, a system defines the admissible cuts—the selections that can be actualised without violating the system’s structure. Consider a network of distinctions where each node represents a potential meaning. Some configurations are coherent and admissible, while others are impossible. The ontology defines this space of possibility, showing which cuts can exist and how they relate, but it does not dictate which cut will be realised in any instance.

---

Theory of Meaning

A theory of meaning, by contrast, explains how meaning operates within a particular system or medium. Theories address questions such as:

• How are meanings represented and communicated?

• What mechanisms govern interpretation and understanding?

• How do signs, symbols, or grammatical structures produce coherent meanings?

Theories are applied and functional. They offer explanatory models for the processes, rules, and dynamics through which meaning manifests in specific contexts, whether in language, semiotics, or other symbolic systems.

Illustrative Example: Systemic Functional Linguistics

Within a language like English, a theory such as Hallidayan SFL explains how register, metafunctions, and clause structures realise meanings in context. It describes how actualisation of meaning occurs in linguistic practice, but it presumes the underlying space of possible meanings (the ontological ground) rather than defining it.

---

Key Distinctions

Aspect	Ontology of Meaning	Theory of Meaning
Purpose	Describe the nature and structure of meaning itself	Explain how meaning functions within a system
Focus	Possibility, structure, relational potential	Representation, interpretation, operation
Level	Meta-structural, fundamental	Applied, functional
Scope	Universal; independent of specific systems	Contextual; system-specific
Examples	Relational ontology: systems, cuts, admissibility, actualisation	Hallidayan SFL: register, metafunctions, realisation, clause structures

---

Why the Distinction Matters

Recognising this distinction clarifies the conceptual landscape of meaning. An ontology identifies what is possible, without dictating how it must be realised. A theory operates within that space, offering explanations for how meaning is produced, interpreted, and communicated.

This perspective allows multiple theories to coexist without conflict: they can be understood as modelling different slices of the ontological space, each concerned with particular modes of representation or interpretation. Ontology provides the ground of possibility, while theory provides the mechanics of operation within that ground.

Illustrative Example: Actualisation Across Perspectives

Suppose two observers interact with the same system of distinctions. Each may actualise different admissible cuts: one may emphasise certain relationships, while the other enacts a distinct configuration. The ontology allows for both, but a theory would describe how each observer’s cut manifests, is interpreted, or communicated within a given semiotic system.

---

Conclusion

Separating ontology from theory illuminates the different levels at which meaning can be approached. Ontology addresses the conditions of possibility for meaning itself, while theory addresses the mechanisms of operation within specific systems. Illustrative examples from relational ontology—cuts, admissibility, and perspectival actualisation—demonstrate how ontology structures the space of potential meaning, while theories describe how meanings are realised and interpreted within that space. Understanding both levels enriches our grasp of meaning, offering a framework for thinking systematically about how meaning exists and how it functions.