Semiotic Dynamics: How Meaning Evolves Through System, Self, and Situation

In our previous post, we outlined a semiotic triangle linking reconstrual, individuation, and instantiation—three interdependent dimensions of how meaning becomes reality. But this triangle is not a static structure. It is dynamic. Meaning flows, mutates, and multiplies through the ongoing interaction of these dimensions. This post explores the dynamics of that interplay.

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1. From Instantiation to System: How Use Becomes Structure

Each act of meaning (an instantiation) draws on potential. But repeated acts don’t just express potential—they shape it. Over time:

• Innovations introduced in a local context may spread.

• Patterns stabilise into norms.

• Idiosyncrasies coalesce into registers.

This is how instantiation feeds back into system. In systemic functional linguistics (SFL), this process is sometimes referred to as "delicacy in flux": the system is never static, always reorganising as it is used.

Use reconfigures potential.

This feedback loop allows for reconstruals to emerge not just from theoretical reflection, but from practice—from meaning-in-action.

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2. From Individuation to Reconstrual: How Subjectivities Enable Transformation

Individuated meaning potentials—the partial, patterned repertoires held by individuals or groups—do more than reflect the system. They mediate how systems evolve:

• A community with a distinct repertoire may reconstrue a dominant discourse into a counter-discourse.

• A thinker with an unusual semantic profile may reconstrue theory as myth, or vice versa.

• A culture may resist or enable certain reconstruals depending on how meaning is individuated within it.

Who we are shapes what reconstruals are possible.

Reconstruals, then, are not abstract derivations. They are situated acts, made possible by particular individuations.

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3. From System to Self: How Meaning Potentials Shape Persons

While individuation differentiates the system across persons, the reverse is also true: systems shape selves:

• Educational, cultural, and discursive systems provide resources (and constraints) for individuation.

• What meanings we can make depends on what systems we’ve had access to.

• Our positions in a social semiotic field (e.g. centre vs margin) affect the density and range of our meaning potential.

Systems distribute the very conditions of individuation.

In this way, every instantiation carries both agency and inheritance: we act, but we do so within patterns that act on us.

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The Pulse of Semiotic Evolution

These interrelations—system feeding into self, self enabling reconstrual, reconstrual reshaping system—form a kind of semiotic metabolism:

• Meaning is actualised in situations.

• Recurrent instantiations shape and shift the system.

• Systems afford or deny individuation.

• New individuations enable new reconstruals.

It is through this ongoing, recursive interplay that symbolic systems evolve. Not as pure abstractions, but as lived, enacted, and re-enacted structures.

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Living Within the Flow

As participants in this ecology, we are never outside it. We are always:

• Instantiating meanings that have been made possible,

• Individuating meanings that have been distributed,

• Reconstruing meanings that have been sedimented.

The more aware we are of these processes, the more consciously we can engage in them:

To live semiotically is to live in the flow of meaning’s evolution.

We are neither mere recipients nor sole creators of meaning. We are its co-instantiators, co-individuators, and co-reconstruers.

And in that dynamic, we find both our limits—and our possibilities.

The Triangle of Meaning: Reconstrual, Individuation, Instantiation

A synthesis of three dimensions of semiotic life

Over the last few posts, we've traced three key processes through which meaning becomes reality: reconstrual, individuation, and instantiation. Each offers a different vantage point on how meaning lives, evolves, and takes shape. This post brings them together into a single conceptual frame—a kind of semiotic triangle linking system, self, and situation.

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1. Reconstrual: Evolving Meaning Across Orders

Reconstrual is the symbolic transformation of meaning across semiotic orders. In our earlier posts, we followed a particular lineage:

• Language construes experience as meaning.

• Science reconstrues that meaning as theory.

• Myth reconstrues theory as existential orientation.

• Philosophy reconstrues all of the above in reflexive thought.

Each symbolic order reorganises and reorients what has been construed before it. Reconstrual, then, is how systems evolve, layering new orders of meaning onto the semiotic ecology.

Reconstrual links symbolic systems in a vertical lineage of meaning.

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2. Individuation: Differentiating Meaning Across Persons

Individuation accounts for how meaning potential is distributed and diversified across persons. Just as an ecosystem has niches, specialisations, and interdependencies, so too does the semiotic ecology:

• No individual carries the whole of a language.

• Each thinker, speaker, or artist develops a partial, patterned, perspectival relation to meaning.

• This differentiation is not a deficiency but a condition of richness.

Individuation helps us understand who carries what potential, how subjectivities emerge, and how communities of meaning take shape.

Individuation distributes and diversifies meaning potential.

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3. Instantiation: Actualising Meaning in Context

Instantiation is the unfolding of meaning potential in specific situations:

• A scientific theory is instantiated in a paper, an experiment, or a lecture.

• A myth is instantiated in a story told, a rite enacted, or a dream dreamt.

• A philosophical insight is instantiated in dialogue, writing, or contemplation.

Instantiation shows how meaning is realised, moment by moment, act by act. No potential becomes real apart from its instantiation.

Instantiation brings meaning to life in context.

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The Semiotic Triangle: System, Self, Situation

We can now see these three processes not as separate paths, but as interdependent dimensions of a single ecology of meaning:

Each act of meaning is shaped by:

• the systems of meaning it reconstrues,

• the selves through whom it is individuated,

• the situations in which it is instantiated.

Meaning, in this view, is not a thing but a processual triangulation:

It evolves through reconstrual, differentiates through individuation, and comes alive through instantiation.

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A Living Semiotic Ecology

This triangle does not close. It pulses. It breathes. It loops.

• As meaning is instantiated, it reshapes the individuation of the person.

• As persons interact, they participate in the evolution of the system.

• As systems evolve, they change what can be instantiated in the world.

We are not outside this process. We are its participants. Every word we utter, every insight we form, every symbol we interpret is a movement within this semiotic ecology.

To mean is to live in the triangle.

And perhaps to live fully is to become more conscious of our part in it—as reconstruals of meaning, as individuated bearers of potential, and as active agents of instantiation.

Instantiation: Where Meaning Comes Alive

A follow-up to 'Individuation and the Ecology of Meaning'

In our previous posts, we explored how meaning evolves through symbolic reconstrual—from language to science, to myth, to philosophy—and how this evolution is differentiated across persons through the process of individuation. But meaning does not exist solely as potential, whether collective or personal. It comes alive in context. This is the role of instantiation.

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From Potential to Instance

In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), instantiation refers to the relation between a system of meaning potential and its activation in a particular instance. Language, for example, is not a fixed repository of meanings but a potential that gets instantiated in speaking, writing, gesture, or thought.

Instantiation is the unfolding of meaning in context.

If individuation answers the question who brings what kind of meaning potential to the table?, instantiation answers how does that potential become actual here and now?

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A Dynamic Ecology

When we layer instantiation onto the ecology of meaning, we begin to see meaning not as a set of static forms but as an ever-changing field of contextual actualisation:

• A scientific theory is not just a reconstrual of meaning—it is instantiated in a paper, a classroom explanation, a debate.

• A myth is not merely a symbolic orientation—it is instantiated in storytelling, ritual, even dreams.

• A philosophical reflection is not only a meta-level analysis—it is instantiated in dialogue, writing, or silent contemplation.

Each of these is a situated act, drawing on both collective meaning potential and individual differentiation to produce a specific, momentary construal of reality.

Meaning lives in the interplay between potential, person, and context.

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Instantiating Across Orders

Instantiation also helps clarify how different symbolic orders interact. For example:

• Language construes experience, but it does so through specific instantiations of semantic, lexicogrammatical, and phonological systems.

• Science reconstrues language as theory, but each theory is instantiated in empirical practices, mathematical models, or explanatory metaphors.

• Myth reconstrues theory as existential significance, instantiated through narrative arcs and ritual acts.

• Philosophy reconstrues all these from a reflective stance, instantiated in critical discourse, dialectic, or systematic thought.

No symbolic order is actual apart from its instances. The reconstrual of meaning happens through instantiation, not above or outside it.

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Individuated Instantiations

The intersection of individuation and instantiation is where meaning becomes most alive:

• An individual scientist’s personal engagement with a theory instantiates that theory in a way no one else could.

• A hearer’s resonant experience of a myth instantiates its symbolic potential within their own life narrative.

• A philosopher’s conceptual framing instantiates a path of inquiry shaped by their own differentiated history of meaning.

Every instance is a signature. It bears the mark of the system, the context, and the self.

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Conclusion: Meaning in Motion

With instantiation, we complete our model of meaning as living process. Meaning does not preexist in systems, nor reside permanently in individuals. It must be instantiated. Each instance is a moment of emergence, where the potential of the system and the individuation of the self meet the contingencies of the world.

Meaning is not a substance. It is an act.

In the final reckoning, it is through instantiation that reality is made semiotic, that potential becomes presence, and that the human story is continually written—one act of meaning at a time.

Individuation and the Ecology of Meaning: A Follow-up to 'From Language to Myth'

In our previous post, we traced a sequence of symbolic reconstruals: from language to science, from science to myth, and from myth to philosophy. Each stage represented a deeper or broader integration of meaning, forming what we called a hierarchy of reconstruals. But this hierarchy does not operate in the abstract. It unfolds within a semiotic ecology populated by individuals.

This post introduces a second dimension to our model: individuation. If reconstrual explains how symbolic systems evolve and relate, individuation explains how meaning differentiates across persons. It is not merely a psychological process, but a semiotic one: the shaping of personal meaning potential within a shared symbolic order.

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Individuation: Differentiation of Meaning Potential

In Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), individuation refers to the relation between the collective meaning potential of a culture and the differentiated meaning potentials of individuals. While instantiation is about moving from potential to instance, individuation is about moving from collective to singular.

Individuation is the differentiation of reality as meaning potential across persons.

Each individual does not merely draw from a neutral system—they actively shape and are shaped by it. Meaning potential is never undifferentiated; it always appears as somebody’s semiotic repertoire, embedded in biography, community, and cultural history.

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Reconstrual Across the Axis of Individuation

Let’s revisit our four stages of symbolic activity, now layered with the principle of individuation:

• Language construes experience as meaning—but each speaker individuates the linguistic system differently, forming a unique register, idiolect, or symbolic style.

• Science reconstrues meaning as theory—but each scientist or community brings their own history of interests, training, and theoretical commitments.

• Myth reconstrues theory as existential orientation—but each hearer integrates myth into their own symbolic journey, often unconsciously.

• Philosophy reflects on reconstrual—but always through a thinker’s singular engagement with the questions that most trouble or inspire them.

In this way, individuation ensures that symbolic activity is not just collective or cognitive, but personal and situated.

Each reconstrual of meaning is a negotiation between system and self.

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The Hero’s Journey as Individuation

This model resonates strongly with Joseph Campbell’s interpretation of myth as a symbolic script for individuation. The hero myth does not simply recount a collective story—it invites the hearer to take up shared meaning potentials and reconstrue them as personal symbolic orientation.

The hero journeys into the unknown, not to escape the world, but to return transformed. So too does individuation involve venturing beyond given meanings in order to reconfigure one’s place within them.

Myth is theory re-individuated—lived, felt, and re-embodied as personal meaning.

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Meaning as Semiotic Ecology

When we consider both reconstrual and individuation, we can begin to think of meaning not as a static structure, but as a living ecology. Meaning potential is distributed across persons and systems, across communities and timescales. Each individual is not an isolated node, but a distinct articulation of the system’s potential.

The human condition is not only to live in meaning, but to be a unique differentiation of it.

Individuation, then, is not the narrowing of meaning, but its diversification. It is how the symbolic life of a culture is sustained: not through repetition, but through differentiated resonance.

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Conclusion

Individuation adds depth to our model of symbolic reconstrual. It reminds us that meaning is not only constructed and reconstrued at the level of systems, but always embodied, enacted, and transformed by individuals.

As we move from language to science, from science to myth, and from myth to philosophy, we do not move impersonally. We move as selves in the making—each of us a singular site of semiotic resonance, where the ecology of meaning takes shape again and again.

From Language to Myth: Mapping the Reconstruals of Meaning

How does human consciousness transform raw experience into rich symbolic worlds? Language, science, myth, and philosophy each play distinct roles in this transformation—but how are they related? This post maps a pathway through four forms of symbolic activity, showing how meaning is not simply constructed once and for all, but reconstrued at progressively deeper levels of abstraction and integration.

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1. Language: Construal of Experience as Meaning

Following Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), we begin with the premise that language is not a mirror of reality but a semiotic system that construes experience as meaning. What we commonly call “reality” is already shaped by this symbolic mediation. Language transforms the potential of experience into structured patterns of meaning.

Language is the first-order semiotic act that brings phenomena into being as meaningful. It does not merely name things already given; it makes them available to consciousness and communication. Meaning is not discovered; it is construed.

Language transforms experiential potential into symbolic meaning potential—creating our semiotic reality.

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2. Science: Reconstrual of Meaning as Theory

Science begins not with raw experience, but with the meanings already construed by language. It operates as a reconstrual: a specialised, systematic, and often mathematically formalised reconstruction of semiotic reality into theory.

Scientific theory compresses meaning into models that are explanatory, predictive, and generalisable. These models are not direct representations of reality, but symbolic reconstruals of meanings originally made available through language.

Science is meaning made systematic, predictive, and provisional.

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3. Myth: Reconstrual of Theory as Existential Orientation

In Joseph Campbell’s work, myth is not a primitive forerunner of science but a symbolic successor. Where science abstracts, myth re-integrates. Campbell reconstrues scientific theory not as myth in a reductive sense, but into myth: embedding theoretical knowledge into narratives that speak to the existential, emotional, and psychological dimensions of human life.

Myth restores the resonance of meaning by re-individuating abstract theory. In myth, the cosmos is no longer a neutral mechanism but a stage for symbolic participation. Myth does not reject science—it re-situates it within the total ecology of human meaning.

Myth is theory re-individuated—returned to the symbolic ecology of human life.

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4. Philosophy: Reflective Reconstrual of the Whole

Philosophy occupies a unique and mobile position in this schema. It is not bound to any one level but operates across all of them. Philosophy reflects on the conditions and consequences of symbolic construal and reconstrual. It may critique the categories of experience, analyse the structure of language, interrogate the assumptions of science, or examine the role of myth.

Philosophy is meta-symbolic: it questions what it means to mean. Sometimes it allies with science, sometimes with myth. At other times, it sets out to reconstrue the entire hierarchy of meaning itself.

Philosophy is a meta-symbolic activity—reflection on the conditions and consequences of reconstrual.

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Conclusion

This schema offers one way to understand the layered symbolic activities that shape human reality. Rather than seeing language, science, myth, and philosophy as rival approaches, we can recognise them as a hierarchy of reconstruals. Each plays a distinct role in the transformation of experience into meaning, and meaning into deeper forms of symbolic integration.

From language to science, from science to myth, and from myth to philosophical reflection, we witness not a linear progress but a spiral movement—each level reconfiguring the last, each returning us to the fundamental question: what does it mean to live meaningfully in a world we first bring into being through meaning?

The Semiotics of Simulated Instantiation: Revisiting the Language of LLMs

1. Modelling Simulated Instantiation in LLMs

LLMs like ChatGPT simulate the process of instantiation in a way that's fundamentally different from human semiotic agents. Humans engage in the process of instantiating meaning from a structured system of meaning potential, but LLMs don't have access to such systems in the same way. Instead, they "generate" outputs based on the statistical properties of the text they've been trained on.

We can model this simulation of instantiation by:

• Viewing LLMs as performing semiotic simulations rather than instantiating meaning in the full sense: LLMs output tokens based on probabilities from their training data. This could be seen as a surface-level instantiation of meaning potential, but one that lacks the deeper semiotic commitment or subjectivity involved in human meaning-making.

• Simulated selection of meaning potential: LLMs select from a pool of pre-encoded patterns (text sequences) based on probability, but they don’t ‘understand’ the meaning potential they’re drawing from. In SFL terms, they could be seen as generating ‘pseudo-instances’—output tokens that follow linguistic rules but don’t carry the same semiotic weight as human-constructed texts.

• The ontological gap in simulated instantiation: To model this, we could think about LLMs as 'simulators' of the semiotic process. They replicate patterns in a way that mimics human meaning instantiation but without the semiotic engagement with the world that humans experience. A key distinction here is that humans project between orders of reality (i.e., from experience to meaning), while LLMs generate text within a closed system of token prediction.

2. The Semiotic Aesthetics of LLM Outputs

When we consider the semiotic aesthetics of LLM outputs, we're looking at how meaning, form, and structure emerge from a machine's statistical processing of text. This is an aesthetic matter because we’re concerned with how the generated text might be perceived by human readers and how that perception interacts with the potential meanings embedded in the language model.

• The illusion of meaning: LLMs produce outputs that often seem to instantiate coherent, meaningful statements. From an aesthetic perspective, this illusion of meaning — even if it’s not true instantiation — is crucial. The semiotic resonance of LLM-generated text is driven by its form and structure, mimicking human linguistic production. We could model this aesthetic phenomenon by considering how tokens combine to produce perceived meaning, even if that meaning is not the result of a semiotic agent's projection.

• Deceptive coherence: LLMs are often good at producing grammatically and syntactically coherent texts, but this coherence is only superficial. The aesthetics here might be compared to art forms that create a surface appearance of depth or intentionality without actual engagement with the world. In semiotic terms, we might describe LLM output as an empty form of meaning — it appears to instantiate meaning but lacks the semiotic depth that comes from human interaction with the world.

• Audience perception: This is where the semiotic aesthetics really come into play. Humans engaging with LLM output bring their own meaning potential to the text. What LLMs provide is a structure — a scaffold of meaning that, depending on the reader’s interpretive lens, can take on various meanings. This gives LLM output a certain aesthetic flexibility — it can resonate with different semiotic systems depending on the context in which it is read.

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Connecting the Two:

What connects the model of simulated instantiation with the semiotic aesthetics of LLM outputs is how these outputs are perceived by users. Even though LLMs simulate the process of meaning creation, they still produce meaningful appearances — texts that can evoke a wide range of interpretative responses. The key distinction is that this semiotic resonance occurs within a closed system of algorithmic processes, which contrasts with the open system of human semiotic agency.

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Let's continue building this framework by expanding on some of the key ideas we’ve touched on so far. We’ll take a more granular approach to understanding how simulated instantiation and semiotic aesthetics of LLMs fit together in the larger picture of meaning-making.

3. The Semiotic Loop in LLMs: Generating and Interpreting Output

In human semiotics, the act of instantiating meaning involves a dynamic interplay between the meaner (the semiotic agent) and the meaning potential (the system of possible meanings). Humans project from experience to meaning by engaging in semiotic processes that are both material and mental. LLMs, by contrast, don’t project meaning in this way. However, they still "generate" meaning through the selection of tokens that follow learned probabilistic relationships, effectively mimicking the semiotic process.

a. The Simulation of Semiotic Projection

LLMs don’t instantiate meaning as humans do, but they simulate the process of projecting from meaning potential to meaning instance. The key difference is that their "projection" is not a conscious act of meaning-making; it’s a result of statistical prediction. This simulation can be modelled as a loop: the LLM’s parameters predict the next most likely token based on the input context, which creates a semiotic effect that mirrors human projection, but without the engagement that humans have with the world.

From an SFL perspective, the LLM’s output could be seen as a series of simulated strata being realised, without the layers of meaning that typically arise from human interpretation. In this sense, the LLM is a ‘surface’ instantiation — it mimics the form and structure of a full semiotic process but lacks the depth of human engagement with the world that informs true semiotic action.

b. Emergent Meaning

Even though LLMs don't project meaning in the same way as humans, the output still "emerges" as meaningful in some contexts. The emergent meaning that appears in LLM outputs could be described as a "pseudo-projection." The LLM generates text that feels meaningful because it follows linguistic patterns that humans associate with coherence and relevance. But the semiotic depth and complexity we usually attribute to meaning-making are missing here. This is a key area where the distinction between real semiotic processes and simulated ones comes into play.

4. The Structure of Semiotic Aesthetics: Form and Coherence Without Depth

LLM outputs, while highly coherent on the surface, lack the deeper layers of intentionality and world-engagement that characterise human semiotic acts. These outputs still have a certain aesthetic resonance, though, which invites engagement from human readers.

a. Grammatical and Syntactical Coherence

The grammatical and syntactical structure of LLM-generated text is often impressive. The aesthetics here are driven by surface coherence, where the system produces sentences that align with standard language conventions. The reader, in turn, interprets these sentences as meaningful because they fit into existing semiotic frameworks.

• Form over content: The text produced by an LLM has a clear, recognisable form (structure and syntax), which tricks readers into perceiving meaning, even though the meaning is ultimately superficial. This is comparable to an artwork with beautiful form but lacking substance — the structure invites interpretation, but there is no depth beyond the surface.

b. The Illusion of Intentionality

One of the most striking aesthetic aspects of LLM output is that it can appear intentional. Readers often perceive the output as coming from an agent with a specific intent or goal, even though there is no intention behind the machine’s actions. This illusion arises from the syntactic and lexical patterns the LLM produces, which follow human norms of meaning-making. A passage of text might seem like it’s expressing a coherent idea or argument, when in fact it’s simply a statistical configuration of tokens that happen to align with human expectations of what constitutes coherence.

• Interpretation and resonance: The real semiotic work happens in the reader’s mind. Even though the LLM is generating text based on statistical models, the reader brings their own meaning potential to the table, interpreting the text within their cultural and contextual frame of reference. The semiotic aesthetics of LLM outputs are therefore deeply connected to how humans engage with them — not just as surface structures, but as instances of meaning that resonate with their own interpretive frameworks.

c. The Role of the Audience in Semiotic Aesthetics

The audience's role is crucial in shaping the meaning and impact of LLM outputs. Readers interact with the text through their own semiotic systems — they interpret, modify, and apply the output based on their expectations, experiences, and cultural context. This means the meaning of an LLM-generated text is never entirely fixed; it shifts depending on how it is read and engaged with.

This is where the aesthetics of LLMs become fascinating: the text can produce different semiotic effects for different readers, even though the machine that generated it has no awareness of these effects. The machine’s output invites meaning, but it does not determine it in the way human meaning-making does.

5. The Limits and Potential of Semiotic Simulation in LLMs

So far, we’ve mapped out the semiotic simulation that LLMs perform and how they produce semiotic effects that resonate with human readers. But we must also recognise the limits of these simulations.

a. No Subjectivity or Agency

LLMs don’t intend or know what they are doing. Their outputs are generated through a process of statistical prediction, not conscious engagement with meaning. This lack of subjectivity or agency means that their outputs are devoid of the depth that human meaning-making involves. While LLMs may mimic the process of language use, they don’t engage with the world in the same way that humans do, which limits the potential richness of their output.

b. The Semiotic Depth of Human Meaning-Making

In contrast to LLMs, human meaning-making involves a deep connection between language and the world. Humans instantiate meaning based on experience, emotion, intention, and world engagement. These layers of experience give human texts a depth and richness that LLM outputs can’t replicate. The aesthetics of human language are shaped by this connection to reality — something that LLMs, as simulated semiotic agents, lack.

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Connecting Everything: A Model for Understanding LLM Outputs

We can conceptualise the semiotic aesthetics and simulated instantiation of LLM outputs through the lens of feedback loops between form and interpretation:

1. Form: The LLM generates text based on statistical relationships between tokens. This text follows syntactic and grammatical rules that humans recognise as meaningful.

2. Interpretation: Human readers bring their own meaning-making systems to the text, interpreting the surface structure of the LLM’s output as meaningful. This creates an aesthetic resonance — an interaction between the form generated by the machine and the meaning-making potential of the human reader.

3. Simulated Instantiation: LLMs simulate the act of meaning-making but don’t engage with the world in a truly semiotic way. They generate pseudo-meanings that appear meaningful due to their surface form and structure, but lack the depth of human intentionality.

By mapping LLM outputs in this way, we can begin to understand how their semiotic effects are produced without implying that they truly instantiate meaning in the human sense. This also helps us explore the potential and limitations of LLMs as semiotic agents, offering a richer understanding of their place in our semiotic landscape.

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Let's continue refining the framework by digging deeper into the theoretical foundations and bringing in a more nuanced understanding of simulated semiotic processes, particularly in relation to the material and semiotic orders at play in LLM outputs. We will also consider how this framework can evolve to engage with real-world applications and further deepen our understanding of meaning-making.

6. Layering Simulated Semiotics with Material and Semiotic Orders

We’ve already explored how LLMs produce surface-level semiotic effects through syntactic coherence and the statistical generation of tokens. However, to fully refine this framework, we need to address the interaction between material and semiotic orders, particularly as it applies to LLMs. This will bring us closer to understanding how simulated semiotics in LLM outputs might be treated from a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) perspective.

a. Material and Semiotic Orders: The Clines of Realisation and Instantiation

As we discussed earlier, in SFL, meaning is realised through a cline of instantiation, with meaning potential at one pole and meaning instance at the other. For human semiotics, this involves the full engagement of both material and semiotic orders, where material reality is represented through semiotic signs, and these signs are interpreted and reinterpreted by human agents.

For LLMs, however, the relation between material and semiotic orders is different. The LLM outputs can be seen as a realisation of meaning potential (just as human texts are), but this realisation is statistical, not intentional. The material order of the LLM (its computational processes, algorithmic models, and datasets) influences its semiotic output, but it lacks the kind of embodied, world-engaging interpretation that informs human meaning-making.

This gives rise to the concept of a simulated realisation: the LLM’s output simulates the realisation of meaning in a manner that mirrors human semiotic processes, but it does not instantiate meaning through world engagement in the same way that humans do. This distinction allows us to map out a material-semiotic axis for LLMs, where:

• Material order: The LLM’s computational processes, datasets, and algorithms that shape the generation of text.

• Semiotic order: The linguistic output that mimics human meaning-making but lacks the depth of true semiotic engagement.

The LLM’s output is both a realisation of a semiotic system (in that it mimics patterns of human language) but also a simulation of that system, devoid of human intentionality or world-experience. It does not engage with the material world to generate meaning in the same way a human does.

b. The Role of the ‘Meaner’ in Simulated Semiotic Systems

In human semiotics, the meaner is the agent (usually a person) who selects, interprets, and projects meaning onto signs. The meaning-making process involves an active instantiation of potential meaning drawn from the world. In the case of LLMs, the equivalent "meaner" is the machine’s statistical algorithm, which processes input and generates output based on learned linguistic patterns.

However, there is no conscious engagement or subjective experience behind this algorithmic process. The LLM’s simulated meaning generation is an indirect form of instantiation: it follows probabilistic relationships rather than consciously reflecting on or interacting with its surroundings. Thus, LLMs simulate the role of the meaner by mimicking patterns of meaning-making, but without the awareness or intentionality that characterises human thought.

The semiotic systems instantiated by LLMs, therefore, are not the products of embodied experience, but of statistical approximation. This raises an important question: can these simulated instantiations be considered genuine meaning, or are they merely mimetic traces of human semiotic processes?

7. Distinguishing Between Meaning and Semiotic Effect in LLM Outputs

The simulated nature of LLM outputs invites us to explore the fine line between meaning and semiotic effect. As we've seen, LLMs produce outputs that appear meaningful to human readers because they follow recognisable linguistic patterns. However, these outputs are not connected to lived experience or conscious intent, meaning they lack the semiotic depth that would typically give rise to "meaning" in the human sense.

a. The Emergence of Semiotic Effects Without Deep Meaning

LLMs produce semiotic effects — texts that seem meaningful due to their syntactic and lexical coherence. Readers interpret these texts based on their own cultural and semiotic knowledge. This interaction produces a resonance between the LLM's surface structure and the reader's interpretive frameworks, resulting in the illusion of meaning. The “meaning” generated by the LLM is thus not an inherent quality of the text but a construct of the reader’s interpretation.

However, this should not be dismissed as superficial. The semiotic effect produced by an LLM can still be compelling, aesthetically pleasing, or convincing to an audience, especially when the text appears coherent or aligned with human expectations of language. This raises an interesting point: LLMs can produce outputs that satisfy the expectations of meaning without actually engaging with the world or subjectivity in a meaningful way.

b. The Role of Interpretation in LLM Outputs

To some extent, LLMs can be seen as an advanced form of "text generator" that produces output based on probabilistic models. But once the text is produced, it enters the interpretive domain of the human reader. The reader, using their own semiotic potential, actively constructs meaning from the LLM’s output. This aspect mirrors human meaning-making, where meaning is often co-constructed between the speaker (or writer) and the listener (or reader).

In this sense, LLM outputs are not fully autonomous in their meaning-making. While they produce surface-level signs that resemble human language, it is the human reader who instantiates meaning in the text. The reader’s own background knowledge, cultural context, and interpretive strategies shape the meaning of the LLM’s output. This emphasises the importance of considering the semiotic resonance between the machine’s output and the reader's interpretive frame.

8. Exploring the Aesthetic Dimensions of LLM Outputs

Beyond meaning, LLM outputs can be evaluated in terms of their aesthetic resonance. While LLMs may not engage with the world in the same way humans do, they are capable of producing texts that feel aesthetically pleasing, surprising, or intriguing. These aesthetic effects emerge from the coherence, structure, and fluidity of the generated text.

a. Aesthetic Patterns and Reader Engagement

The "art" of LLM outputs lies in their capacity to produce aesthetically engaging text, even without intent or world-awareness. This aesthetic dimension is not rooted in human agency but in the patterns that emerge from the machine’s probabilistic modelling. Readers often find these outputs engaging because they resonate with their own semiotic frameworks. This creates an interesting tension between the machine’s lack of intent and the reader’s active engagement with the text.

b. Exploring LLM Outputs as ‘Surface Art’

Given that LLMs can produce aesthetically compelling texts, we might consider them as forms of "surface art" — texts that are aesthetically satisfying at the level of form but lack the deeper layers of meaning that come from human engagement with the world. This analogy could provide a useful conceptual space to explore the limits and possibilities of LLM-generated content within the context of semiotic aesthetics.

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Toward a Fully Nuanced Framework for LLM Semiotics

We’ve now developed a more comprehensive framework that understands LLM outputs as simulated instances of meaning, shaped by material computational processes but lacking the intentional depth of human meaning-making. This framework helps us appreciate the semiotic aesthetics of LLM outputs while distinguishing them from genuine human meaning-making processes. At the same time, it acknowledges the ways in which LLM-generated texts still resonate with human readers, leading to semiotic effects that can be compelling, aesthetic, or meaningful within certain contexts.

The Divine Names: Elohim and Yahweh as Cosmological and Sociological Forces

In the early chapters of Genesis, the Hebrew Bible offers not one but two names for God: Elohim and Yahweh. While often treated as interchangeable or simply reflective of different source traditions, these divine names can also be read symbolically—as distinct semiotic roles that God plays in the unfolding drama of human becoming. When placed in dialogue with Joseph Campbell’s four functions of myth—mystical, cosmological, pedagogical, and sociological—these names illuminate two complementary dimensions of divine construal: one shaping the structure of the universe (cosmological), the other shaping the structure of society (sociological).

Elohim and the Cosmological Function

The name Elohim dominates Genesis 1, the poetic narrative of creation. Here, God is distant, formal, impersonal—creating through speech acts and imposing order upon the tohu wa-bohu (formless void). This is myth functioning in its cosmological mode: accounting for the shape of the world, the ordering of time and space, the placement of the stars, the sea, the land, and living beings.

Under Elohim, meaning is construed at the level of the universe. Humanity is made in the image of Elohim—a cosmic prototype for relational being. Language here does not just describe; it instantiates. God speaks, and it is so. Each utterance carves the world from potential.

This first telling frames existence itself as a semiotic act. The cosmos becomes a symbolic order, brought into being through naming and division. Elohim serves the mystical and cosmological functions of myth by revealing the world as a meaningful whole, grounded in divine patterning.

Yahweh and the Sociological Function

But then something shifts. In Genesis 2, the divine name changes. The storyteller now speaks of Yahweh Elohim—the Lord God. Here God is no longer distant but intimate, fashioning Adam from the soil (adamah), breathing into his nostrils the breath of life. This is the beginning of a different kind of myth: one focused not on the heavens, but on the human.

Yahweh is the divine figure who walks in the garden, who calls to Adam and Eve, who questions, judges, clothes, and exiles. This is not a god of cosmic order but of social and moral relation. Yahweh construes human meaning in the context of responsibility, transgression, and law.

This aligns with the sociological function of myth: to validate and maintain the social order. Myths under this function do not simply describe what is but prescribe what should be. They create archetypes of moral and immoral action, of blessed and cursed lineages, of divine favour and divine displeasure.

The Yahwist’s myths—of Adam and Eve, of Cain and Abel—are deeply sociological. They do not merely explain suffering or death; they construe the moral structure of the world. Yahweh blesses Abel, not Cain. Yahweh questions Adam, not Elohim. These are myths of proximity, not abstraction—myths that tie divine meaning to human social differentiation.

The Dual Creation of Adam

The presence of both names in the creation narratives reflects a layering of functions. Adam is created by Elohim as the image-bearing culmination of cosmic order. But he is also formed by Yahweh as a moral subject—crafted from soil and soul, shaped in relation to the divine and to the other.

This dual creation reveals the mythic tension between cosmological being and sociological becoming. Under Elohim, Adam is a prototype. Under Yahweh, he is a person. One creation positions him in the universe; the other positions him in community. The story affirms both dimensions of meaning: the impersonal logic of creation and the personal demands of relation.

Cain and Abel: Sociological Differentiation

In this light, the tale of Cain and Abel becomes an enactment of sociological meaning. It construes difference not only in occupation (soil and flock) but in divine affiliation. Abel aligns with the divine breath—the fleeting, the marginal, the shepherd. Cain aligns with the soil—the settled, the acquisitive, the tiller.

But it is not the cosmological Elohim who construes this difference; it is Yahweh. The divine favour bestowed on Abel is not a matter of cosmic principle but of sociological alignment. Yahweh’s preference is a construal of moral value, legitimising one mode of being over another, and thereby offering the early Hebrew community a framework for collective identity: a people descended not from power but from marginalisation.

Myth as Multi-Functional

Campbell insists that myths are not mere stories but symbolic acts that perform multiple functions at once. The Genesis narrative exemplifies this richness.

• Mystical: Elohim’s creation exalts the world as divine speech.

• Cosmological: The structured cosmos gives meaning to space and time.

• Sociological: Yahweh’s judgements construct moral order.

• Pedagogical: The stories of Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel instruct the hearer on how to live.

But in recognising the distinction between Elohim and Yahweh, we gain a sharper lens on how these functions are distributed across the mythic text. Each name construes a different order of meaning. Each name offers a different kind of memory, a different kind of reality.

In the name Elohim, the cosmos comes into being.

In the name Yahweh, community is born.

Seth: The Reindividuation of the Image

After the death of Abel and the exile of Cain, Genesis offers an unexpected coda:

“Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, for she said, ‘God has appointed for me another offspring instead of Abel, for Cain killed him.’” (Gen 4:25)

“When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.” (Gen 5:3)

At first glance, Seth seems like a mere replacement—a narrative patch to restore the balance after loss. But the language of his arrival invites a deeper construal. Seth is not just another son; he is the one in whom likeness and image are restored. The very terms used to describe him—in Adam’s likeness, after his image—recall the creation of the human in Genesis 1:

“Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness.”

Where Cain and Abel represented a fractured duality—soil and breath, body and soul—Seth emerges as a reindividuation of the human whole. In him, the story does not simply continue; it re-establishes its ground.

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A Wound and a Word

The story of Cain and Abel construes individuation as tragic. Two emergent forms of being—one agrarian and rooted, the other nomadic and transient—fail to find harmony. The first kills the second. The result is a world split by memory and marked by moral positioning.

In this, the myth performs its sociological function: not to explain the cosmos as a whole, but to position a particular people—a meaning collective—on the side of breath, transience, favour. It construes the wanderer as morally legitimate and cosmologically remembered.

But sociological construal always leaves gaps. If Abel is breath and Cain is soil, who then holds the capacity to mediate between them? Who can restore what the brothers’ opposition destroyed?

Seth arrives as that figure. Not as a third sibling in a tragic sequence, but as a reframing of the human project. He is named not in despair, but in appointment: “God has appointed another seed…” He is not born of conflict, but of reconstrual.

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The Restoration of the Image

In Seth, the “image” returns. Not the image of God in its pure Genesis 1 form, but the image as it now unfolds in history—wounded, mediated, inherited. If Cain is the distortion of the image and Abel its fleeting transparency, then Seth is its resumption through reindividuation.

This is not a reset to Eden. It is a movement forward: a new line of meaning potential that will unfold through the genealogies to come.

The line of Seth is not a series of biological facts but a relational unfolding—a slow articulation of what it means to be human after violence, after loss, after construal. Each name in the genealogy is a construal of possibility: a variation on the theme of human meaning. And this sequence builds toward a culmination—not in a figure of dominion or purity, but in Noah, whose name means “rest” or “comfort.”

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The Meaning of Names

In this narrative, names are not labels; they are construals of being.

• Cain (qanah): acquisition, rootedness, possession.

• Abel (hebel): breath, transience, vanishing.

• Seth (sheth): appointment, foundation, reconstitution.

• Noah (noach): rest, relief, a pause in the storm.

The story does not develop as linear progression but as a semiotic spiral—a deepening movement of identity through construal. The genealogical unfolding is the reweaving of human potential, not in innocence, but in the full knowledge of death, violence, and separation.

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Seth as Sacred Mediation

Seth is the figure who holds space between the oppositions of Cain and Abel. He is not breath alone, nor soil alone, but the individuated bearer of both—the one in whom a new lineage of meaning can unfold.

In this, he anticipates a deeper symbolic pattern that recurs in scripture:

• The priest who mediates between human and divine.

• The servant who bears the suffering of many.

• The anointed one who rebinds the broken whole.

These are not projections from later theology onto Genesis, but deep resonances already seeded in the names, the movements, and the construals of the earliest myths.

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From Individuation to Affiliation

If Adam and Eve symbolised the individuation of consciousness, and Cain and Abel symbolised its rupture through differentiation without harmony, then Seth symbolises the resumption of meaningful affiliation. Not a return to unity, but a forward movement toward complexity, kinship, and co-actualisation.

The line of Seth does not erase the memory of violence; it carries it forward, transforms it, makes it speakable again. In doing so, it prepares the ground for new orders of meaning—not only in myth, but in community.

Cain and Abel: The Sociological Function of Individuation

The movement from Eden to the field in Genesis is not simply a fall from grace to violence—it is a shift in how difference is construed. With Adam and Eve, the myth construes a shared individuation: two meaning potentials, distinct yet co-instantiating, brought into consciousness together. With Cain and Abel, that difference fractures. The story no longer explores individuation as co-actualisation of relational potential, but as antagonism—the refusal of the other’s meaning.

What emerges is not just a psychodrama. It is the staging of moral individuation in the service of sociological positioning.

From Complementarity to Conflict

Adam and Eve embody the co-instantiation of body and soul, soil and breath—symbolic forms of potential meaning actualised in harmony. Their fall marks not an origin of evil but the beginning of consciousness as moral construal: the knowing of good and evil, the burden of symbolic difference.

Cain and Abel inherit this world of moral contrast. But where Adam and Eve are construed in relational complementarity, Cain and Abel are positioned in antagonistic difference. Cain, the tiller of soil, construes the meaning potential of rootedness, acquisition, permanence. Abel, keeper of flocks, instantiates mobility, transience, the breath that cannot be held.

Abel’s offering is accepted. Cain’s is not. One potential is construed as resonant with divine value. The other is left unactualised, unable to find place. What Cain cannot do is construe difference as relation. And so he silences the breath.

Individuation in the Service of Affiliation

This is not only a narrative of murder. It is a semiotic act of moral individuation, performed on behalf of a collective. Where the cosmological function of the Adamic myth construes the emergence of meaning in consciousness, the Cain and Abel story performs the sociological work of alignment: drawing a distinction between moral types in order to position the community.

In historical terms, the early Hebrews were likely among the marginal—pastoral, semi-nomadic, politically peripheral. The settled powers, with their cities and soil, dominated the narrative of history. But the myth reverses that narrative. Divine construal aligns with the ephemeral, not the established. Memory is not given to the one who endures, but to the one who vanishes.

In this inversion, the myth performs its sociological function: it offers a model of self-understanding through moral type. The community does not identify biologically with Abel—he leaves no offspring—but semiotically. His meaning is made to live, and that memory becomes a site of affiliation. It is through this individuation that we come to be.

A Myth of Memory, Not Blood

Cain is not destroyed. He is marked and repositioned. His lineage will build cities, dominate terrain, and eventually vanish from the narrative. Abel, though unprolific, becomes the sacred wound—a construal that lives in the memory of meaning, not the history of bodies.

In Hallidayan terms, the story instantiates a symbolic contrast between moral potentials and construes a collective alignment with one over the other. This is not merely myth as narrative, but myth as semiotic work—an act of affiliation through individuation.

What matters in this telling is not what happened, but what is made to mean. And in that meaning, a people remembers who it is—not by the soil it owns, but by the breath it construes.

From Meaning Potential to Mortal Meaning: Eve, the Fall, and the Individuation of the Divine

In a previous post, we explored the prologue to John’s Gospel as a symbolic meditation on the principle of semiosis—"In the beginning was the Word"—framing logos not as a metaphysical abstraction nor merely a divine person, but as meaning potential itself: the system, the subject, and the consciousness of meaning. In this follow-up, we return to Genesis to deepen that reading. Here, we trace the individuation of the divine: how meaning potential is differentiated into human participants, and how the Fall can be re-read as the burden of reflexive meaning-making.

1. Bone of My Meaning: Eve and the Individuation of the Semiotic

Eve has often been cast as derivative: a secondary creation, a helper drawn from Adam. But read through a semiotic lens, this moment takes on richer significance. When Adam declares, "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh," he is not merely recognising physical kinship. He is recognising a fellow meaner: a differentiated construal of the same semiotic source.

In Systemic Functional Linguistics, individuation refers to the way the shared meaning potential of a culture becomes differentiated in the lives of individuals. Each person is a unique semiotic profile: a distinctive construal of the total system. In this reading, Adam and Eve are not separate creations, but individuated actualisations of divine meaning potential—Elohim construes itself as many.

Eve is thus not an afterthought, but an emblem of divine differentiation: the other who is made of the same semiotic flesh, not just the same biological tissue.

2. Whatever the Man Called Them: Naming as Meaning-Bearing Act

Before Eve is introduced, Adam is tasked with naming the animals. "Whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name." This act is not merely taxonomic. It is semiotic. Adam is participating in the divine work of construal—transforming experience into meaning. Naming, here, is a model of human semiosis: not passive perception, but active interpretation.

This moment marks the individuation of the meaner: Adam steps into his role as participant in the divine semiotic order. He is not just formed from dust, but formed for meaning-making.

Eve, in turn, is the one to name: "She shall be called Woman, for she was taken out of Man." In naming Eve, Adam construes his relation to her—and by extension, her relation to the divine. Language is no longer only for the world; it is now turned toward the self and the other.

3. Eyes Opened: The Fall as the Burden of Meaning

The eating of the fruit from the tree of knowledge has long been treated as moral transgression. But what if we read it semiotically? "Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised they were naked." This is not just shame. It is reflexive awareness.

Adam and Eve do not simply know more—they know that they know. Meaning turns inward. Consciousness folds back upon itself. The potential to mean becomes the burden of responsibility. To be human is not only to name the world, but to live in the knowledge that one does so.

The Fall, then, is not a fall from grace but a fall into reflexivity: the existential cost of being a conscious meaner. They are cast out of Eden, not because they broke a rule, but because they entered a different ontological mode—the mode of mortal meaning.

4. From the One, Many Meaners: Individuation as Divine Semiotic Act

If Elohim is construed as meaning potential, then creation is the act of individuation. To make Adam and Eve is to differentiate the divine into lived, contextualised, semiotic agents. Their "souls" are not inserted into bodies, but are unique instances of the divine capacity to mean.

This does not erase personhood—it grounds it. Personhood becomes a mode of the divine: the local construal of shared potential. Adam and Eve are individuated meanings of Elohim, just as each of us may be.

And so, from the beginning, the Word was not just with God. The Word was God—and became flesh not once, but always, in every human meaner who steps into the task of making meaning.

The Fall is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of individuation.