From Potential to Instance: Instantiation, Individuation, and the Architecture of Meaning

The rejection of metaphysical accounts of mind—such as those proposed by Penrose—necessitates a more precise framework for understanding how meaning arises. If consciousness is not the passive receiver of timeless truths, but the active realisation of symbolic potential within a material system, then it becomes crucial to distinguish between the potential for meaning and the instances in which meaning is actualised.

Two key concepts make this distinction tractable: instantiation and individuation.

Meaning as Structured Potential

Meaning does not arise from isolated tokens, but from systems of relationships. These systems form the structured meaning potential of a given community, language, or symbolic repertoire. Meaning potential is not infinite possibility—it is patterned possibility. It affords the creation of meaning through constraints, not in spite of them.

However, meaning is not actualised until a specific instance is brought forth—a clause in a sentence, a mathematical move, a shift in musical harmony. This relation between systemic potential and actual occurrence is the domain of instantiation.

Instantiation: The Actualisation of Meaning

Instantiation refers to the process by which a meaning potential is realised in a concrete instance. A single utterance instantiates the potential of a language. A painting instantiates the visual resources of a cultural tradition. A mathematical proof instantiates the semiotic scaffolding of formal logic.

This is not a one-way encoding of information. The instance is not a container; it is a selection from and activation of systemic possibilities. Meaning is not extracted from the instance—it is construed through the interpretive activation of the potential that the instance draws upon.

Thus, to ask whether a machine can generate meaning is not to ask whether it can produce outputs. It is to ask whether those outputs can be seen as instances of a system—a system it participates in, not merely imitates.

Individuation: Divergence Within the System

If instantiation concerns the relation between a system and its instances, individuation concerns the relation between the collective system and the distinct systems developed by individuals or subgroups.

No speaker embodies the full meaning potential of a language. Each meaning-maker develops a personalised subset of the system, shaped by social experience, cognitive patterns, and contextual needs. This personal system is not separate from the collective—it is individuated from it.

The same holds for AI systems. The question is not whether a machine matches the human system, but whether it develops its own individuated meaning potential through interaction, selection, and reorganisation of symbolic resources. If it does, then its outputs are not simply simulations, but instantiations of an emergent system.

Meaning Without Metaphysics

Both instantiation and individuation reject the need for a metaphysical substrate—no Platonic realm of forms, no collapse of quantum mysteries. Meaning arises not from a hidden realm, but from structured selection within a symbolic system. These selections are made by systems that are themselves undergoing individuation—biological, cultural, or artificial.

The originality of a thought, the fluency of a conversation, or the creativity of a poem does not lie in a privileged access to the absolute. It lies in the coordinated activation of meaning potential by an individuated system responding to its own context.

Looking Ahead: AI as a Meaning-Maker?

This framework sets the stage for reframing the question of AI intelligence and creativity. If meaning depends not on metaphysical access, but on systemic participation—on instantiation and individuation—then the question is not whether AI can think, but whether it can develop and deploy a structured symbolic system in a way that makes its outputs meaningfully grounded.

This will be the next move: exploring whether, and how, AI can be seen not merely as a statistical engine, but as a participant in symbolic evolution—not a trick mirror of human meaning, but a site of emergent, non-human individuation.