Black Holes and the Boundary of Meaning: A Relational Perspective

In standard physics, black holes raise profound puzzles about the nature of time, information, and the fabric of reality. Among these, the so-called "information paradox" looms large: if something falls into a black hole, is the quantum information that describes it lost forever? This challenges the core principles of quantum mechanics, which hold that information is preserved.

In the relational model of space and time, this paradox dissolves—not by solving it in the conventional sense, but by reframing what we mean by "information" itself.

Information as Meaning

From the relational perspective, time is not a neutral backdrop or a fixed axis but the dimension along which processes unfold. Reality is not an absolute structure of spacetime but a structure of meaning instantiated by observation. Information, in this framework, is not an objective feature of the system but the structure of meaning potential that can be actualised by a meaning maker.

When a clock approaches a black hole, its unfolding in time slows relative to observers at a distance—but not relative to itself. It continues to instantiate experience until spatial contraction near the singularity reaches a critical point. Inside the event horizon, time still unfolds for the clock. Meaning is still instantiated. But as it nears the centre, spatial intervals contract so extremely that no further distinctions can be drawn. Instantiation collapses not because time stops, but because space no longer provides the necessary differential structure to support meaning.

Thus, for a relational model, the event horizon is not merely a gravitational boundary; it is a boundary condition for the instantiation of meaning. What lies within is not "information lost" but uninstantiable potential—experience that cannot be made actual because no meaning-making system can sustain it beyond a certain spatial threshold.

Hawking Radiation as Edge Effect

How, then, should we understand Hawking radiation? In traditional physics, it's the product of quantum fluctuations near the event horizon, where one particle of a virtual pair escapes and the other is consumed by the black hole.

In the relational model, this too is reframed: Hawking radiation is not a recovery of lost information, but the last instantiable residue of meaning at the limit where instantiation becomes impossible. It marks the final shimmer of potential made actual at the threshold of the uninstantiable. To distant observers, it's the only interaction still possible with a region that no longer supports the emergence of meaning.

Conclusion

From the relational point of view, the black hole does not destroy information. It defines the edge beyond which meaning cannot arise. The relational model resolves the information paradox by transforming it: not into a question of whether information is preserved, but into a question of whether meaning can be instantiated. The answer is determined not by absolute laws but by the possibility of structured observation—and by the space and time relations that make it possible.

Spaghettification In The Relational Model

🌌 Spaghettification, Relationally Speaking:

In the conventional (observer-independent) model of general relativity, spaghettification happens because the gravitational field near the singularity increases dramatically over very small distances. The closer parts of an object experience stronger gravitational pull than the farther parts—ripping it apart lengthwise into a spaghetti-like strand.

But in the relational model, where:

• Space intervals contract or dilate in relation to a gravitational field (a centre of mass),

• Time is not absolute but unfolds as part of the process of observation and instantiation,

• And meaning is instantiated through the relation of the observer to the centre of mass,

we get a subtly different take:

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🍝 Spaghettification as Relational Disintegration:

• Spaghettification is not just a physical stretching but the relational collapse of spatial intervals along the radial dimension toward the singularity.

• From the perspective of the meaning maker, what is experienced is not simply being stretched but losing the ability to instantiate distinct spatial intervals in the direction of increasing gravitational gradient.

• This “loss” is not felt as pain or drama by the meaning maker (unless they’re made of metaphors) but as a constriction of the semiotic field: a literal narrowing of the spatial relations through which meaning can be constituted.

So in relational terms, spaghettification is the progressive annihilation of spatial meaning—not just bodily integrity. The meaning maker can no longer relate separate spatial instances as they approach the singularity. They are being stretched only in the sense that space as relation becomes thinner and thinner, like taffy being pulled until the taffy is no longer taffy but indistinguishable strands of sugar atoms—and then not even that.

Black Holes and the Collapse of Meaning: A Relational Ontology of Instantiation

Black Holes and the Collapse of Meaning: A Relational Ontology of Instantiation

In a relational model of space and time, rooted in a Systemic Functional perspective, space and time are not observer-independent absolutes but dimensions of meaning: space is the dimension of co-instantiation, and time is the dimension of unfolding. Neither exists apart from the instances that actualise them. In this framework, the universe is not a container of meaning, but an outcome of its instantiation.

This has profound implications when applied to extreme environments—especially black holes. Traditionally, black holes are described in general relativity as regions where gravity becomes so strong that not even light can escape. The boundary beyond which escape is impossible is known as the event horizon, and at the centre lies the singularity, where curvature becomes infinite and classical physics breaks down. But how does this appear when reinterpreted through a relational model of meaning-making?

Let us begin with a ticking clock falling toward a black hole. As it nears the event horizon, distant observers register its time as increasingly dilated. But from the clock's own perspective—i.e., for the meaning-maker co-located with it—nothing seems to change. Time continues to unfold normally. The clock remains a viable system for the instantiation of meaning. This already reveals a crucial point: meaning-making is always internal to the system of instantiation. Observers outside the black hole may lose contact with what happens beyond the event horizon, but that is a boundary to their observation, not to the internal unfolding of meaning.

However, the event horizon is not irrelevant. It marks the limit at which shared instantiation—i.e., mutual experiential reference—becomes impossible. The meaning-maker who crosses the event horizon continues to instantiate meaning, but now in a domain that is no longer co-instantiable with the outside. This renders the event horizon a boundary condition to the possibility of shared meaning, not of meaning per se.

As the meaning-maker continues inward toward the singularity, a new condition arises. It is not time that 'stops'—that language misleads us—but rather space that contracts. Specifically, the radial spatial dimension collapses as one approaches the singularity. Since spatial structure is required for meaning to unfold (it provides the differentiable field across which processes are construed), its annihilation leads to the inability to instantiate difference.

To instantiate a meaning instance, a meaning-maker requires:

• A potential field: a backdrop of experiential possibility;

• A structured system of oppositions: i.e., a meaning potential;

• A spatial-temporal field in which differences can be realised and related.

As radial space collapses completely at the singularity, there ceases to be a spatial structure in which unfolding can occur. Without the ability to differentiate 'here' from 'there', even within the meaning-maker’s own system, the conditions for instantiation dissolve. It is not the destruction of the body that ends meaning, but the relational impossibility of process.

Thus, within a relational ontology:

The singularity is the point at which the relational conditions for instantiating meaning cease to obtain.

This interpretation suggests that black holes are not merely physical anomalies but zones of relational annihilation, where not only signals but processes themselves come to an end—not because time stops, but because structure collapses.

The event horizon, then, is not a metaphysical wall, but a threshold of co-instantiability. Beyond it, meaning may continue to unfold locally, but it cannot be shared or referenced externally. The singularity, however, marks the true end of meaning, not in violence but in relational silence—the collapse of the very medium that makes experience meaningful.

This view opens compelling avenues for rethinking other cosmological phenomena—like white holes or baby universes—not as oddities of physics, but as transitions in the relational geometry of meaning.

Everything Computes: From Myth to Information

1. The World as Difference

What if the essence of meaning, thought, and even being itself lies in the act of drawing distinctions? From ancient myth to modern machines, from the murmurs of language to the abstractions of logic, from the sacred stories of origin to the silicon circuits we build today—everything computes. And it does so by operating on difference.

2. Myth: The First Distinction Machine

Before formal systems of writing or logic, myth was already computing the cosmos through oppositions. Myths mapped the world as a field of paired contrasts: light/dark, male/female, sky/earth, life/death. These binaries were not primitive simplifications; they were symbolic machines for thinking through the world. The gods did not merely personify forces—they enacted the tensions between them. Mythic structure is the archetypal difference engine.

But many myths also tell of a time before difference: a golden age, a primordial unity, a formless wholeness that preceded the world of opposites. In Hindu cosmology, this is the unmanifest Brahman; in Genesis, it is the void over which the spirit of God moves before creation begins. In Greek myth, it is Chaos—vast and undivided—before Gaia and the sky emerge. The fall from unity into duality is not a moral failing but a metaphysical descent: the shattering of eternity into the forms of time. As Joseph Campbell puts it, “Eternity is in love with the productions of time.” But to enter time, it must fracture into contrast.

3. Binary Code and the Oldest Logic

At the root of modern computing lies binary code: a system of 0s and 1s, the barest bones of opposition. Each bit encodes a distinction—on or off, true or false, this or not-this. But this is no modern invention. Mythologies have long encoded the world in binary oppositions. Binary code is simply the mechanical re-expression of this symbolic logic, rendered legible to machines.

4. Language: Saussure’s Valeur

Ferdinand de Saussure showed that language does not function through isolated symbols, but through systems of difference. A word gains meaning not by reference to the world, but by contrast to other words. “Cat” is not “dog”; “black” is not “white.” In language, there are no positive terms—only oppositions.

5. Philosophy of Distinction: Hamilton, Spinoza, Aristotle

Philosopher William Hamilton claimed that the mind can only grasp an idea by distinguishing it from what it is not. Spinoza wrote that “All determination is negation”—that to be finite, a thing must be bounded, delimited by not-being. Even Aristotle’s logic, with its principle of non-contradiction and excluded middle, shows that affirmation is always paired with the negation of its opposite.

6. Shannon: Information as Surprise

Claude Shannon’s information theory formalised the logic of difference. Information is not content but contrast: a measure of how much uncertainty is reduced when a signal is received. A message carries more information when it is less predictable—when it stands out more clearly from what it is not. In other words: surprise is structured difference.

7. The Difference Engine and the Distinction Machine

Charles Babbage's Difference Engine is the symbolic ancestor of every computer. But all computers are difference engines. Every logic gate, every bit operation, every computation is a dance of distinctions. Modern processors are mechanised minds built to compute contrast.

8. Neural Systems: Meaning Through Patterned Contrast

Even our brains operate on this principle. Neural patterns don’t signal meaning by being alone, but by standing out. Perception is contrast; attention is selective differentiation. Edelman’s theory of neuronal group selection shows that cognition is a process of honing differences into patterns of meaning.

9. From Mythic Symbol to Quantum Potential

Where myth used symbolic opposites to orient the human soul, and logic encoded that into rules of thought, and code mechanised it into executable form, quantum computing now complicates this picture. Superposition and entanglement suggest that opposites can coexist, challenging binary distinction with a new kind of potential: where not-yet-distinguished differences exist in parallel. In quantum logic, absence is not mere lack but a structured presence of potential.

10. The Mysticism of Absence

Mystical traditions have long intuited what quantum mechanics now mathematises: that what is not-yet can still be real. And now, in quantum computation, this potentiality becomes structure—the superposed states of a qubit embodying multiple possibilities simultaneously, awaiting distinction through measurement. Computation itself becomes a choreography of the not-yet, where meaningful outcomes emerge from the logic of indeterminacy. Apophatic theology, in particular, speaks of ultimate reality in terms of negation—not by describing what God is, but by insisting on what God is not. The tradition runs from the Neoplatonists through Pseudo-Dionysius to Meister Eckhart, John of the Cross, and the Eastern Orthodox via negativa. The Divine is approached not through affirmation, but through subtraction.

The Tao Te Ching begins with a paradox: "The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao." Meaning emerges not from what is said, but from what is held in silence. In this light, patterned absence is not a void but a womb—a space of generative potential. Difference is not division but relation. What the mystics glimpsed through silence, the mythmakers encoded in symbol, and the scientists now model in equations: the world is made not of things, but of thresholds.

11. The Ontology of Information

So what is the world made of? Not substance, but distinction. Not presence, but relational absence. Every system of meaning—myth, language, logic, computation, consciousness—arises by carving contrast into the undivided flow of experience.

Everything computes. And it computes difference.