Two such modes are perceptual instantiation and cognitive instantiation. Both refer to how meaning is actualised — either through sensory construals of experience, or through reflective engagement with semiotic systems such as physical theory. The distinction is especially crucial when we consider phenomena like black holes, where experience challenges the limits of what can be perceptually instantiated.
Perceptual Instantiation: Meaning as Sensory Construal
Perceptual instantiation refers to the actualisation of meaning through the semiotic resources of perception. This does not mean that there is a material reality “out there” that we perceive and then represent in the mind. Instead, perception itself is a semiotic mode in which meaning is construed directly from experience — that is, from the potential that is made available through our orientation in a gravitational field, our sensorium, and the systems we bring to bear in interpreting what is seen, heard, touched, and so on.
When you see an apple fall from a tree, that is not an event in the material world which you then interpret — it is an instance of meaning, construed through perceptual systems that are themselves semiotic. The apple falling is a semiotic event, not because it is interpreted after the fact, but because it is instantiated as meaning in the act of perception.
However, perception is constrained by physical conditions — such as the limits imposed by relativity. Near a black hole, light emitted by an object falling toward the event horizon becomes increasingly redshifted and delayed. For an external observer, there comes a point at which no further perceptual construal is possible: the object’s continued motion cannot be instantiated perceptually. This does not mean the object ceases to exist in some material sense; rather, it marks a boundary in the field of perceptual meaning.
Cognitive Instantiation: Meaning as Theoretical Construal
When perceptual instantiation is no longer possible, meaning may still be actualised cognitively — that is, by deploying semiotic systems such as general relativity to construe experience that cannot be accessed via perception. This is not a fallback or a substitute for perception, but a distinct semiotic pathway through which meaning is instantiated.
In the case of the black hole, the object’s motion beyond the event horizon cannot be construed perceptually, but it may still be instantiated cognitively through theoretical modelling. The observer construes the object’s continued inward motion not by representing it mentally as if it were perceptually real, but by construing it as meaning within the system of physical theory. In this sense, general relativity is not a set of propositions describing an external reality — it is a semiotic resource through which potential experience is actualised as cognitive meaning.
This is what distinguishes cognitive instantiation: it construes meaning not from immediate sensory input but from semiotic systems that extend the field of experience beyond perceptual constraints.
Data and Theory: Complementary Semiotic Resources
This distinction resonates strongly with the relation between data and theory in scientific practice. Data are not raw materials awaiting interpretation; they are already semiotically construed through perceptual systems, instrument calibration, and methodological assumptions. They are instances of meaning instantiated through sensory and procedural semiotic resources.
Theories, on the other hand, are semiotic systems that organise, extend, and project meanings beyond the scope of direct perceptual instantiation. They allow us to construe what cannot be observed directly by mapping construals onto structured systems of inference, analogy, and metaphor.
Thus, the distinction between data and theory is not ontological but semiotic: both are meaning, instantiated through different systems. Data involve perceptual instantiation; theory involves cognitive instantiation. In both cases, meaning is not derived from a pre-existing world but actualised from potential through semiotic activity.
The Event Horizon as a Limit of Perceptual Instantiation
From this perspective, the event horizon does not mark a boundary in the material world, but a boundary in perceptual meaning. It is the limit beyond which no new perceptual instantiations can be made by an external observer. However, it is not the limit of meaning. Meaning may still be instantiated — cognitively — through the theoretical resources of general relativity. The observer cannot perceive the object’s continued fall, but they can still construe its trajectory as an instance of meaning within a semiotic system.
Thus, the event horizon is not a limit of what is real, but a shift in the semiotic mode through which meaning may be actualised.
Individuation and the Modes of Instantiation
This distinction between perceptual and cognitive instantiation also invites us to consider how meaning is individuated across different semiotic systems. Individuation refers to the way meaning potential is distributed among individuals within a community. Just as the same semiotic system may instantiate different meanings for different perceivers, so too may the potential for cognitive instantiation vary with the individuation of theoretical understanding.
Perceptual instantiation draws on the relatively shared resources of embodied experience, shaped by evolutionary, cultural, and physiological constraints. It affords a degree of commonality in the instantiation of meaning. By contrast, cognitive instantiation often depends on specialised semiotic systems (e.g. mathematical physics), and the capacity to deploy them is unevenly distributed. Theoretical meaning is individuated through education, practice, and disciplinary socialisation.
Thus, where perceptual meaning is more likely to be broadly instantiated across a community, cognitive meaning may be instantiated only by those whose individuation includes access to and fluency in a given theoretical system. The black hole’s interior, for instance, may be perceptually inaccessible to all, but cognitively meaningful only to some. Yet both forms of instantiation operate within the same semiotic ontology: meaning is actualised not from the world, but from potential, through differently individuated construals.
Conclusion
To distinguish perceptual from cognitive instantiation is not to separate experience into material and mental domains. Rather, it is to recognise that experience is semiotically structured, and that different semiotic systems afford different ways of actualising meaning from potential. Whether through sensory construal or theoretical inference, we do not access a world beyond meaning; we participate in the continual actualisation of meaning itself.
In this view, the universe does not disclose itself as material substance waiting to be interpreted. It unfolds as meaning, instantiated through our engagement with it — perceptually, cognitively, socially, historically. Even at the edge of a black hole, where the senses fall silent, meaning persists.
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