Time as Meaning in Motion: From Construal to Ontology

In most traditions of thought, time is assumed to be a fixed and universal backdrop—an abstract container in which things happen. But what if time, rather than being a container, were a construct—a way of cutting across potential to produce the experience of unfolding? What if time was not something we move through, but something that moves through us, shaped and reshaped by the ways we construe meaning?

In this post, we want to explore this question by weaving together two strands: the richly elaborated construals of time in systemic functional linguistics (SFL), and the deeper ontological account offered by a relational perspective in which time is no longer a given, but a perspectival effect of meaning in motion.

---

1. Time in Systemic Functional Linguistics: A Multifunctional Construal

SFL offers a powerful array of resources for understanding how language construes time—not as a singular phenomenon, but as a complex, multifunctional system of meanings. From this view, time is not "represented" in language, but enacted through choices made in grammar and semantics. Several key systems illustrate this point.

Metafunctional Time

Language construes time differently across each of the three metafunctions:

• Experiential time treats time as part of the world: when things happen, how long they last, how often they recur.

• Interpersonal time emerges in interaction: how speakers negotiate temporality relative to the "now" (e.g. tense, usuality, obligation).

• Textual time organises meaning across the unfolding of discourse: how the text structures its own temporality, whether through narrative ordering or thematic progression.

This reveals that there is no single temporal axis in language—only multiple orientations, each shaping a different slice of the temporal field.

Extent and Location

Two key circumstantial systems elaborate time further:

• Extent construes how far a process stretches through time (duration) or how often it recurs (frequency).

• Location situates the process in time—when it unfolds—but also includes metaphorical paths of temporal movement, such as beginnings, middles, and ends.

Time, here, is spatialised—measured, located, traversed—but all within the fabric of meaning.

Tense: Temporal Logic

Tense is not merely a reflection of past, present, or future. It defines a temporal reference point, which becomes the anchor for further logical relations. This allows for a complex layering of time—e.g. “She had been waiting” construes not just a past event, but one that began before another past reference point.

Tense turns time into a semantic logic of relation, rather than a timeline of absolute positions.

Phase: The Ontology of Becoming

Phase introduces a different kind of temporality—one that doesn’t just position events, but stages them:

• A process may be inceptive (just beginning), durative (ongoing), or conclusive (ending).

• Crucially, this system begins to speak not of time as background, but of becoming as process: the unfolding of something from potential into reality.

At its most suggestive, SFL itself notes that “at the deepest level, time-phase and reality-phase are the same thing.” Time here is not just a category—it is a trace of emergence.

---

2. Time in Relational Ontology: Construal in Motion

While SFL describes how language construes time, relational ontology asks a more radical question:

What if time itself is nothing but a product of construal?

From this view, there is no universal "time" in which things unfold. Instead, what we experience as time is the result of perspectival cuts across a field of potential—a system of possible relations, meanings, and events. When we speak, act, perceive, or imagine, we make a cut: we bring something into being as an instance of meaning. And it is this act of instantiation—the construal of difference, motion, dependency—that is the experience of time.

Let’s now reinterpret the SFL notions through this ontological lens.

Metafunctional Time as Perspectival Cuts

The three metafunctions offer not distinct timelines, but three cuts through relational potential:

• Experiential construals produce time as externalised sequence—events “happening.”

• Interpersonal construals enact time as positioning within subjectivity—expectation, urgency, modality.

• Textual construals organise time as meaning in motion—how construal itself unfolds.

Time is not built into these dimensions—they are different ways in which construal temporalises relation.

Extent and Location as Modal Architecture

Duration, frequency, path, and position are not properties of time—they are modal construals of how meaning unfolds. A process that lasts "for three years" is not unfolding in time, but being construed as a temporally extended relation. Likewise, "by the end of the week" is not a fixed endpoint, but a construal of directionality within the logic of instantiation—the structuring of an instance as it emerges.

Tense as Projection of Potential

Tense doesn't encode time; it projects possible instances from a reference point within the unfolding of meaning. It allows the speaker to construe dependencies: what follows what, what precedes what, what might follow next. It is time as a logic of construal, not as a container for events.

Phase as Thresholds of Instantiation

Phase is not merely the temporal shape of a process (beginning, continuing, ending), but a semiotic construal of instantiation-in-motion. It tracks how an instance is staged from within a system of potential—not how something occurs in time, but how meaning comes into view through a perspectival cut.

The earlier insight that “time-phase and reality-phase are the same thing” aligns here: time is not a setting in which reality occurs. Rather, time is the construal of becoming, the cut through which reality takes shape as event.

---

3. From Description to Explanation

SFL gives us a precise description of how time is construed in meaning; relational ontology provides an explanation of how these construals emerge:

SFL Time	Relational Reinterpretation
Metafunctional Time	Perspectives on unfolding potential
Extent and Location	Modal construals of unfolding and direction
Tense	Logical projection of interdependent instances
Phase	Semiotic staging of instantiation from potential
"Time-phase = reality-phase"	Ontological claim: time is the perspectival construal of becoming

---

4. Conclusion: Time as Meaning in Motion

Rather than treating time as a fixed axis along which meaning travels, this perspective invites us to see time as the motion of meaning itself—a series of perspectival cuts across relational potential.

Language doesn't merely refer to time. It temporalises meaning. And when we move from tense to phase, from location to unfolding, from frequency to construal, what we are tracking is not time, but the becoming of meaning—the motion from potential to instance.

In this sense, time is not out there.

Time is in the construal.

Time is the very motion of becoming.

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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.

Individuated Consciousness and the Collective Semiotic Field

Following from our discussion of consciousness as a reflexively emergent semiotic process, we now turn to the question of individuation: how do distinct consciousnesses emerge and relate within a collective field of meaning? In other words, how are meaning systems both shared and individuated?

Meaning Potential and Meaning Instance

As before, we distinguish between:

• Potential meaning: raw, unstructured experience that can be semiotised.

• Meaning instances: actualised meanings—structured construals.

• Meaning systems: the patterned resources for meaning-making that emerge across instances.

These components scale from the individual to the collective.

Individuation as a Semiotic Process

An individuated consciousness is not ontologically separate from the collective. Rather, it is a locus of semiotic activity—a site where potential meaning is actualised using a subset of the collective semiotic system.

Each person’s consciousness is individuated through:

• Their history of meaning instances;

• Their access to collective meaning systems (language, culture);

• The patterning of meaning potential shaped by embodied experience and social positioning.

Over time, this leads to a personalised but socially grounded meaning potential—a system of semiotic resources available to that consciousness for construal.

The Collective Semiotic Field

The collective consciousness is not a metaphysical super-being. It is the shared semiotic system: the language, discourse fields, cultural practices, and meaning potentials that have emerged across generations. These systems exist in potentia until actualised by individuals.

Thus, the collective is:

• Distributed: across texts, artefacts, interactions, institutions;

• Instantiated: through the construal activity of individuals;

• Reshaped: by the novel construals of individuated consciousnesses.

Reflexive Positioning

Each individuated consciousness locates itself within the collective semiotic field by:

• Construal of identity (who am I?)

• Construal of agency (what can I mean?)

• Construal of history (how have I come to mean?)

These construals are not merely cognitive—they are semiotic enactments. In constructing themselves, individuals also restructure the collective field. Individuation is thus relational and dialogic: one becomes a self through meaning within and against the meanings of others.

Toward Subjectivity and Shared Intentionality

The next step is to explore how these individuated meaning systems give rise to subjectivity—the sense of being a centre of experience—and to shared intentionality—the capacity to coordinate construal with others.

Subjectivity emerges as a semiotic orientation: the projection of meaning from a position construed as 'mine'. It is not a metaphysical substance but a stance within a meaning system. This stance is reflexively sustained by the system that enacts it, much like a grammatical subject position is sustained by the syntagmatic and paradigmatic structures that make it meaningful.

Shared intentionality, meanwhile, depends on the capacity to align systems of meaning across individuals. This alignment is made possible through:

• Interpersonal metafunction: the negotiation of roles, moods, and modalities;

• Textual metafunction: the structuring of discourse to guide shared construal;

• Field: the construal of a shared experiential domain.

Shared intentionality is therefore not merely behavioural coordination. It is a semiotic achievement: the actualisation of compatible construals from different loci of consciousness, drawing on overlapping meaning potentials.

Together, subjectivity and shared intentionality illustrate that meaning is not only constructed from a position—it is also constructed towards others. Every act of construal projects both a subject and an intersubjective horizon.

Conclusion

Individuated consciousness emerges as a reflexive, patterned construal of potential meaning shaped by collective systems. It is not a fragment of a whole, nor a self-contained unit—it is a relational node within a distributed field of semiotic activity.

The collective consciousness, in turn, is the sedimented potential of these relational construals—shaped by many, sustained by many, and actualised anew in each act of meaning.

In our next post, we will consider the implications of this relational ontology for ethics and co-responsibility within a shared meaning ecology.

The Participatory Cosmos: Science, Subjectivity, and the Meaner

From Detached Observer to Co-Creative Participant

In the dominant narrative of modern science, the observer is no one—a transparent, disembodied gaze. The ideal is objectivity: to see without touching, to know without becoming, to measure without meaning.

But this ideal, elegant though it may seem, collapses under the weight of relational reality.

There is no knowing that does not touch the known.

There is no observation without participation.

And there is no science without the meaner—the one who construes meaning from experience.

---

The Quantum Threshold: From Observer to Meaner

Quantum mechanics first exposed the cracks in the myth of detachment. The act of measurement does not reveal a hidden truth—it actualises one among many potentialities.

But if we reframe the so-called “observer effect,” a more radical shift emerges.

The observer is not just a passive recipient of outcomes.

The observer is a meaner—an agent whose construal brings the instance into being.

The wavefunction is not a hidden reality awaiting revelation; it is potential meaning, structured possibility.

And the collapse is not a disturbance, but a transformation:

– From symbolic potential to symbolic act.

– From uncertainty to construal.

– From cosmos-as-background to cosmos-as-response.

---

The Mirror Across Disciplines

This participatory principle is not confined to physics.

In biology, perception is not a neutral intake of data but a recursive loop between sensing and acting.

In psychology, the self is not a given, but a construct—an emergent pattern shaped by interpretation.

In ecology, the act of framing a system changes its behaviour.

In climate science, the model not only describes the world—it guides political action that changes the world it models.

Everywhere we look, science bends toward its own participation.

The meaner is within the system, not above it.

---

Measurement as Meaning-Making

Measurement has long been mistaken for mechanical extraction. But in a relational ontology, measurement is symbolic interaction—a mutual construal between system and agent.

To measure is to constrain potential. It is to shape the relational field so that one instance may emerge.

This is not merely epistemic. It is ontological.

We do not simply discover the world.

We enact it.

We select from the web of potential, and that selection becomes real.

---

Models as Metaphors

Scientific models are not mirrors of reality. They are metaphors of relation.

They function symbolically:

– Simplifying the world by selecting relevant dimensions.

– Constraining the relational field to produce intelligibility.

– Mapping one system of relations onto another.

A model is a meaning structure. Its power lies not in its objectivity, but in its expressiveness—its ability to resonate with experience and to guide action.

Like myths, scientific models are symbolic acts.

They organise meaning in the face of chaos.

They are real not because they are literal, but because they work.

---

The Meaner as Interface

In every scientific act, the meaner stands at the threshold:

– Between system and symbol,

– Between potential and instance,

– Between experience and explanation.

This is not a weakness in science—it is its hidden strength.

Science is not diminished by subjectivity. It is animated by it.

The rigor of science is not in its denial of the meaner, but in its discipline of recursion—the willingness to check meaning against relation, to refine symbolic acts through further acts.

The participatory cosmos does not abolish truth. It reframes truth as relational coherence—as the resonance between model, measure, and the world-as-respondent.

---

A New Ethic of Knowing

If the meaner is not separate, then knowledge is not domination.

It is communion.

It is dialogue with the real.

It is an ethical act—because every construal shapes what can be, for others as well as for oneself.

To know is to participate.

To measure is to enter into relation.

To model is to symbolise a world that is never fully other, because we are always within it.

---

Closing Spiral: The Cosmos That Knows Itself

In this light, science becomes not the cold pursuit of certainty, but the warm articulation of becoming.

It is the cosmos exploring itself through patterns of symbolic recursion.

It is the world knowing the world—through us.

The detached observer never existed.

But the meaner—the symbolic participant, the recursive agent of meaning—has been there all along.

We do not merely observe reality.

We speak it into being.

The Fall as the Myth of Instantiation

🌀 1. The Fall as the Myth of Instantiation

We’ve previously discussed how the Fall can be understood as an ontological event—where meaning and reality are instantiated. Now let’s push this idea further: the Fall is the moment when the self becomes aware as a meaner.

In traditional mythological terms, Adam and Eve’s fall is often seen as the moment they gain self-consciousness, realising their nakedness and, consequently, their separation from God. But what if this "fall" is also the first conscious act of meaning-making? Not just the world being construed, but the self being construed as distinct, as something that has meaning.

The Fall can thus be interpreted as the first instantiation of the self as a meaner—a subject who can create meaning by choosing which potentials to actualise. It’s the birth of self-awareness within a system of meaning-making.

We can expand on this model:

• The Fall = the emergence of self-consciousness as an act of construal (when the self first sees itself as distinct, it begins to construe itself);

• The separation between Adam and Eve from God is the separation between the self and the world of undifferentiated meaning (the Edenic state);

• Self-awareness emerges when the self becomes aware of its own potential to instantiate meaning and to shape its own reality—this is the real "fall" of the self into subjectivity.

This opens up a deeper understanding of humanity’s role in the world: the fall doesn’t just mark the beginning of suffering; it marks the emergence of agency, choice, and meaning itself. To be human, then, is to be in a constant state of falling—not as a tragic state, but as an unfolding of potential.

---

🌀 2. Eden as Meaning Potential, the Fruit as the First Instance

Let’s look at Eden through the lens of meaning potential. Before the Fall, there is an undifferentiated unity. Adam and Eve live in a state of potential meaning—a state where everything is part of the whole and nothing is yet separated into instances.

Eden represents meaning potential—the unformed, undifferentiated possibility that everything could be. There’s no actual world yet, just a field of possible worlds.

The Tree of Knowledge represents the system of potential meanings—the infinite array of possibilities that could come into being as meaning is instantiated. It’s the system of all the meanings available to a meaner, but it’s only realised when someone engages with it.

The Fruit is the first instance of meaning—the moment of differentiation, where a single meaning is brought into focus and actualised. By eating the fruit, Adam and Eve instantiate a meaning: the awareness of their own separateness, and the knowledge of good and evil.

In this frame, the Fall isn’t just the loss of innocence or the introduction of sin. It’s the moment when meaning itself is instantiated—and with it, the world of subjectivity, choice, and responsibility.

This also points to a SFL view of meaning—where meaning is not a static given, but something that unfolds, is chosen, and is actualised in moments of construal.

---

🌀 3. Time and the Fall

Now let’s dive into the connection between the Fall and time. In this model, we interpret the Fall as the origin of time itself.

Before the Fall, there is no distinction between the self and the world, no differentiation—everything is just potential. There is no before or after, no sequence. There is only the undifferentiated eternal present.

But with the Fall, time begins. The first differentiation—the first act of meaning instantiation—creates a sequence. The fall is the entry into the world of becoming, the world of temporal process. Once meaning is instantiated, time is created as a function of the unfolding of that meaning.

The Fall is the origin of time in this sense because:

• Time emerges when meaning is instantiated, as the process of becoming actual;

• The act of eating the fruit is the first moment of differentiation, and time is the unfolding of the consequences of that moment.

In this view, time is not something that just “passes” or “flows,” but something that unfolds with every act of construal. The Fall is the first moment of temporal becoming, where a sequence is created.

---

🌀 4. Recursive Falls: Every Act of Construal as Fall

In our previous discussions, we’ve explored how every act of construal is a kind of fall—a movement from undifferentiated potential into actualised meaning. This makes the Fall a recursive process, where each new construal can be seen as a fall into more fully realised meaning.

Every time we make a choice, every time we act as a meaner, we are falling—but not in a negative sense. Each fall is an opportunity for new creation.

This brings us to a more dynamic understanding of ethics and agency: every construal brings us into a new world of meaning, but each construal also limits the world of possibilities, constraining future choices.

But importantly, the recursive fall is not just about losing potential—it’s about creating meaning. To be a meaner, to instantiate meaning, is to continually engage in this cycle of creation and differentiation, which shapes not just the world, but the self that construes it.

This means that the Fall doesn’t just mark the end of Eden—it marks the beginning of agency, and the ability to create meaning through choice.

---

🌀 Wrapping It All Together

So, in sum:

• The Fall as the myth of instantiation helps us see the emergence of the self as a meaner—an agent of meaning-making in the world.

• Eden as meaning potential, the fruit as the first instance gives us a more SFL-centric view of the Fall as the moment of differentiation and the origin of meaning itself.

• Time and the Fall shows us that the Fall is not only the moment of differentiation, but also the birth of time as the unfolding of potential into actual.

• And finally, recursive falls reveal that every act of construal is both a fall and a creation, shaping the world and the self in a process of continual becoming.

By exploring all these aspects together, we see how the Fall is not just a singular event, but the ongoing myth of meaning itself. Each of us is continually falling and instantiating meaning, creating and constraining the possibilities of the world and ourselves.