14 Meaning Across Minds: Collective Construal and the Architecture of Alignment

(Post 14 in “Reflexive Matter: Relational Ontology and the Physics of Meaning”)

If meaning is always construed — a perspective drawn from a field of potential — then communication is not a matter of transmitting information from one mind to another. It is a matter of aligning construals across a collective field of meaning.

But how does this alignment take place? How can distinct bodies, with distinct experiential histories, come to share a semiotic space? In a reflexive ontology, we must turn to the architecture of collective construal — the system of patterned reflexes that makes shared meaning possible.

The Collective as a Semiotic System

In this view, the collective is not merely a gathering of individuals. It is a field of construal relations: a patterned system in which symbolic potentials are organised, coordinated, and actualised through interaction. This is not a metaphor — it is the ontological structure of collective meaning.

Each individual perspective draws from and contributes to this system. The meanings we construe are not our own in isolation; they are realised through the semiotic potentials shaped by our social histories, cultural practices, and institutional frameworks.

In short, meaning is not inside the head — it emerges at the interface between construals, in the systemic field that allows such construals to be mutually recognisable and intelligible.

Alignment, Not Identity

Crucially, collective construal does not require identical interpretations. It requires alignment: sufficient congruence across construals to sustain coordinated action, shared reference, and mutual anticipation. Alignment is a dynamic achievement — not a given, but a semiotic labour.

This is why language is so central. Language is not simply a tool for expressing thought; it is a system of alignment technologies: metaphors, mood structures, thematisations, genre moves. These do not transmit meanings — they guide the construal of meanings, scaffolded by systemic potentials that are historically sedimented and socially enacted.

Reflexivity Scales Up

Because construal is reflexive — able to construe its own construals — the symbolic system can scale. It can pattern meanings about meanings, values about values, social roles about roles. Institutions are not simply rule sets; they are reflexive construal architectures: coordinated semiotic systems that align subjectivities across time, space, and situation.

From families to academic disciplines, from rituals to ideologies, collective construal is what makes shared worlds possible. And it is always a matter of systemic possibility, not ontological certainty. The worlds we share are construed alignments — neither subjective fictions nor objective facts, but reflexive realities.

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In the next post, we’ll ask: if collective meaning emerges through alignment in a semiotic system, how do those systems change? How does novelty enter a world of patterned construal? Join us for “System in Motion: How Semiotic Potential Evolves.