Thursday, 21 August 2025

21 Worlds Within Meaning: The Ontological Status of a Semantic Phase Space

(Post 21 in “Reflexive Matter: Relational Ontology and the Physics of Meaning”)

We have spoken of meaning systems as fields of potential, and of meaning events as cuts through those fields. But what kind of reality does a phase space of meaning have? Is it simply a metaphor, or can we speak of it with ontological commitment?

This is not a question of belief. It is a question of perspectival rigour. If relational ontology teaches us anything, it is that the mode of existence of a phenomenon depends on how we engage it.

Meaning as a Phase Space

In physics, a phase space is not a physical location but a structured manifold of possible states. Each point in the space corresponds to a distinct configuration of the system. The dynamics of the system trace a trajectory through this space.

In a similar sense, a semantic phase space is a structured manifold of possible construals. Meaning events trace trajectories through this space — not as particles, but as phase shifts in a system of affordances.

We do not move through the semantic space as through a landscape. We enact cuts through it — selections and inflections that bring potential into actual relation.

The Ontological Status of Potential

So does the semantic phase space “exist”? The answer depends on how we understand existence.

In a relational ontology, to exist is not to be independently present. It is to be a potential for relation. What exists is what can be brought into meaningful alignment — what can be cut into relevance.

Thus, the semantic system — the phase space of meaning — exists not as a substrate, but as a theory of construal. It is the very possibility of orientation, coherence, and differentiation. It is not behind meaning events; it is made real through them.

There is no semantic space apart from the construals that enact it. And yet, those construals are only possible because of the system they instantiate. This is not a paradox; it is the logic of reflexive matter.

Virtual, Actual, and Construal

In Deleuzean terms, we might say the semantic system is virtual, meaning events are actual, and construal is the cut that connects them. But in our model, this triad is not metaphysical. It is epistemological and semiotic.

The virtual does not stand behind the actual; it is not a reservoir of forms. It is structured openness — the affordance of difference itself. The semantic system is this openness, this relational potential, not yet cut.

Meaning, then, is not an overlay upon matter. It is a mode of mattering: the relational dynamics by which systems enact distinctions, cohere across difference, and reconstitute their own field of relevance.

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