33 Matter as the Condition of Symbolic Cut

(Post 33 in “Reflexive Matter: Relational Ontology and the Physics of Meaning”)

Physics has long treated matter as the ultimate stuff — that which underlies all form, resists all abstraction, grounds all reality. But in relational ontology, matter is no longer a thing beneath appearance. It is:

The condition for symbolic cut — that which enables construal to take hold.

From Substance to Condition

Matter, in this sense, is not inert substance. It is the field of difference that allows a cut to matter at all:

• It is not reducible to particles, nor energy, nor even fields in spacetime.

• It is the background of potentiality against which a symbolic system may phase itself.

When we say a construal “takes hold in matter,” we do not mean that it sticks to some underlying stuff. We mean:

Matter is the openness through which construal may be differentiated.

This is not metaphysical mysticism. It is a shift in how we understand symbolic systems:

• Language does not float above matter.

• Meaning is not imposed upon it.

• Rather, matter is the stratified horizon through which semiotic construal becomes real.

Reflexive Matter: A Dynamic of Alignment

To call matter reflexive is to say that it is not passive. It is:

• Structurally open to construal, yet

• Resistant in specific ways, providing a basis for coherence and distinction.

Matter phases itself symbolically — not because it is “conscious,” but because systems within it can be cut, realigned, and recursively re-cut. That is, matter:

Is not what resists meaning — but what enables it to differentiate and persist.

This is why relational ontology requires no ghost in the machine. The symbolic does not hover above matter. It emerges within it, and as it, through systems that:

• Construe,

• Align,

• Phase,

• and Reflexively re-cut.

The Ontological Shift

Thus, we no longer ask: “What is matter made of?”

We ask instead:

• What kinds of symbolic cut can matter support?

• What phases of alignment allow construal to emerge?

• How do systems within matter differentiate the possible?

Matter is not the ground beneath — it is the field through which symbolic differentiation becomes actual.

It is not the stuff of being, but the openness of potential within constraint.

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Having reframed matter as the symbolic condition of construal, we now arrive at a final synthesis: how does this framework change what we mean by reality itself?

32 Freedom as Reflexive Potential: Beyond Will, Beyond Determinism

(Post 32 in “Reflexive Matter: Relational Ontology and the Physics of Meaning”)

Freedom is often posed as a problem: either we are free and must explain how, or we are not and must accept determinism. But both sides assume a metaphysics of the subject: that agency lies inside an individual who either does or does not transcend causal constraint.

In relational ontology, this dichotomy dissolves. Freedom is neither metaphysical liberation nor mechanical illusion. It is:

The openness of a system to rephase itself.

Freedom Is Not Uncaused

Relational cuts never arise in a vacuum. Every construal is situated within:

• A semiotic system (what construals are systemically possible);

• A symbolic history (what construals have been actualised);

• A phase of alignment (how construals are constrained by others).

There is no absolute spontaneity. But neither is there mechanical necessity.

A system may shift phase — not by escaping causality, but by modulating which constraints are activated, and how. This shift is freedom.

To be free is not to act without constraint, but to play within constraint — to construe otherwise.

Rephasing the Possible

Freedom becomes visible not in isolated acts, but in the inflection of a trajectory:

• A collective reframes its narrative.

• A speaker redrafts their relation to what has been said.

• A tradition construes itself anew through inherited forms.

Each act of rephasing shifts what counts as possible. This is not the exercise of will in the face of resistance, but the emergence of a new potential within the reflexive field.

Freedom is not a capacity possessed by a subject. It is the event of possibility surfacing through symbolic alignment.

Neither Free Nor Determined — But Reflexive

From this view, we are not free beings who occasionally confront determination. We are reflexive matter: systems capable of symbolically phasing their own constraints.

What appears as “freedom” is the system seeing itself differently — a construal that cuts through past alignments and opens a new direction.

Thus, to be free is:

• To rephase the system from within.

• To symbolise what was not yet visible.

• To align a cut that realigns the field.

No will required. No determinism escaped. Just the emergence of the possible in the flux of the actual.

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With freedom reconceived as reflexive potential, the ground is now prepared for a deeper rethinking of matter itself — not as the inert ground of being, but as the condition of construal.