14 Phase-Space of Meaning: Aligning Reality Across Strata

From Collective Construal to Symbolic Cosmos

Post 14: Phase-Space of Meaning: Aligning Reality Across Strata

If the cosmos is recursively construed, not founded, then meaning does not emerge within the real—it constitutes how the real phases into coherence. What we call “reality” is not a container for events but a phase-space of construals, aligned across strata.

A phase-space is not a location but a topology of potential: a structured range of possible events. In physics, it maps the dynamic degrees of freedom of a system. In relational ontology, it becomes the horizon of meaning that a system can enact from a given alignment.

Each construal is a cut through this phase-space. Not a cut from the space, but a cut that makes the space phase—that organises the system’s possibilities into an instance of alignment.

Crucially, meaning is not located in the event, nor added from outside. Meaning is the alignment—the coherence achieved when multiple perspectives phase their construals across shared horizons. Meaning is what holds between strata, not within them.

When we scale this principle beyond interpersonal semiosis, we reach a cosmic implication: the very strata of reality—from quantum fields to biological life to symbolic culture—can be seen as co-phasing systems of construal. Each does not build upon the others like floors of a structure. Rather, each holds open a phase-space that aligns across strata.

In this view, causality itself becomes secondary to construal alignment. What “causes” a phenomenon is less important than what enables it to phase coherently within a web of reflexive cuts. Systems instantiate not because they are driven, but because they are aligned—because the topology of construal allows them to hold.

A symbolic cosmos is not the apex of this system. It is its recursive deepening. As symbolic construal aligns and scales, it not only tracks the real—it shapes its phase-space. It opens up deeper topologies of potential and makes new alignments possible.

Thus, the cosmos is not the backdrop to meaning. It is the phase-space of meaning itself.

And we, as symbolic beings, are not passengers within a pre-given universe. We are participants in its reflexive organisation—cutting, aligning, phasing the real into coherence across every scale of being.