The Word That Cannot Be Spoken

Imagine a word known only in thought, never on the tongue. You know its shape, its force, its place in the lattice of meaning. It is fully real to you — and yet, when you try to speak it, no sound comes.

The word resists articulation. No matter how you move your mouth, the air will not shape itself around it. To others, it seems as if nothing was said. To you, however, the word remains, pressing insistently at the edge of expression.

This is not silence, but an asymmetry: construal without symbolisation. The meaning exists, but it cannot pass into the shared system of language. It hovers on the boundary between thought and communication, alive in the individual but absent in the collective.

The experiment reveals the fragility of symbolic life. A meaning without words can exist, but it cannot circulate, align, or endure. It is a solitary construal, unable to take part in the reflexive architectures of language.

What this reveals:

The symbolic order is not a passive mirror of thought but an enabling infrastructure. A meaning without expression is already constrained, bound to the private horizon of its thinker. Only in symbolisation can meanings move, align, and become part of a shared world.

The Forgotten Gesture

Imagine a gesture once common in human interaction — a simple movement of the hand that once carried clear meaning. Perhaps it meant welcome, or refusal, or an invitation to join. At one time, it was immediately understood across a community.

Now imagine that the gesture has been forgotten. A child stumbles upon it playfully, moving their hand in that long-lost pattern. To them it is just movement, empty of meaning. An onlooker sees the gesture but cannot recognise it; it is strange, without significance.

And yet, in another time, in another construal, that same movement was alive with meaning. Its power lay not in the motion of the hand but in the shared symbolic system that anchored it. Without that system, the gesture is not destroyed — but it is no longer a gesture. It has slipped back into the realm of mere movement.

This experiment reminds us that meaning is never inherent in the act itself. It is the relational system that renders movement a gesture, sound a word, colour a category. Without construal, the sign dissolves back into material process.

What this reveals:

Meaning depends not on physical form but on the relational architectures that construe form as symbol. What is forgotten is not the movement but the system that once allowed it to signify.

The Unnamed Colour

Imagine that you encounter a colour you have never seen before. It is not a new shade of red or green, not a subtle mixture of the known palette, but something utterly outside your vocabulary of hues.

You perceive it vividly. It is undeniable, radiant, present. Yet you cannot name it, cannot even place it. The mind strains to compare — “it is like…” — but every likeness fails.

For a moment, the unnamed colour overwhelms you. But as soon as you turn to share it, you falter. Without a word, without a system of reference, how can it be communicated? To point and say “look” is not enough, because what the other sees they will inevitably construe in terms of the colours they already know.

Here, the gap between experience and meaning yawns open. The colour is there, yet its reality as a meaningful phenomenon is precarious. Without a name, without a place in the symbolic system, it hovers at the threshold between phenomenon and non-phenomenon.

The unnamed colour is not absent; it is inaccessible. It shows us that perception alone is not enough for meaning. To be meaningful, experience must be construed — folded into a system of differences that can be shared.

What this reveals:

Meaning does not reside in the rawness of perception but in the symbolic systems that allow perception to be integrated, recognised, and communicated. Without construal, even the most vivid encounter risks vanishing into silence.

The World Without Others

Imagine a world in which you are the only being. Not merely alone in a room, nor marooned on a deserted island, but truly solitary — no other consciousness, no other voice, no other mind to respond.

At first, this world might seem serene. There are still trees, rivers, stars, winds — a universe of phenomena to witness. Yet something is missing, though it resists naming. For without another, there is no dialogue, no contrast of perspectives, no recognition.

What is an utterance when no one is there to hear? What is identity when it cannot be answered? Even self-reflection falters, because to reflect on oneself is already to adopt a perspective other than one’s own — a doubling of consciousness that presupposes the possibility of the other.

In this world without others, meaning thins out. There are experiences, but not interpretations; phenomena, but no shared construals. The very notion of “world” trembles, for a world is always already between — a horizon that opens only when perspectives align and differ.

Thus, to imagine the absence of others is to confront the impossibility of meaning. The solitary being is not only alone; it is mute in the deepest sense, incapable of anchoring experience in the shared play of construal. A world without others is no world at all.

What this reveals:

This thought experiment shows that meaning is not private property but relational emergence. Others are not incidental to experience — they are constitutive of what it means to have a world.

The Mirrorless Reflection

Imagine standing in a world without mirrors, cameras, polished surfaces, or any medium that could reflect your appearance back to you. You have a body, you move, you act — but you have never once seen yourself from the outside.

Now ask: how could self be construed under such conditions?

Without reflection, self-construal cannot rely on the external image — the visible body doubled back as object. What remains is the lived process: proprioception, inner alignment, the sense of moving through a world that offers resistance, support, and response.

This thought experiment highlights a distinction at the heart of relational ontology:

• The body as event — experienced from within, as process.

• The body as object — construed from without, through reflection.

In our world, self-construal entwines both. Mirrors, photos, and others’ gaze fold us back into ourselves, constructing an image of the self as an external object among others. But in the mirrorless world, “I” is never doubled in this way. Identity remains a lived alignment, a resonance of action and sensation, never split by reflection into an inner and outer.

The mirrorless reflection thus shows us that the self-as-object is not a given, but an achievement of construal. It requires symbolic mediation — a surface that turns perspective back upon itself.

And in this reversal lies the seed of reflexivity itself: the possibility of construing construal.

5 The Infinite Process: Emergence of Boundless Possibility

In our previous post, we explored the Collective Process, showing how many interacting processes produce coherent fields, patterns, and emergent norms. Now, let us imagine a process without boundaries: the Infinite Process — a process that continuously unfolds, extending its relational horizons without end.

Infinity as Relational Potential

Imagine a process, I, whose states perpetually interact with other processes and whose relational field continually expands:

• There is no final “state” or endpoint; the process continuously creates new alignments.

• Horizons of time, space, and meaning are open-ended, always partially unconstrued.

• The Infinite Process illustrates that potentiality itself is structured: coherence arises from relational constraints even as the field expands without limit.

Implications

• Infinity is not an abstract totality but a dynamic horizon of relational possibility.

• Complexity, novelty, and emergence are natural consequences of unbounded relational interactions.

• Symbolic, social, and cognitive systems can be understood as finite instantiations within an effectively infinite relational field, continuously actualising new possibilities.

Concluding the Sequence

Through these five thought experiments — Entangled, Observer, Fragmented, Collective, and Infinite Processes — we have explored the emergence of:

1. Coherence without independent identity (Entangled).

2. Perspective and construal (Observer).

3. Distributed identity and partial alignment (Fragmented).

4. Collective behaviour and emergent norms (Collective).

5. Unbounded potential and structured possibility (Infinite).

At each stage, we see that process is primary, and horizons — of time, space, reflexivity, and meaning — emerge relationally. This sequence illustrates the power of relational ontology to illuminate the architecture of possibility across individual, collective, and symbolic domains.

4 The Collective Process: Emergence of Coordinated Fields

In our previous post, we explored the Fragmented Process, showing how identity and coherence emerge through relational alignment across partial threads. Now, let us expand to many interacting processes forming a Collective Process — a coherent field arising from relational interactions.

Collectivity as Emergent Coherence

Imagine a system of processes, P₁, P₂, … Pₙ, each with its own unfolding states:

• As they interact, patterns of alignment emerge, producing coherence across the group.

• Individual processes retain their distinct threads, but the collective field constrains and enables their possibilities.

• Temporal, spatial, and symbolic horizons now operate at multiple levels: individual, relational, and collective.

Implications

• Collective processes illustrate how social systems, culture, and coordinated activity arise naturally from relational alignment.

• Identity and meaning are not only personal but also distributed across the collective field.

• Norms, structures, and patterns emerge without central control, through recursive alignment of interacting processes.

Looking Ahead

The Collective Process sets the stage for our final thought experiment in this sequence: the Infinite Process, exploring processes that extend without bounds, generating emergent complexity and potentiality across ever-expanding relational horizons.

3 The Fragmented Process: Identity and Partial Construal

In our last post, we introduced the Observer Process, showing how perspective and reflection create epistemic horizons that make time, space, and coherence legible. Now, we turn to a subtler scenario: the Fragmented Process — a single process that appears divided into separate threads or aspects, each partially coherent on its own.

Fragmentation as Relational Differentiation

Imagine a process, P, which unfolds in multiple “threads” simultaneously:

• Each thread carries part of the process’s state but does not fully determine the whole.

• No single thread represents the process completely; identity emerges only across the alignment of threads.

• The relational field is crucial: the coherence of P is constructed through the cuts made across its fragments.

Implications

• Fragmentation illustrates that individuation is not inherent. Identity is relational, arising from how threads are construed relative to one another and to other processes.

• Partial construals allow distributed coherence, which can illuminate social, cognitive, or symbolic systems where processes are inherently multi-faceted.

• Observers (like process O) can perceive some threads and not others, showing that what is construed depends on perspective and alignment.

Looking Ahead

The Fragmented Process prepares us for the next thought experiment: the Collective Process, where many interacting processes form a coherent field. Here, we will explore how collective behaviour, emergent norms, and coordinated action arise from relational alignment.

2 The Observer Process: Construal and Perspective

In the previous post, we explored entangled processes, where two or more processes are inseparably linked, demonstrating that coherence can emerge without independent identity. Now, let us introduce a new twist: the Observer Process — a process capable of reflecting on others, without directly influencing them.

Observation as Relational Act

Imagine a process, O, that monitors two other processes, A and B. O does not intervene; it only construes the unfolding relations between A and B.

• O establishes perspective: it aligns sequences, notes correlations, and constructs temporal and spatial relations between processes.

• This act of observation does not create time or space ex nihilo; it makes these horizons legible by structuring relational cuts.

• O exemplifies construal as constitutive: meaning emerges through the observer’s alignment with the relational field.

Implications

• Observation is not passive. Even without intervention, construal creates epistemic horizons, revealing patterns and coherence.

• The observer highlights that time, space, and relational identity are perspectival: they depend on the cuts enacted by processes that perceive or measure.

• In social or symbolic systems, every act of reflection or measurement is a recursive relational process, shaping what can be construed.

Looking Ahead

The Observer Process sets the stage for our next thought experiment: the Fragmented Process, where a single process appears divided or incoherent. Here, we will explore how partial construals generate the conditions for identity, individuation, and distributed coherence.

1 Entangled Processes: Coherence Across Horizons

In earlier posts, we explored solitary and multiple processes, showing how time and space emerge as relational horizons. Now, let us consider a subtler scenario: entangled processes — two or more processes whose changes are immediately linked, so that the state of one is inseparable from the state of the other.

Entanglement as Relational Coherence

Imagine two processes, A and B, in a relational field. Unlike previous examples, a change in A co-determines a change in B, and vice versa. Neither process exists in isolation; each is partially defined by the other.

• There is no independent “before” or “after” for either process — temporal ordering becomes relative and relational.

• Space is also relational: the “position” of each process cannot be defined independently, only in terms of their entangled alignment.

Implications

• Entangled processes demonstrate that coherence can exist across processes without requiring separable identity.

• Horizons such as time and space are flexible and perspectival, emerging from the relational pattern, not pre-existing containers.

• Even with multiple processes, relational entanglement shows that the field itself shapes the possible cuts, constraining and enabling what can be construed.

Looking Ahead

Entangled processes prepare us for the next exploration: the Observer Process, where a process reflects on others. Here, we will see how perspective and measurement are themselves relational acts, revealing the role of construal in creating epistemic horizons.

5 Symbolic Processes: Meaning and Construal

In our journey through The Construal Experiments, we have explored solitary processes, the emergence of time and space, and recursive processes that generate reflexivity and higher-order horizons. Now we turn to symbolic processes — language, dialogue, and other forms of symbolic activity — to see how meaning itself emerges in relational fields.

Symbolic Processes as Recursive Alignments

A symbolic process is a process that refers not only to itself or other processes, but to patterns, norms, and distinctions within a relational field. Language, for instance, is a recursive process:

• Utterances are aligned with previous utterances.

• Words, grammar, and symbols emerge as coordinated relational structures.

• Meaning arises not from words themselves but from the relations they instantiate across participants and contexts.

Construal as Constitutive of Meaning

In relational ontology, meaning is never pre-given: it emerges in the act of construal. A sentence does not carry meaning independently; it becomes meaningful when processes (speakers, listeners, context) are aligned and phased relationally.

This insight has profound implications:

• AI and computation: AI outputs are not meaningful in isolation; they gain significance only in relational fields with human or other interpretive processes.

• Social systems: Norms, symbols, and culture arise through recursive construals of many interacting processes.

• Personal identity: Selfhood is enacted as a recursive alignment of one’s own processes with social and symbolic fields.

Horizons of Symbolic Construal

Symbolic processes extend the horizons we have explored:

• Time and space arise first from the alignment of processes.

• Recursive processes create reflexive horizons and higher-order construals.

• Symbolic processes expand these horizons further, creating structured fields of meaning, identity, and coordination.

In other words, the architecture of symbolic reality emerges from relational cuts applied recursively across processes, producing the familiar worlds of language, culture, and social interaction.

Concluding the Series

Through these five posts, we have traced a path from the simplicity of a solitary process to the complexity of symbolic fields:

1. The Solitary Process — process exists without time or space.

2. The Dual Process — time emerges as coherence between processes.

3. The Relational Field — space emerges from multiple processes in alignment.

4. Recursive Processes — reflexivity and metaconstrual create higher-order horizons.

5. Symbolic Processes — meaning and social reality emerge in recursive relational fields.

At every stage, we see that horizons of construal — time, space, reflexivity, and symbolic meaning — are not independent structures but emerge from the relations we enact among processes.

This series offers a framework for understanding reality not as a collection of objects or pre-given dimensions, but as a field of relational possibility, continuously actualised in the interplay of processes.

4 Recursive Processes: Reflexivity and Metaconstrual

So far in The Construal Experiments, we have seen how a solitary process exists without time or space, how a second process allows time to emerge, and how multiple processes give rise to space. Now we take the next step: processes that reference themselves or other processes, introducing reflexivity and higher-order construals.

What is a Recursive Process?

A recursive process is one that:

• Observes or references itself,

• Interacts with another process in a way that modifies both,

• Or participates in loops of mutual alignment.

These processes introduce a new horizon: metaconstrual — the capacity to construe not only events, but the relations between events themselves.

Reflexivity in Action

Imagine a process that records its own unfolding or adjusts based on its prior states. This is reflexivity: the process becomes a participant in its own alignment.

• Time and space are already present from prior posts, but now the process can act upon the temporal or spatial horizons themselves.

• The boundaries of relational coherence are no longer fixed; the process can modify them, creating new possibilities for construal.

Metaconstrual: Constructing Higher-Order Horizons

Recursive processes allow us to see how complex structures of meaning emerge:

• Identity arises when a process aligns with itself across time and space.

• Norms or patterns emerge when multiple recursive processes align their reflexive actions.

• Symbolic structures — such as language or social coordination — can be understood as recursively constraining and expanding relational fields.

In this way, reflexivity and recursion are the engines through which higher-order horizons — beyond mere time and space — come into being.

Implications

• Recursive processes illustrate that horizons themselves can be acted upon.

• Reflexivity is the key to symbolic, cognitive, and social phenomena.

• The distinction between first-order processes and higher-order construals clarifies how meaning and identity emerge from within the relational field, rather than being imposed externally.

Looking Ahead

In the next post, we will explore symbolic processes, including language, dialogue, and AI, showing how meaning emerges in relational fields. We will see that the structures of thought and culture are nothing more — and nothing less — than recursive construals of processes within extended relational horizons.

3 The Relational Field: Emergence of Space

In the previous post, we saw how introducing a second process allowed time to emerge as a horizon of relational coherence. Sequence, “before” and “after,” became meaningful only through the alignment of multiple processes.

Now, let us expand the universe to include many processes. With multiplicity comes a new horizon: space.

Space as Relational Horizon

When multiple processes coexist, we can begin to ask:

• How are these processes positioned relative to one another?

• How do they extend, overlap, or coexist in a larger field?

Space, in relational ontology, is not a pre-existing container. It is the horizon of potential alignment, the perspectival field within which relations between processes can be construed. It allows us to make sense of extension, proximity, and coexistence.

Relation vs. Space

It is crucial to distinguish relations from space:

• Relations are actual cuts — the alignments, interactions, or coherences that exist between processes.

• Space is the potential horizon — the condition that allows such relations to be meaningfully construed.

Without multiple processes, there is no space. Just as time required at least two processes, space requires many processes. Space emerges as the relational canvas upon which processes can be juxtaposed, extended, and coordinated.

Implications

• Space is not intrinsic to the processes themselves; it is a product of how we construe them relationally.

• Position, distance, and extension exist only in the field of multiple, co-actualised processes.

• Like time, space is a second-order phenomenon, emerging from relational construal rather than existing independently.

Looking Ahead

From solitary processes to many, we see how relational ontology gradually builds the familiar scaffolds of experience: first process, then time, then space. In future posts, we will explore recursive processes, reflexivity, and symbolic systems, showing how even more complex horizons — including meaning, identity, and collective construal — emerge from these fundamental principles. 

2 The Dual Process: Emergence of Time

In our previous post, we imagined a universe with only a single process: a solitary unfolding event. Alone, it simply is — no questions of duration, sequence, or location made sense. Time and space were absent because they are not intrinsic features of a process; they emerge only through relational construal.

Now, let us introduce a second process into this minimal universe. Two processes, each unfolding independently, create the conditions for something entirely new: temporal ordering.

Time as Relational Coherence

With two processes, we can begin to ask questions like:

• Which process occurs “first”?

• How do the changes in one process relate to the changes in the other?

These questions make sense not because time exists independently, but because we are now able to construe the coherence between processes. Time emerges as the horizon within which processes can be aligned, phased, or sequenced. It is not a container in which events happen; it is the reflexive relation that arises when processes are construed relative to one another.

A Perspectival Cut

Observe carefully: each process still unfolds independently. Its sequence is complete in itself. The “when” only appears when we cut across the two processes and align them. In other words, time is second-order, a product of the relational field, not a property of any single process.

Implications

• Time is not a background flow but a horizon of relational possibility.

• Temporal questions always presuppose at least two processes.

• Our intuition of “past, present, future” is a reflection of the cuts we make across relational fields, not a universal substrate.

Looking Ahead

Adding a third, fourth, or more processes allows us to extend this logic into space: the horizon across which processes coexist and can be aligned in extension. But for now, we see that time itself is emergent, not absolute, and is inseparable from relational construal.

In the next post, we will explore the Relational Field and the Emergence of Space, showing how multiple processes generate the horizon in which relations and extension appear.

1 The Solitary Process Thought Experiment

Imagine a universe with only a single process — a lone unfolding event. It changes, it moves, it evolves, but there is nothing else. No other events. No points of reference. No observers.

In this solitary universe, familiar questions lose their meaning:

• How long does it take? There is no “time” yet — time emerges only when multiple processes are construed relative to one another.

• Where is it? There is no “space” yet — space emerges only when processes are aligned, extended, or co-existing.

The process simply is. Its unfolding is complete in itself, independent of any horizon. It does not happen in time, nor does it occur in space. Time and space are absent because they are not intrinsic features of a process; they are relational horizons that emerge only when multiple processes are construed together.

Through this thought experiment, we glimpse the relational ontology of reality: processes are primary, and the familiar scaffolds of time and space arise only as conditions of coherence in a field of possibility.