The Dependence of Articulation on Relation: A Preliminary Discussion of Being, Knowledge, and the Limits of Self-Representation

Abstract

Generative Relational Being holds that beings are constituted in relation and that knowledge emerges from relational dynamics. Taken together these two commitments generate a difficulty the framework has not addressed. If knowledge emerges from relational dynamics, and a formal system can articulate those dynamics, then a sufficiently powerful formalism appears able to exhaust what it articulates, which contradicts the long-standing position that an understanding of being precedes its logical expression. This paper resolves the difficulty and, in resolving it, states the framework's ontology and epistemology in a form the companion papers of this series presuppose without arguing. Three results are offered. The dependence of articulation on relation is asymmetric and non-temporal, so it is a relation of grounding and never a sequence of stages; a formulation as a chain of layers is shown to contradict the framework's own commitments. The relation between a being and the knowledge of it is neither identity nor separation, and the two failures are distinct errors with distinct consequences; the resulting position is stated as neither-one-nor-different in place of the weaker formula of non-duality. And complete self-representation is unavailable to a system that produces its own means of representation, for a reason internal to the framework in place of borrowed from any limitative theorem. Two consequences are drawn for the companion papers: the defect in a representation is ontological closure and never loss, and a generative event admits no locus among its participants.