SSI Thought Letter: Vol. 1 Issue [X]
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Case Study: Meaning — Trivalent Semantic Optics of Reality
Sociology has enjoyed a long and complex set of relationships with history, psychology, political science, anthropology, economics, and other disciplines. Areas like sociolinguistics and sociological semantics, however, aren’t well known and seldom appear in public discussions of how meaning is created and developed over time.
In sociology, a semantic unit (or “sememe”) is the smallest, independent proposition or idea that is considered meaningful within a particular social context. They’re indivisible units (or “irreducible”). This could be a word, phrase, sentence, or even a non-verbal gesture that carries a specific social meaning. Those meanings are often context-dependent, but always more than merely words. They will carry history, emotion, demands, and energy, meaning they have power and do work.
We achieve meaning through braided sets of perceptions. Those perceptions can be distilled into three “points” we tend to describe using familiar terms we often treat as interchangeable. In actuality, they are closely related but with nuanced differences that, once clarified, create an integrative three-dimensional interwoven spatial framing of our perceptions and a way to gain a better understanding of the perceptions of others.
To demonstrate a semantic structure around triads for this article, I chose the following tripartite Venn-like shape (from among many others I’ve generated), showing how we integrate meanings to arrive at a unified, coherent, multi-dimensional understanding of our thinking about a complex whole. It is also a guide to how we can more effectively interrogate the realities of others, as well as better understand our own. The terms I’ve selected are likely familiar to everyone:
a) Viewpoint
b) Standpoint
c) Vantage Point
At its bare bones simplest, we can capture the complexity of a worldview as a multidimensional positionality with a standard consulting 3x3 matrix of nine container cells.
A “world view” isn’t just what one believes — it’s how one perceives, orients, and positions oneself in relation to the world. This 3x3 matrix reflects that by breaking it down into the three “points,” each with a nuanced meaning:
- View: What one sees and how their spatial angle alters that.
- Stand: Where one stands regarding roles, filters, attitudes, and commitments.
- Vantage: How clearly and strategically one can perceive both self and system.
However, the 3x3 grid structure creates an illusion of comprehensiveness while obscuring the nexus where meaning actually forms.
Kurt Lewin fashioned his “Life-Space” as a unified field, similar to an electromagnetic field. He recognized that our lives and our worldview are not static or universal. They shift across three contextual planes:
- Relational: Socially constructed and shaped through qualia and intersubjectivity.
- Situational: Bound by moment-to-moment context and emergent conditions.
- Individual: Rooted in personal identity, internal logic, and interpretive stance.
These three can illustrate how worldview functions within a field, echoing Lewin’s life-space and field theory, where behavior (and thus interpretation and belief) is always shaped by the person, their environment, and a specific time.
Each domain in a semantic structural node can be illustrated using a simple Cartesian coordinate system. Lewin’s encompassing trifecta maps directly to epistemology (knowing), ontology (being), and praxeology (acting), classic philosophical elements of worldview.
By a metaphorical use of a theoretical math process called “eversion,” we can turn this 3x3 “inside-out” without losing (breaking) any information within the matrix. Here is the most straightforward depiction of the everted matrix using a 2-dimensional Venn-like framework, which removes the configuration a step or two from strict set mathematical relationships, allowing it to behave more like a cartograph and a Cartesian coordinate system in two or three dimensions.
Why do that? It frees us from the tyranny of the grid and opens the components to unbridled “access” to one another in a nonlinear, complex, interacting relationship. While this type of “3x3 eversion” concept is novel (i.e., not yet a recognized definition or practice), the act of making a 3x3 from a tripartite Venn and, vice versa, is indeed possible and, with careful labeling (meanings) protocols, understandable. It’s an exercise in the flexibility of data representation using underlying concepts that aren’t overly complicated or “mystical.”
The Lewinian RIS Core (Relational, Individual, Situational) anchors the framework, centering a more dynamic, emergent, and nuanced understanding of complexity. Let’s break down why it’s powerful:
- Relational: Emphasizes that entities (whether they are people, concepts, or components of a system) are defined and behave in relation to each other. Their properties and actions are not inherent but arise from their connections and interactions. This moves beyond simple intersections to continuous, evolving linkages. It preserves relational primacy. Properties aren’t intrinsic to entities but emerge from connections. For example, a CEO’s “authority” as a property of position or leadership doesn’t exist in isolation, but is constituted through relational patterns with the board, executives, and field conditions. This explains why transplanting “successful leaders” often fails. The relational configuration that enabled their effectiveness doesn’t transfer.
- Individual: Acknowledging relations, this still recognizes the unique characteristics and agency of individual entities. The aggregation, group, or situation doesn’t merely subsume individuals; their distinct qualities contribute to the interaction. Individual agency is preserved. Unlike pure systems thinking that dissolves actors into roles, RIS maintains that individuals bring distinct capacities, models, and agency into relational configurations. The interaction isn’t deterministic — individual variation matters even within structural constraints.
- Situational: Highlights the crucial role of context. The same individuals in the same relationships might behave differently or exhibit different properties depending on the specific situation, environment, or surrounding conditions within the field. This preserves dynamism and contingency. The same individual-relational configuration performs differently across situations. This isn’t noise. It’s fundamental. What works in one context fails in another, not because of execution quality but because situational dynamics have changed.
Where all three converge is where meaning, semantics, and reality actually form — the frame of reference or “meaning point” as it relates to the three primary domains. This isn’t reducible to any single RIS dynamic. Meaning emerges, not just from their pairwise interactions with the primary domains, but from their simultaneous interaction at the nexus.
The Meaning Point Venn Cartograph, as an example, shows how a structural semantic node addresses one question while employing the three different “point” approaches (view, stand, vantage) iteratively. We might recognize how most of us have used these three distinct terms casually, interchangeably, without a more considered approach to sorting out what might be “subtle,” but not insignificant, shades of meaning.
Think of an issue that is one of your matters of great personal concern in life. We’ll label it as an “Issue [X]” and insert it into the narrative around meaning. Ask yourself:
- What’s my viewpoint on [X]? (Or: What’s my point of view, my internal “camera” angle (macro, wide, fisheye, etc.) from which I can observe or perhaps approach and experience the matter, the way I reflect on and process the information related to the issue, as well as how the issue reflects light toward me?) In engineering/mechanical drawing, the three classic views are front, side, and top views. (But 3D CAD Software has augmented the presentation of views from many angles, in 2D and 3D, including “exploded” views.) Viewpoint shapes our initial perceptions based on personal experiences and beliefs. It is more optical/geometrical than interpersonal, tied to distance, angle, gravitas, and shape perception (as anamorphosis). It is the basis for the immediate, subjective reaction to an interaction.
- What’s my vantage point on [X]? (Or: From what place do I come, what lens do I look through that frames how I interpret and filter things, my strategic location from which I gain insight or clarity, or how much of it I can see, like standing on a hill to see the Issue [X] below?) It is the point at which we obtain the most robust view possible for us, such that it enhances our comprehension of what we see, a commanding overview, providing the ability to grasp both object and context, and a strategic perspective. In common language, we may speak of this as a “bird’s eye view,” “panorama,” “scenic view,” or “from 10,000 feet.” Our vantage point offers a broader perspective, allowing consideration of the interaction within a larger context. This can reveal patterns or implications not otherwise immediately apparent.
- What’s my standpoint on [X]? (Or: Where do I take a stand, what firm attitude (position) would I or do I take as commitment or conviction I hold to as a personal stand, grounded in morals, ethics, values, or principles?) Standpoint grounds the interpretation of the individual’s social position, accounting for how factors (such as race, gender, culture, etc.) influence the understanding of power dynamics and social norms at play in the interaction. It includes not just values or ethics, but orientation, platform, intention, and bodily or quantum posture, “how one is standing in relation to [X].
First, all three are cognitive “points.“ The terms viewpoint, vantage point, and standpoint are spatially-based metaphors. They reference how we orient ourselves cognitively or perceptually in relation to any object. An “object” can be an abstraction, like a social issue. In this semantic case, it would also be an abstract “point” that exists in a moment of time. They share time, or temporality, in the present. The set of view, vantage, and stand, then, are spatiotemporal points related to some specific matter of importance, creating a semantic congruence among them, and thereby become a coherent set.
The three distinct types of “point” each highlight a nuanced difference while maintaining the shared sense of our relationship as a cognitive positionality to “Issue [X].” An individual’s viewpoint, vantage point, and standpoint work together as an integrated whole to create a unique lens through which they interpret and interact with Issue [X].
Based on the opening image of dual orbs, you might immediately wonder, “Then, where is the third view, a third orb, representing the completion of the set of three points?” The answer is that you are inside it as you read this. The reflections on the surfaces of the two orbs in the image are visible from the “point” in space you occupy now, but are spatially positioned beyond your peripheral range. In our cognitive reality, we intellectually occupy all three simultaneously, can “see” all three simultaneously, but will likely tend to be most focused on one in a given moment. How so?
Remember: A view is something we hold. A vantage is a location we occupy. A stand is an action we take. The three are borromean in nature, as they operate simultaneously as a cognitively integrated whole. But we can be immersed in or focused on one of them. When it is decision time, for example, we exercise deliberative choice and take action on an issue of importance. We engage our attitudinal stance in our action, our leaning, our dispositional state. We take a stand. We make a stand.
Attention is a limited resource. We can’t actively hold all three in the foreground of our minds at the same time. While we may have a specific view (e.g., this is a good deal) that is influenced by our life’s vantage (e.g., financial or ethical background), the conscious mind must ultimately focus on taking a stand (e.g., “I will buy this”) to make a decision. This dominant point of focus in the moment allows for clear thought and decisive action, even as the other two “domains” continue to influence us from the background.
In the 2D version below, we are cognitively positioned in the nexus, the center intersection of all three circles. In a more robust 3D image of orbs, the reflections of all three would appear iteratively, recursively, and fractally, in all three spheres, as if we were in the center of three mirrors configured to face each other directly. It is the whole of the intersecting three that generates our full meaning of a structural semantic node, in this case, a “meaning point,” and explains how we interact with it relationally, situationally, and individually.
There’s yet more here than meets the eye, so I’ll write more on this and on the importance of understanding our “umwelt” and “anamorphosis” in the SSI Thought Letter series a little later. Each of those will be explained in upcoming installments in connection with the quality of “Quantumnicity” in language, communication, and meaning.
Using another structured heuristic, such as the 6-IQ semantic unit, can significantly enhance the depth and breadth of inquiry when exploring the three semantic components displayed in the viewpoint-vantage point-standpoint configuration as a single, discrete structural semantic node. Applying this heuristic to each semantic component domain allows for a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of an issue, both from one’s own perspective and from the perspectives of others.
By systematically applying the 6-IQ heuristic to each component, we can gain a much deeper and more nuanced understanding of meaning in almost any circumstance. This approach encourages critical reflection, promotes empathy, and facilitates more productive dialogue and collaboration. It allows us to move beyond superficial opinions and engage with the complexities of different conceptions and perspectives, ultimately leading to more informed and effective decision-making.
Together, these elements form an accessible yet complex interpretive framework. For example, in a workplace disagreement, considering our individual:
- Viewpoint might color immediate impressions of who’s right or wrong,
- Vantage point could reveal how this conflict fits into broader office politics, and
- Standpoint might highlight how the social identities of those involved impact the dynamics.
This combination can generate a richly nuanced, highly personalized understanding of complex issues and social interactions across disciplines, venues, and milieus, among other things, but in this case, it shows the fundamental semantic structure, employing it to explain why different people can interpret the same event in vastly different ways.
In the broader context of language/linguistics, let’s look at how the tyranny of the grid would construct/constrict an explanatory structure of linguistics using a Lewinian core embedded in the three primary venues of our embodied existence.
Grids are fine for categorizations and rigid intersections of members. But attempting to “stuff” the grid with all of the complexities, intricacies of interrelations, and interdependencies is an overreach for something of the magnitude of language.
For example, we can observe the overlapping domains of certain entries, which, upon closer examination, don’t necessarily represent redundancy but rather reflect the inherently cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of language study. Fields like "Psycholinguistics" and "Music Cognition" must appear in multiple cells as they are inherently multifaceted. Psycholinguistics, for example, covers acquisition, processing, and perception, which can manifest at individual, situational, and relational levels.
Therefore, the appearance of redundancy is a natural reflection of their broad scope and relevance across different language aspects. The grid tacitly acknowledges the multi-faceted nature, implying these fields bridge categories, rather than attempting to confine them to single, exclusive cells. A grid would either explicitly state the multi-faceted nature of certain fields or use sub-categorizations to clarify their specific relevance within each cell, rather than simply removing them. But that’s cumbersome.
The traditional 3x3 grid, while a valuable starting point for categorizing language facets, inherently presents these aspects in discrete, somewhat isolated compartments. Matrix structure naturally struggles to fully capture the dynamic, interconnected, and interdependent essence of language within Kurt Lewin’s “life space.” Lewin’s theory emphasizes a “dynamic unified field” where all elements are “mutually interdependent” and behavior is a function of the continuous interaction between the person and their environment. The grid is an adherent structure, like a substrate, that can describe what language components exist or can exist. However, matrix configurations are less coherent, not adept at illustrating how the components constantly influence and shape each other in real-time. Structuration is not easy to show in a grid.
The elegant solution is the eversion of the grid into the Venn-like representation, “Lewinian Linguistic Structure in Life Space.”
Kurt Lewin was analogizing social fields to magnetic fields. The term field was developed in electromagnetism by Michael Faraday, well articulated by 1845, and subsequently mathematically formalized by James Clerk Maxwell in the 1860s. They theorized “field” as a region in space in which a force is exerted on objects; no need for direct contact (non-local causality). The core idea was that forces act within structured but invisible spatial regions. Kurt Lewin, a prominent Gestalt psychologist, developed his Field Theory in psychology primarily in the 1930s and 1940s.
Lewin took the idea quite literally. He envisioned behavior as the result of forces acting in a psychological or social space. The person was not a closed unit but part of a field of vectors (forces, directions, and magnitudes). To extend Lewin’s logic: we do not merely live within the field, we co-create it through how we act, perceive, relate, and embody.
It captures the complex interconnections and interdependencies that our previous analysis highlighted as central to Kurt Lewin’s Field Theory. Turning the grid “inside-out” provides a powerful visual metaphor for language's dynamic, holistic nature within an individual’s psychological reality. It provides a highly intuitive and academically rigorous visual rendering for understanding language within the Lewinian life space.
The Reuleaux core of the diagram, the “Meaning Point,” where all three domains and their intersections converge, represents the holistic nature of language. It signifies that true meaning-making and comprehension are not isolated processes but emerge from the simultaneous and interdependent operation of physiological, psychological, and sociological factors. The configuration moves beyond a static categorization to illustrate linguistic phenomenal dynamics, interconnected borromean nature, making it an incredibly flexible and generalizable tool for cross-disciplinary conceptualization and research, among many other things.
The structure of the field around and emanating from the sememe is not fixed; it is shaped through the ongoing interactions of its sememe. Outcomes within the field are not static; they emerge as dynamic equilibria, the result of reciprocal moderation among the three domains.
As the orbs in the opening picture suggest, a 3D complex method addresses the “field” in field theory, as the next two phases in the Trivalent Semantic process.
But that’s for another issue. For now, this link will take you back to Volume 1, Issue 1 of the Sociological Safety Insider, where we introduce readers to Sociological Safety®, the concept of Field Trivalence™, and the first-level nature of “OctalRepresentational Space” possible through the everted 3x3.
End Notes:
Special thanks to my colleague, Martijn Flinterman, for introducing me to Professor Lisa Feldman Barrett’s discussion of reality at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YmyMHbIWCo
