Meaning as Interbeing: A Treatment of the WE-turn and Meta-Science

1 Introduction

“Can meaning be universal?”^[1] This is one of the fundamental questions that have occupied Western philosophy since the Pythagoreans. In “Über Sinn und Bedeutung,”^[2] Frege makes a useful threefold distinction of meaning between reference (Bedeutung), sense (Sinn), and imagination (Vorstellung). Frege explains this differentiation of meaning with the example of Venus as morning and evening star, where reference (a = a) is analytic and denotes equivalence (both morning and evening star are Venus). Sense (a = b) describes the gain of further insight (Erkenntnisgewinn), in which case morning star and evening star have different meanings. Imagination (Vorstellung), to Frege, is the subjective inner image we form of an object based on, for example, memory and emotions. Sinn, he argues, is collective property of the genus human.^[3]

This raises the question, which Frege leaves open in this regard, where such a collective or universal Sinn comes from. This problem I call, in reference to theories of mind, the problem of the emergence of meaning, i.e., the problem that the emergence of meaning cannot be fully explained by materialist and subjectivist ontologies and the possibility that meaning might emerge from an underlying relational ontology – something deeper than the sum of individual parts, their cultural formations, or their corresponding neural correlates. The concern is that we lack a conceptual space for a form of meaning as universal that is neither fully dependent on (inter-)subjective interpretations nor exhaustively reducible to material causes.

When addressing this question, this contribution takes “meaning” not in the sense of expressions and ideas being communicated and understood as mere artifacts of symbolic equivalence between utterance and ideas (i.e., reference), but rather as recognition of semblance between immanent and transcendent patterns of relations between objects – a deep structure of meaning.^[4] This understanding shifts the term’s meaning from a mere semantic understanding of meaning, a common interpretation of the term since the linguistic turn in philosophy, to meaning as relating to a deeper reality behind its mental and physical expressions in the phenomenal world.

This contribution, therefore, explores the concept of meaning as “interbeing,” positioning it within the relational ontology of the two incapability theses articulated by Yasuo Deguchi’s WE-turn (as found in this collection) and supported by the meta-ontological framework of Meta-Science (understood not merely as the science of science but also as the science of meaning).^[5] The article argues that meaning emerges at the intersection of epistemic subject–object interactions and non-epistemic archetypal structures emerging from a Schellingian Ungrund. It asserts that “meaning-making” is not merely a subjective, neurological, or intersubjective process, but rather a process of introspection and re-cognition, which links a deeper relationality of all interdependencies in reality (an engraved proto-meaning) to the epistemically accessible. This understanding of proto-meaning as deep relationality of all interdependencies corresponds with the two incapability theses of the WE-turn. In this sense, the present article also aims to show that it is possible to sketch a conception of meaning that, while being inclusive, conducive to dialogue, and aware of the situatedness of all involved, such conceptions do not necessarily lead to relativism of “anything goes.”

The analysis begins by expanding contemporary materialist and subjectivist perspectives on meaning beyond reductive notions, as often encountered after the linguistic turn in philosophy. Such notions often confine meaning to neural, linguistic, or cultural constructs. They fail, however, to explain the problem of the emergence of meaning. Building on the relational ontology of the WE-turn, the article introduces the idea of proto-meaning emerging from the ineffable (non-epistemic) to enter into the knowable (epistemic) and, thus, bridging immediate experiential realities with deeper archetypal structures.

The article concludes by addressing the challenges of achieving a philosophical WE-turn across diverse epistemic traditions, proposing Meta-Science as a tool to navigate and reconcile these differences based on a common meta-ontology. Meta-Science provides such a methodological pathway to integrate the universal and particular dimensions of meaning. As a set of meta-ontological propositions, Meta-Science argues that both mental and physical phenomena have, in principle, epistemic status grounded in a reality that cannot be accessed “as is.” Rather, this foundational reality can only be accessed through epistemically mediated filters grounded in one’s ontology. Ultimately, the article, therefore, argues for a holistic approach to ontologies of meaning rather than one mediated by one particular ontology; an understanding of meaning that transcends reductionist paradigms by acknowledging the interplay of archetypal deep structures of meaning (proto-meanings), empirical accessibility, and collective engagement.

2 Conceptions of Meaning

Many contemporary conceptions of meaning often remain confined within certain disciplinary horizons. Etymological and hermeneutical approaches, while illuminating how words and texts derive significance through historical, textual (scriptural), and interpretive contexts, ultimately tie meaning to linguistic communities and their shared traditions. Social-constructivist theories similarly broaden the scope to include cultural, institutional, and intersubjective agreements of negotiated symbolic correspondences between utterances and ideas, yet they still root meaning in contingent norms and practices without much exploration of the possibility of a more fundamental ontological dimension. Neuro-scientific and materialist perspectives, for their part, offer valuable insights into how neural processes underpin meaning-making but risk reducing meaning to mere physiological or computational states (Bedeutung), overlooking the normative or experiential richness that meaning often entails.

3 Meta-Scientific Propositions

In order to establish a foundation that can support an understanding of meaning as more than just a product of cultural practice, subjective interpretation, or physical process, we must first delineate the conceptual contours of the conditions of the possibility of our knowledge of reality. The following propositions lay the groundwork for a perspective that acknowledges both mental and physical phenomena as legitimate domains of inquiry, yet they also recognize that our knowledge of the physical is necessarily shaped by mental frameworks, and that ontologies related to either are by necessity incomplete. From there, we posit the existence of a deeper, unifying foundation of reality that underlies and gives rise to both mental and physical expressions of reality and from which proto-meaning might emerge. Finally, we conclude that what we commonly call “reality” cannot be apprehended in an unfiltered manner but is always mediated by our epistemic conditions. These premises will guide us toward an integrated understanding of meaning that transcends the familiar boundaries imposed by physicalist or subjectivist paradigms and set the stage for the relational meta-ontology that WE-turn and Meta-Science seek to illuminate.

Proposition 1: Both mental and physical phenomena can be objects of knowledge – i.e., both have epistemic status.

Drawing from philosophers of mind and science, such as Atmanspacher and Rickles,^[24] this premise underscores that the “mental” and the “physical” are not absolute, inaccessible domains. Instead, they represent conceptual arenas open to inquiry. For instance, we can study mental states – thoughts, perceptions, emotions – through introspection, psychological analysis, and cognitive science, as well as their corollaries in the material substrate, for example, by neuroscience. Simultaneously, physical phenomena – ranging from subatomic particles to celestial bodies – can be subjects of empirical investigation, modeling, and theoretical explanation in the natural sciences. Thus, both mental and physical realms yield to systematic inquiry.

This premise is epistemic rather than metaphysical: it does not assert which domain is ultimately “more real,” nor does it postulate a monist view on behalf of either the mental or the material, only that both can be known in principle. We can form justified beliefs or theories, which are internally logically consistent, about mental experiences and about material objects, even though the methods might differ depending on the underlying ontological framework (introspection vs experiment, qualitative vs quantitative analysis, reason vs intuition). Acknowledging both as in principle epistemically accessible prepares the stage for more nuanced questions about how these domains relate, rather than forcing a choice between mental idealism or physical reductionism.

Proposition 2: Both the mental and the physical presuppose an underlying, more fundamental reality from which they emerge as aspects.

This proposition draws on philosophical traditions that postulate a unifying substrate underlying apparent distinctions. Conceptual backing comes from, Neo-Platonists’ the One, Meister Eckhart’s concept of the Godhead, Spinoza’s substance monism of God, Schelling’s Ungrund, and the Pauli-Jung conjecture (Atmanspacher’s dual-aspect monism),^[25] which assert that mind and matter are not separate substances but two aspects or expressions of an underlying reality.^[26]

Plotinus defines the source of all existence and life as the One principle: “here let it be said succinctly that since all living things proceed from the one principle but possess life in different degrees, this principle must be the first life and the most complete.”^[27] To Eckhart, it is the Godhead, yet undifferentiated, from which the Trinity has to be birthed and from which everything that is overflows.^[28] Jung adopts Eckhart’s idea and summarizes it as “absolute Koinzidenz der Gegensätze” (absolute co-incidence of opposites, see in this regard also Nicholas of Cusa’s coincidentia oppositorum).^[29] Building on Spinoza’s definition of God as “a being absolutely infinite – that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality,”^[30] Atmanspacher and Rickles develop in their Dual-Aspect Monism the concept of the psycho-physically neutral (PPN),^[31] which suggests that both mental and physical properties are manifestations of a deeper, unitary reality.

Such a pre-epistemic source of all reality is not simply another layer of matter or a hidden mental realm; it is a non-dual foundation that gives rise to both. According to Schelling, the Ungrund, which he derives from Böhme and which follows the same Neo-Platonist logic of the One, is inherently indescribable, because in it no separation between objects exists.^[32] From the Ungrund derive in the pre-epistemic realm first principles, as Schelling argues (and as will later be shown). In accounts of mystics throughout the cultures and ages, including Plotinus, Meister Eckhart, and possibly Spinoza, this Ungrund, when experienced in what is usually termed “mystic experience,” remains inexpressible as it eludes all ontological frames. Consider the following example: James’^[33] and Stace’s^[34] treatment of mystical experiences for which they collect descriptions throughout history and across cultures points to the assertion that ultimate reality resists empirical demonstration or even description (James’ double criterion of ineffability and noetic quality of mystical experience). The Ungrund is thus beyond direct epistemic capture. We know it only either directly through mystic experience or indirectly through mental constructs.

If both mental and physical phenomena arise from a deeper reality that remains inaccessible, it follows that what we call “reality” can never be encountered purely “as it is.” Instead, our experience and knowledge are mediated. The next premise addresses this epistemic nature of reality head-on.

Proposition 3: Our access to reality should be understood as fundamentally epistemic, since its true nature is not directly accessible, and what we call “reality” is always filtered through epistemic frameworks derived from one’s ontology.

Building on the insights of Plotinus, Eckhart, and Schelling, reality as we experience it is a filtered reality.^[35] Its Ungrund is beyond epistemic access, and so are the first principles which we can speculate about only metaphysically, e.g., love, harmony, and the Trinity. Like prisoners in Plato’s cave, we see only shadows, or like Kant’s epistemic agents, we know phenomena but not noumena. Even modern structural realists acknowledge that we know only the structure of phenomena, not their ultimate “essence.” Thus, the Ungrund, like the noumenon, and the first principles which emerge from it cannot be straightforwardly known. We interact only with its manifestations, always “translating” raw reality into forms our cognition can handle. Archetypes and Platonic forms take an interesting interposition between such first principles and experiential reality, and as will be elaborated below, intuited meaning seems to be a medium of access.

Summary of the Meta-Scientific Propositions:

• Proposition 1: Both mental and physical phenomena are knowable objects of inquiry.

• Proposition 2: Both mental and physical aspects arise from a deeper, not directly knowable Ungrund.

• Proposition 3: Reality is fundamentally epistemic, as we can only encounter it through mediated, epistemic filters derived from one’s ontology rather than in its “raw” form.

Taken together, these propositions provide a theoretical framework of Meta-Science that shows knowledge is always situated and epistemically mediated but rooted in a foundational yet hidden ground; and the entire notion of “reality” is something we know only through epistemic interfaces. This Meta-Scientific framework prepares the ground for subsequent arguments that seek to move beyond strictly empirical proof and toward a conception of meaning that can incorporate non-empirical aspects.

4 Essences of Meaning

Markus Gabriel’s notion of “fields of sense” argues that reality consists of multiple, overlapping “fields” within which senses (i.e., meanings) arise.^[36] Each field contributes certain structures, reference points, and possibilities for interpretation. The subject, situated in various overlapping fields – linguistic, cultural, perceptual, ethical – approaches the object not as an isolated entity, but within a preconfigured landscape of proto-meaning, i.e., the engraved structure of all relationships (see first incompatibility thesis) that conditions how the subject can understand it. The object, too, is not encountered in a vacuum: it participates in fields of meaning that inform its potential interpretations.

By integrating Gabriel’s perspective, we see that a meaning is not drawn on a blank canvas but is traced against multi-relational backdrop. The subject’s interpretive stance, guided by diverse fields of sense, meets an object whose intelligibility is likewise shaped by its integration into these fields. The result is an interplay in which meaning emerges not merely from a subject looking at an object (or as some psychologists and neuroscientists like to argue that the brain “throws” meaning at things), but from their co-participation in broader, interwoven domains of significance. In this sense, meaning is simultaneously personal and shared, conceptual and contextual, dynamic and evolving. At the same time, as our discussion on proto-meaning already indicated, the fields of meaning are themselves interdependent and thus shaped by the structures and laws that govern reality, from natural laws to first principles, which we as humans can only approximate through reason^[37] and intuition,^[38] but never know in their completeness.

Gabriel’s fields of sense theory underscores that meaning is not simply discovered or assigned; it is continuously generated and reconfigured through the subject–object and object–object interplay within the multi-relational network of meaningful relations. This perspective also perfectly aligns with WE-turns’ two incapability theses. Individuals are simply incapable of conjuring meaning out of thin air; they are dependent on all surrounding elements that, as fields shape meaning, include but are not limited to the bi-directional subject–object relationship.

For meaning to resonate in an individual’s epistemic process as truly meaningful – where we theorize, reason, intuit and seek understanding – it must be grounded in something we can recognize, observe, or intuit at the level of lived experience, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, correspond with larger less subjective patterns that we can intuit and then “re-cognize.” That means that if meaning lacked any correlate in our perceptual, emotional, or cognitive life, it would reduce to an empty abstraction with no hold on our understanding. This requirement of experiential anchoring needs to be complemented with notions like Platonic forms, or archetypal patterns, which posit that fundamental meaning-structures exist prior to and independent of our direct awareness of them; they are imparted on us as proto-meaning.^[39] This proto-meaning or “blueprints of meaning” reside in a dimension beyond our immediate sensual experience (e.g., in Plato’s world of ideas or in what Frege terms the “third domain”).^[40] The laws and structures that dominate all of reality, albeit being accessible to us only incompletely through reason and intuition, nevertheless structure all fields of meaning. As collectively intuited archetypal patterns that give rise to collectively and individually recognizable Vorstellung, they are a necessity if any meaning is to hold and unfold any deeper “meaning.”

To make this more concrete, Schelling, in his Freiheitsschrift, for example, points to an “all-encompassing love” as a first principle that logically emerges from the Ungrund. He understands it as the emerging faculty of spirit that separates from the Ungrund’s indifference (Gleichgültigkeit) yet remains undifferentiated to any object–subject distinction. This idea harkens back to earlier traditions such as the Pythagorean tradition of harmony as the structural principle of the universe, expressed mathematically through proportions and musical intervals like the idea of the “music of the spheres” (harmonía ton sphairón). In Plotinus’ Enneads, the One is the source of all emanation, and harmony is a reflection of the orderly return to the One. And, for example, Leibnitz posited a “pre-established harmony” between all monads, orchestrated by God; and though each monad acts independently, their actions are harmonized by divine order. In other words, such first principles like “harmony” or “love” lack any deeper significance if they are reduced to mere object–subject relationships. Without such a deeper meaning, an act of self-sacrificial love, like Christ’s death on the cross, then is no more than a historical anecdote without deeper meaning. And while rational interpretive thought might end there, intuitive thought (as embodied in many religious and metaphysical traditions) can arrive at such a deeper correspondence between the historical anecdote and proto-meaning embodied in all relational constellations. How this can explain also other foundational or archetypal meanings will be explored below.

However, as rich and suggestive as these deeper ontological or metaphysical patterns may be, they cannot inform our understanding unless they manifest, however obliquely, in forms we can apprehend. Consider Platonic forms: while they represent eternal, perfect patterns of meaning, their relevance to human knowers depends on how they are reflected in the particulars of our world – particulars that we perceive through our senses and interpret through our minds. While often viewed critically, in this instance, Jungian archetypes can help to illustrate the relationship between archetypes and their relation to cognition. Archetypes can be thought of as innate, universal templates of meaning latent within what Jung terms the “collective unconscious,” but they only become significant when they surface in dreams, myths, narratives, and personal experiences recognizable to individuals and communities.^[41] The epistemic realm, then, functions like a kind of translation layer. It provides the conceptual and perceptual “interfaces” through which otherwise inaccessible patterns of proto-meaning can filter into our field of understanding. In this way, our lived experience of objects, relationships, events, and symbols acts as a bridge. Even if universal meaning lies beyond direct epistemic reach, it becomes meaningful to us by taking forms we can perceive and engage with, thereby transforming distant archetypal patterns into lived significance. Ultimately, the interplay between non-empirical, archetypal patterns of meaning and their experiential correlates ensures that meaning is not lost in abstraction. Instead, we access it through embodied cognition, cultural artifacts, and personal encounters. The experiential anchoring of meaning ensures that our pursuit of knowledge, understanding, and interpretation does not float free of the human condition but remains grounded in the tangible, interpretable field of our day-to-day existence.

The idea of archetypal patterns here is akin to deep structural templates that condition how subjects perceive and how objects present themselves – the most foundational of which, as Schelling argues, being love or others harmony. ^[42] All other proto-epistemic object–subject relationships, leaving this foundational level, enter various derivations of the prime duality that arises out of the Ungrund. Let me borrow again from Jung’s terminology for the lack of better terms to illustrate: Jungian archetypes point toward innate, universal patterns that transcend individual cultures and personal life histories. These archetypes shape the way subjects and objects are mutually disclosed, influencing how individuals experience certain symbolic forms, narrative structures, and mythic themes. While Jung located archetypes primarily in the collective unconscious (das kollektive Unbewuste), the notion of archetypes as categories can be recast as pre-epistemic proto-meaning in the third domain. In fact, Jung himself differentiates between archetypal imagination (archetypische Vorstellungen) in the human mind and archetypes proper as hypothetical pre-epistemic template.^[43] In that case, the archetypes serve as fundamental “organizing principles” that guide both what a subject can conceive and how an object can appear.

Meaning, then, is layered. On one level, it is the immediate, phenomenological encounter – me looking at a tree, feeling its presence, and calling it “tree.” On another, deeper level, it involves the interaction of primordial categories – archetypes of “observerhood,” “objecthood,” “life,” or “growth” – that enable both the concept of a “tree” and the very capacity for a “subject” to behold it. Again, the first incapability thesis and its corollary for proto-meaning are fundamental in this regard. These archetypes emerge, as has been argued, from the Ungrund, the psycho-physically neutral substrate that precedes and underlies the mental and the physical aspects of reality. By acknowledging these multiple layers, we understand meaning not as a simple, one-dimensional link between a knowing mind and a known object, but as a complex interplay of relational fields of sense, grounded in correspondences with archetypal patterns of proto-meaning that inform and enable the recognition of semblances to pre-epistemic subject–object relationships.^[44]

Unlike empirical claims – propositions that can be tested, verified, or falsified by reference to observable phenomena – these archetypal patterns are not objects of proof. Instead, they are transcendental conditions: the frameworks of sense-making that must already be in place for us to recognize anything as meaningful, coherent, or intelligible. Such relationships are “non-epistemic” because they do not belong to the realm of claims that could be subject to empirical investigation or rational demonstration – there are only correspondences in the phenomenal world. Neither are they hypotheses about how the world happens to be; rather, they define what it means for there to be a world we can know at all. Just as Kant’s categories of understanding – such as causality or quantity – are not themselves proved by experience but are instead conditions that make experience possible, these non-epistemic, archetypal patterns serve a similar function at the deeper level of meaning. They establish the ground rules for any interpretive act between subjects and objects, ensuring that meaning can arise even before we gather evidence or formulate theories.

To demand “proof” of these conditions would be to misunderstand their role. Proof presupposes a logical space in which claims can be tested, reasons can be given, and evidence can count for or against a proposition. But the logical space itself is demarcated by these categorical conditions derived from its underlying ontology (i.e., an incomplete set of non-formal propositions). They are, in effect, the enabling environment for proof, not one of its possible outcomes. If these fundamental relationships required proof, they would be conditional rather than archetypal. In shifting them into the domain of proof, we would reduce them to ordinary claims standing in need of justification, thereby losing their distinctive character as non-epistemic preconditions of understanding.

In short, these non-epistemic archetypal-object–subject patterns embody a pre-epistemic role: they define the horizon within which any claim, meaning, or understanding can appear. They cannot be established by evidence or argument because evidence and argument already operate within the space of an ontological framework. Rather, these non-epistemic object–subject patterns can only be recognized because they resemble deeper intuited structures or archetypal patterns. This act of recognition is what Bergson would refer to as intuition, “the ability to grasp the larger picture and its meaning.” As a result, these archetypal patterns engraved as proto-meaning remain beyond the purview of proof, standing instead as the indispensable, unconditional “scaffolding” of meaning itself.

In other words, at this epistemic level, meaning is negotiable, contestable, and dynamic – particularly where different ontologies collide – whereas archetypal patterns of proto-meaning – not assigned or negotiated meaning – occupy the space Frege refers to as the third domain, where truth can only be discovered, not created.

5 Interbeing as the Integration of Epistemic and Non-Epistemic Dimensions

This final point draws together the various threads established in the previous arguments. We have seen that meaning can be understood on two distinct but interrelated levels. On the epistemic level, meaning appears as the product of tangible, testable relations between specific subjects and specific objects – interpretations we can debate, evidence we can gather, claims we can evaluate. On the non-epistemic level, however, meaning is also anchored in foundational conditions that cannot be directly proven or falsified, such as archetypal patterns and first principles that emerge from the Ungrund. In short, we are not free to define and negotiate meanings (corollary to the second incapability thesis), but it is derived from proto-meaning as archetypal patterns, e.g., motherhood as an anthropomorphic archetypal imaginary of progenital, hierarchical relationship.

Previously, we considered meaning as a relational field between object and subject, and then we extended that model to include archetypal patterns that result as derivatives from a first principle that emanates from the Ungrund. Meaning-making moves from the concrete, knowable relationships (the epistemic realm of hypotheses, evidence, and debate) toward the deeper, non-epistemic structures that anchor meaning but lie beyond direct proof. It is not confined to either of the three domains (the physical, the mental, or the psycho-physically neutral third domain); rather, it spans them, showing that meaning is intrinsically relational at multiple levels, from the directly experienced to the fundamentally presupposed.

“Interbeing” is introduced here as a term to capture the essence of this relational ontology. Whereas traditional approaches may treat meaning as either a subjective construction (rooted in individual minds) or an objective property (inherent in external objects), interbeing recognizes that meaning arises from the interplay of many layers – epistemic and non-epistemic, mental and physical, experiential and archetypal. This is predicted by the two incapability theses of the WE-turn when applied to meaning. Interbeing implies that no single vantage point – no isolated subjects or objects – holds the key to meaning by themselves. Instead, meaning is woven into the relationships that connect a multitude of subjects, objects, and underlying patterns (i.e., proto-meanings). It emerges from a network of interactions and conditions that span beyond what can be empirically verified, integrating the foundational conditions of possibility of recognizing meaning with the everyday processes of interpretation and understanding.

In this relational ontology, meaning is not locked into individual cognition, merely dependent on intersubjective negotiation. It is a joint product of the interplay among various levels of reality – some epistemically accessible, some not. Interbeing acknowledges a fuller conception of meaning (the possibility of a deeper, universal meaning) based on the complexity of the conditions necessary for meaning to arise. It is this integration of the incapability theses that allows us to move beyond simplistic accounts of meaning and fully appreciate the dynamic, layered nature of what it means for something to hold meaning.

Let me illustrate: Goethe’s concept of the Urpflanze (primordial plant) offers a concrete example of how meaning emerges from both the immediate object–subject interaction and a deeper archetypal pattern. When we observe an individual plant – a rose, for instance – our meaning-making operates at the epistemic level: we perceive its shape, color, and fragrance and identify it as a rose through empirical, sensory-based understanding. This is the direct, testable, and interpretable relationship between subject and object. However, the rose’s intelligibility does not arise solely from this single encounter. Goethe’s Urpflanze represents an underlying archetypal pattern – a non-empirical, archetypal pattern common to all plants. It is not something we can directly perceive like the rose itself. Rather, it is intuited recognition of the rose’s semblance to an archetypal pattern that functions as a guiding conceptual schema and that informs our recognition of any particular plant as a member of a broader family. This archetypal pattern exists at the non-epistemic level: it cannot be proven by empirical means or reduced to a specific object, yet it conditions how the subject can meaningfully apprehend and classify individual plants. In other words, the Urpflanze stands for the deeper, non-epistemic, structural patterns that shape our understanding, connecting the immediate perception of a rose to an overarching conceptual framework that transcends any single, observable specimen and that escapes empirical proof.

6 Conclusion

The analysis presented in this essay demonstrates that meaning is a multidimensional, relational phenomenon that cannot be fully explained by empirical observation and physicalist substrates or subjective interpretation and intersubjective negotiation alone. While these explain a part of the meaning-making process, they are incomplete. As argued, on the one hand, meaning manifests in the epistemic domain, where subjects engage with objects through perception, reasoning, and discourse, testing and refining their interpretations. On the other hand, meaning is anchored in non-epistemic, foundational patterns, such as archetypal patterns that lie beyond the scope of direct proof. These fundamental conditions make meaningful experience possible in the first place through intuited recognition of deeper structures of proto-meaning in our ontologically and epistemically mediated understanding of reality.

By acknowledging both the epistemic and non-epistemic dimensions of meaning, we move toward a more holistic philosophical stance of what Atmanspacher and Rickles term the “deep structure of meaning.” Meaning is neither strictly subjective nor merely a product of objective facts. Instead, it arises from a rich interplay of perceivable phenomena and underlying archetypal-subject–object relationships. This interplay extends beyond straightforward subject–object relations to encompass relational fields – what we have called “interbeing” – in which proto-meaning is engraved and can be accessed through various sources of knowledge, in the last instance through logical reasoning and intuition.

In essence, meaning resides at the intersection of what can be observed and reasoned about, and what must be presupposed and invoked as a condition of possibility of meaning-making. It is both what we can point to in immediate experience and what we must assume operates beneath that experience. Recognizing this dual character allows us to appreciate the full depth and complexity of meaning, paving the way for philosophical approaches that give space for both its empirical accessibility, intersubjective negotiation, and its transcendent, formative underpinnings arising from an Ungrund.

Of particular importance is Yasuo Deguchi’s WE-turn, and specifically the two incapability theses, which propose that meaning emerges through an irreducible relational field – an “interbeing” that underlies both individual and collective sense-making. Similarly, Meta-Science seeks a meta-ontological standpoint from which one can consider meaning beyond the constraints of empirical validation or ontological acquiescence. For example. given that the scientific method demands proof rooted in observation and replication, it naturally struggles with the non-material or non-empirical dimensions of meaning identified by thinkers like W. James and W.T. Stace. Meta-Science, therefore, provides a pluralist ontological vantage point that can integrate many ontologies and their epistemically accessible insights and those more elusive aspects of meaning, resonating with the WE-turn’s emphasis on relational interbeing.

This more expansive understanding helps explain why certain meanings resonate across disparate traditions and have a notion of universality to them. It accounts for the intuition that there is a dimension of meaning that surpasses what can be fully captured by language, culture, or neural processing. By considering meaning as interbeing, we open a pathway to a richer ontological grounding – one that can integrate the strengths of established approaches and ontologies, such as physicalism or idealism, while moving beyond their respective limits. In this way, WE-turn and Meta-Science together point toward a more expansive understanding of meaning, one that acknowledges the contributions of materialist and subjectivist perspectives yet recognizes that meaning also arises from a deeper relational ontology.

In conclusion, this exploration of meaning as interbeing invites to move beyond reductive paradigms, embracing a holistic approach to various ontologies of reality that embraces both the universality and particularity of human experience and, most importantly, its inherent limitation of grasping the foundations and laws of reality beyond the mentally mediated spectrum of perceptions and conclusions about reality. By doing so, we not only deepen our grasp of what meaning entails but also lay the groundwork for a more interconnected and harmonious engagement with the diverse realities we inhabit.