Inside the Event Horizon III: Shared Construals of Space and Time

In the first post of this series, we explored what it means for construal to persist inside an event horizon. In the second, we turned to the construal of space and time within that enclosure. Here, we want to ask one further question: if multiple observers cross the same horizon, what happens to their capacity to share construals?

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Horizons as Relational Cuts

Relational ontology reminds us that horizons are not walls of annihilation. They are perspectival cuts: boundaries that structure what can and cannot be actualised as phenomenon for differently placed observers.

From the outside, the interior is inconstruable: no phenomena can be instantiated there.

From the inside, construal continues, bounded by the horizon but not obliterated.

So what happens when two perspectives meet on the inside?

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Construal in Common

If two observers are both inside the horizon, their zones of construal overlap. They inhabit the same bounded domain, and therefore:

• They can still construe space relationally — mapping here/there, near/far, shared location.

• They can still construe time sequentially — agreeing on before/after, shared events, overlapping trajectories.

Nothing in the horizon prevents their perspectives from aligning with one another. The horizon does not block reflexive alignment within its bounds.

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The Relational Seal

What the horizon does prevent is the outward circulation of these construals. Shared phenomena inside cannot be re-aligned with perspectives outside.

Thus:

• Inside observers: capable of co-constructing meaning, sharing construals of space and time, coordinating perspectives.

• Outside observers: structurally cut off from all of this, able only to theorise or imagine what “might” be occurring.

The seal is asymmetric: for those within, construal is alive and shared; for those without, it is absent as phenomenon.

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Horizons as Semiotic Enclosures

This gives us a new image of the horizon. It is not the death of meaning, but the partitioning of meaning into enclosed domains. Construal inside is not solitary: it can be relational, social, aligned. Yet it is enclosed. The horizon creates a semiotic enclosure — a region where meaning circulates internally but cannot be exchanged externally.

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Closing Thought

Seen through relational ontology, an event horizon does not dissolve space, time, or shared experience. It simply relocates them into a sealed domain of construal.

• Inside: observers can still align construals of space and time, generating shared phenomena.

• Outside: no construal can bridge the boundary.

In this sense, an event horizon is less a rupture than a partition of reflexivity: an architecture that limits the scope of who can construe with whom.