Bridging Sensory Substitution and Perceptual Agency

In this paper, I introduce a conceptual refinement to the theory of structural coupling as originally developed by Maturana and Varela by proposing the notion of the basin and what it energetically sustains, as a necessary intermediary layer between environmental dynamics and organismic response, a view experimentally grounded through relative phase, sensory substitution and body transfer illusion. While structural coupling accounts for recurrent interactions that shape an autonomous system’s structure over time, it lacks an explicit mechanism to explain how perceptual coherence, and further down the stream, meaning, agency, biological stability emerge from such interactions. The basin functions as a placeholder of matter-energy manifestation – a catalytic field where coherent input begins to coalesce into emergent Symbols. These Symbols are not representational in the classical sense, but are instead structured residues of interaction – persisting beyond immediate coupling events and capable of scaffolding new rounds of phase differentiation, problem-solving, sense-making, and even cultural transmission. Their properties and the latent solution space they form constitute what I term the Symboliad. Through this, I introduce a new ontological category: "software"-physicalism. Within this framework the demarcation of agency is reframed as contingent, and distributed – emerging through a novel definition of the Observer specific to this framework.