Expression

An Expression is a distinguishable and reproducible form through which a concept becomes observable. It is the operational medium that allows a concept to appear within observation, communication or formal manipulation. Without expression, a concept cannot be accessed, differentiated or stabilized, even though it may still be presupposed.

Expressions are not identical with concepts. They don't contain meaning, truth or reference by itself. Rather, they provide a condition under which a concept can be observed and operated upon. They may take linguistic, symbolic, formal, technical or biological forms, such as words, signs, code, gestures, mathematical notation or neural patterns. What unifies them is not their substance but their reproducibility and distinguishability within an operational context.

An expression must carry a reference. Only through reference does an expression become directed toward something and gain epistemic relevance. Every expression remains operationally available by reference. This may render it meaningless.

Multiple expressions may be associated with the same concept and a single expression may support different concepts depending on its contextual embedding. For this reason, expressions neither fix concepts nor guarantee stable meaning. They enable observation without determining what is observed. In this sense, expression is not a representation of reality but a condition for operability within cognitive, social, technical or formal systems.

Within the relation Concept-Expression-Reference, expression functions as the mediating element.

Relation to Watzlawick’s Communication Axiom

The idea that an expression always carries a reference echoes a well‑known principle from communication theory, often expressed as Paul Watzlawick’s first pragmatic axiom: “One cannot not communicate.” According to Watzlawick and his collaborators, every behaviour in a communicative situation conveys something, because even apparent non‑action, such as silence or avoidance, is observed and interpreted as communicative behaviour. In this sense, communication cannot be suspended; behaviour always has a communicative impact on others and thus “refers” to something in the system of observers. This axiom was articulated as part of the foundational pragmatics of human communication in Watzlawick’s work on communication theory, where it is presented as a basic principle that requires no further proof.