In APS, meaning is not abstract symbol manipulation detached from life.
Biological significance arises when differences in conditions bear upon viability and are differentiated through biological evaluation. Signals, environmental conditions, and internal states matter biologically because of how they affect the organisation and activity through which living systems maintain themselves.
A sign acquires biological significance when it modulates activity relative to viability. Through semiosis, such significance can be organised and integrated within increasingly complex relations between a living system and its conditions.
APS therefore distinguishes biological significance from meaning rather than treating the two as identical. Significance is a relationally real product of biological evaluation; meaning develops through the further organisation and integration of significance within cognitive and, ultimately, reflective forms of biological organisation.
Meaning is therefore grounded in living organisation without being reduced to formal representation or externally imposed interpretation.