Meaning, cognition, mind, and selfhood are closely related concepts within APS, but they refer to different aspects of biological organisation.
Meaning concerns significance. A condition is meaningful when it matters within the viability-oriented organisation of a living system. Meaning reflects the stabilisation of biological significance through ongoing patterns of evaluation and agency.
Cognition concerns the organisation of significance across time. Through cognition, meaningful conditions can be retained, coordinated, anticipated, and utilised in adaptive regulation. Cognition allows biological significance to influence activity beyond the immediate circumstances in which it arises.
Mind concerns the integrated organisation of evaluative cognitive processes through which an agent maintains a coherent relationship with itself and its world. Mind emerges when cognitive organisation becomes sufficiently integrated to support ongoing agent–world coherence.
Selfhood concerns the persistence of that organised relationship through time. It reflects the stabilisation of an evaluative perspective within ongoing biological organisation and allows continuity to be maintained despite continual change in structure, activity, and circumstance.
Meaning
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Cognition
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Mind
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Selfhood