Several concepts within the Cognition & Mind domain concern what matters to living systems, but they describe different aspects of that process.

Affordance — A possibility for action or interaction.

Evaluation — The process of distinguishing what matters.

Significance — The resulting relevance of conditions to an agent.

Meaning — Significance incorporated into an agent–world relation.

Cognition — The organisation of significance for adaptive activity.

Value — A relatively enduring organisation of significance.

These concepts are closely related but not interchangeable. Affordances describe what is possible. Evaluation determines which possibilities matter. Significance is the relevance that results from those distinctions. Meaning emerges when significance becomes integrated into an agent’s ongoing relationship with its world. Cognition organises significance through processes that enable agents to detect, integrate, remember, anticipate, and respond to what matters. Values are relatively enduring patterns of significance that continue to guide behaviour and evaluation across changing contexts.

Together, these concepts describe a developmental progression through which living systems distinguish, organise, and respond to what matters.