In APS, Significance is a relationally real product of biological evaluation.
Significance arises because conditions make different viability-relevant differences to an organised agent. A resource, threat, internal disturbance, environmental change, or possible action can matter because of its relation to the organisation and continued functioning of that agent.
This does not imply conscious meaning.
Biological significance can be real without being consciously experienced. Biological Evaluation is not conscious judgement, and significance is not a mental interpretation added to otherwise neutral biological activity.
The distinction is important because several different explanatory questions can otherwise be collapsed together.
A condition may be significant because it makes a viability-relevant difference to organised activity. That does not establish that the organism experiences the condition, represents it consciously, or understands it symbolically.
Significance should therefore be distinguished from both cognition and phenomenal consciousness.
Within APS, claims that conscious or reflective forms of meaning depend upon biological significance are explanatory dependency proposals. They should not be treated as established evolutionary chronology merely because significance occupies an earlier position in the APS explanatory architecture.
Significance identifies what matters biologically. It does not by itself establish conscious meaning.