Meaning As Evolved Function / 意义作为进化功能

Meaning as evolved function is EP256 AI时代，“自由意志”还存在吗？’s biological answer to the meaning question. [[TuMotuo|土摩托]] argues that meaning is not only mystical, religious, or literary; it can be understood as a life function comparable in broad terms to hands, eyes, or other evolved capacities that help organisms survive and act.

The source extends this into cognition. The brain does not report every low-level neural or metabolic signal to consciousness. It turns signals into usable meaning such as hunger, danger, intention, or “I want to eat,” which can guide action and communication. That makes meaning part of Biological Agency / 生物能动性 and Embodied Intelligence / 具身智能.

Key Claims

• Meaning can be naturalized without being dismissed as fake.
• Brains process and compress bodily and environmental signals into action-relevant meanings.
• Meaning is tied to survival and continuation, but it can scale into human communication, moral responsibility, and life purpose.
• Current language models can generate meaningful-looking text, but the source questions whether they have organism-grounded meaning in the same sense.

Connections

• Biological Agency / 生物能动性 - life process that gives meaning its role.
• Embodied Intelligence / 具身智能, Embodied Judgment, and Wet-State Human Agency - body and cognition branch.
• Meaning Through Experience - adjacent life-philosophy concept grounded in experience rather than biology.
• LLM Statistical Boundary - AI contrast around generated language and actual meaning.
• Philip Ball, Kevin Mitchell, and 土摩托 / Tu Motuo - source figures.