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Something acquires meaning for an organism to the extent that it relates (either positively or negatively) to the norm of the maintenance of the organism's integrity.
Evan Thompson Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind
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Something acquires meaning for an organism to the extent that it relates (either positively or negatively) to the norm of the maintenance of the organism's integrity.
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Evan Thompson

Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind

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The organism - there was no other thing she could think to call it - churned and moved as it propelled itself across the ground, the living bodies of animals briefly appearing before being submerged in a sea of bugs as others rose to the surface. And then there were the bones. At first she didn't quite understand what she was seeing. For a moment she believed that they were pieces of wood - limbs of trees picked up by the undulating mass - but when she saw the skull, its jaw hanging open in a silent scream, she understood the horror of what it was. the remains of victims were a part of its body, flowing within the multitude that made up its mass.

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Mind emerges from matter and life at an empirical level, but at a transcendental level every form or structure is necessarily also a form or structure disclosed by consciousness. With this reversal one passes from the natural attitude of the scientist to the transcendental phenomenological attitude (which, according to phenomenology, is the properly philosophical attitude).

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Evan Thompson

Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind

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To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.' But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.' Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.

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Viktor E. Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning