Codepoietic Generation of Meaningful Information in the Evolving Biosphere

Meaningful information represents reality in its potential form, and its actualization increases the system's negentropy. Biological evolution leads to the expansion of meaningful information by generating new coding systems (codepoiesis). Through this expansion, any evolutionary change obtains functional value when it receives an interpretation through which it gives rise to a meaningful function. Complexification in the evolutionary process corresponds to the generation of new meaningful information and, thus, to the development of new structures with corresponding functions. Any biological function has a meaning within the context of a particular environment, and the evolutionary search for new meanings results in the establishment of the state of sustainable non-equilibrium acting as an attractor, in which the developing system achieves the condition of maximization of its power via synergistic effects. At higher levels of the organization, evolutionary innovations emerge as niche constructions, behavioral choices, and, finally, the phenomenon of cognition. The evolutionary growth of meanings appears as a part of the expanding information system formed by the organisms inhabiting it. It acquires major expansion with the emergence of consciousness that incorporates the image of the whole world into the dynamic process of knowledge acquisition and creates the conditions for the development of global civilization.