6.3 Meaning is a learned cognitive attribute.

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The word meaning is used at many different levels. Words of course have a meaning, and, more elementary, there is a meaning attached to perceived olfactory, tactual, auditory or visual signals. Situations are classified according to the signals and their consequences, as positive (to be accepted) or as negative (to be avoided). The elementary discrimination between good and bad food is based in part on inborn patterns of discernment and in part on judgement acquired by experience. The inborn discernment is acquired in the course of evolution (phylogeny), in contrast to a meaning based on experience that is acquired in the school of (ontogenic) life. Meaning arises first from relations to bodily needs, later from emotional, social, moral and spiritual needs (Chapter 8). Hence it is clear that meaning is not always universal but is sometimes stricly personal. Not all early experiences are nourishing, some are really bad. For that reason every new-born child must learn from the beginning how to discriminate nourishing from evil stimuli, and how to handle poisonous, adverse stimulation. Remembering and storing the lessons from early experiences is just as important for the central nervous system as the gradual immunisation is for the lymphoid system.

During growth and development of an embryo the decisions are made at the chemical/cellular level and are determined genetically, e.g. by the codes of the histo-compatibility (or HLA) complex. In a further stage immune markers of the self are used to recognise and discriminate between useful and harmful antigens. Antibodies are formed that will memorise and recall every early experience for as long as the individual will live. The immune system continuously communicates with the environment: scanning and sniffing, rejecting and approving, on the basis of genetic rules that have been refined by the traces of past experiences. The lymphoid system has learned to resist adverse factors and to make good use of the favourable factors in the environment, and in so doing it assures the physical health of the individual.

In various and more differentiated ways the neuronal system (CNS) does the same for the mental health of the individual. It scans, recognises, evaluates and selects, it approaches nourishing and avoids harmful stimulation. Communication and defence: the two are one.

Map 6.3 is again about the two-way learning process. It shows in its right half that appropriate responses are selected by the circumstances in which they occur. In behaviourist jargon: response-selection is controlled by the environment. The display in its left half shows that anticipated effects of certain actions are remembered as motives. The saying "Love is the anticipation of pleasure" reveals that love is a potent motivator. When imagined stimuli are labelled as desirable they acquire a positive "meaning". Another motive: "Social disapproval must be avoided at all costs": the thought of being rebuked in public is so aversive that all actions that could lead to it are avoided. Such motivating responses as apprehension or aversion are indicated by the small r's. The capital R's on the right are the instrumental actions that implement the drives and motives on the left.