International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

The progressive ordering of relationships within a flow of information

(Information is given here its most extensive meaning).

Such a process is spontaneous in young animals, and in babies, still more so when reacting to more elaborated stimuli from grown ups.

Any relationship in itself contains the basic features of meaning. This is made very clear by STEINBUCH's learning matrixes, with the transit from a learning phase – which connects a specific stimulus or experience with a specific signal (being this also the basics for conditioning) – leading to a knowing phase, which in turn opens the way to use acquired knowledge for action.

Recent advances in robotics are now also oriented to "… make machines that acquire meaningful representations of the world with as little intervention as possible"(D. GRAHAMROWE, on P. COHEN's research – 2002, p. 22-23). We could be on our way to self-constructed artificial intelligence. (see also: Artificial Life)

As noted in very general terms by F. DRETSKE (1981), meaning comes from interactions with the environment. It derives thus primarily from a more or less high quality of perceptions – something that F. ROSENBLATT already had understood with his perceptron (1961 and 1962). Experiencing with the environment is also a core feature of autopoiesis. Clustering, finally, as a process, is closely related to the construction of constraints in ASHBY'S sense.