Ivan Pavlov called sensations, perceptions and mental representations of the environment the first signaling system that humans have in common with animals, and the word the second system that distinguishes humans. “But words have built up a second system of signaling reality, which is only peculiar to us, being a signal of the primary signals. The numerous stimulations by word have, on the one hand, removed us from reality, a fact we should constantly remember so as not to misinterpret our attitude towards reality. On the other hand, it was nothing other than words which has made us human” (Pavlov 1941, vol. 2, p. 179). Nevertheless, not only a word is a signal of primary signals, but every abstract, symbolic action. Both a word and, for example, a human gesture or instrumental action are types of abstract social action.

(3) The evolution of the material side of activity enlarges the niche that man occupies. From generation to generation, humans expand their domus, the part of the environment they use as a means of activity, thus extending the boundaries of their home. Meaning is a material abstraction, because meaning is both a process of interaction with things (making) and at the same time the material precondition and result of human self-reproduction.

Meaning made apes human. The coevolution of proto-humans and meanings gave rise to Homo sapiens. When we look at the universe of humans and meanings from the perspective of humans, we see society, and when we look at it from the perspective of meanings, we see culture. We call this universe culture-society.

Self-reproduction of man as a living being presupposes the satisfaction of his needs. “The presence of needs in a subject is as a fundamental condition of his existence as metabolism [and signal exchange—A.K.]. In fact, these are different expressions of the same thing” (Leontiev 1971). Consumption, or the satisfaction of needs, is the beginning and end of self-reproduction. Essentially, consumption is the production of humans, since the product of consumption is man himself. In its origin, consumption was based on the search for food (foraging), appropriation of the material of nature and its minimal elaboration (mediation).

Meaning is a means that has evolved into an end. Ends and goals are the results of possible actions that subjects imagine. The ability to set goals, that is, to imagine means and to choose between them, distinguishes humans from animals, which also use the environment as a means.

“A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labor process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the laborer at its commencement” (Marx and Engels 1975-2004, vol. 35, p. 188).

The evolution of meanings began with the simplest actions and their results, such as the making of a chopper. The simplest chopper—a stone whose edge has been sharpened by chipping off fragments with another stone—is the result of the motions of a hominid. The sum of the motions forms a holistic action, the result of which is the chopper. A hominid, his instrumental action, and chopper itself are necessary for meaning to emerge. The moment when hominids began deliberately making choppers was also the moment when nature became their means and culture emerged. It is obvious that this “moment” is actually a bridge across time, and the spans of this bridge require further exploration.

Ants of the Attini family grow Basidiomycota fungi that process leaves they cut. The ants in turn feed on the protein-rich “ant kohlrabi” that grows on the fungi. Ants do not just use means, but engage in a whole “craft,” a kind of “agriculture.” However, the ants’ activities remain within the limits set by their genetic program. Their behavior changes only as their instincts evolve, and it cannot change through the inheritance of learning-based practices. Human behavior can change through practice: learning creates understanding, understanding creates choice. Unlike ants, humans imagine things before they act: “new technologies are constructed mentally before they are constructed physically” (Arthur 2011, p. 23).

Animals do not have ends or means, but they do have wants or needs. Need is the focus of a living being on something that does not exist. “In its primary biological forms, need is a state of the organism expressing its objective want for a complement that lies outside itself” (Leontiev 1971). Terence Deacon introduced the concept of “entention,” which can be considered a kind of generalization of the concept of “need.” Entention combines direction and lack, it is “a fundamental relationship to something absent” (Deacon 2013, p. 27). The object to which the need is directed is the motive.

“…Motives must be distinguished from conscious goals and intentions; motives ‘stand behind goals’ and stimulate the achievement of goals. If goals are not directly given in the situation, motives encourage goal formation. However, they do not generate goals, just as needs do not generate their objects” (Leontiev 1971).

Emotions are internal signals that reflect the relationship between motives and activities caused by motives. Alexey Leontiev reduced emotions to a reflection of meaning: “Emotional processes include a broad class of processes of internal regulation of activities. They perform this function by reflecting the meaning of the objects and situations that affect the subject, their significance for his life” (Leontiev 1971). It seems to us that this is not quite correct historically, because if meanings preceded emotions, then monkeys would be like robots, and we would now need to look not for a bridge from emotions to meanings, but for a bridge from meanings to emotions. In fact, meanings arose from emotions. Emotions still are a large part of the content of meanings, if only because they reflect processes in the body. “Primordial emotions are the subjective element of the instincts which are the genetically programmed behavior patterns which contrive homeostasis. They include thirst, hunger for air, hunger for food, pain and hunger for specific minerals etc.” (Denton et al. 2009). Meaning is a symbolization and mediation of emotions.