Abstarct Contemporary theories of mind and consciousness typically begin with a world that is already present and seek to explain how organisms perceive, represent, predict, or become aware of it. This paper investigates a prior question: What transforms reality into an inhabitable world in the first place? The argument challenges the assumption that meaning emerges only after perception and cognition. Instead, it proposes that significance is one of the fundamental conditions through which worldhood itself becomes possible. Information alone consists of differences. A world emerges when some differences become meaningful and acquire relevance for a system. The paper traces a progression from difference to significance, from significance to perspective, and from perspective to horizon-formation, arguing that meaning generates the structures commonly associated with worldhood. This analysis leads to a reconsideration of minimal worldhood. Rather than beginning with temporality, salience, or perspective as independent conditions, the paper suggests that these structures may arise from a more basic principle: the emergence of meaningful difference. Worldhood begins when reality becomes organised according to significance. The paper concludes that meaning is not merely something that occurs within an already constituted world. Meaning participates in the generation of worldhood itself.
Erik Tönsberg (Sun,) studied this question.