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If meaning is the imposition of conditions of satisfaction on otherwise lifeless objects such as sounds, marks or even gestures, then something non-living can be said actually to have conditions that satisfy it. It is being said to have appetites and aversions. I see nothing wrong with entertaining this line of reasoning, and a similar one is used in the new field of artificial life. The sounds and marks that mean something are alive. The more acute, clear and rich those meanings are, the more alive they become. On this magical view, it is man’s cosmic destiny to breathe life, Godlike, into material nature.