If behavior is an adaptation to the environment, then activity is an adaptation of the environment to one’s needs. The “needs trap” meant that proto-humans now had to again and again transform the environment, including their own organisms and behavior patterns, into means of self-reproduction based on the transmission and processing of social information. After this critical point was passed, the degree of adaptation to the environment, the degree to which the needs of proto-humans were satisfied, was determined not only by their animal instincts but also by the sociality and abstractness of their actions. Benjamin Schumacher noted that information is a paradox: on the one hand it is material, and on the other hand it is abstract. If we want to share information, we must give it the physical form of a signal—sound, light, electricity, etc. However, information is abstract in content: the messages transmitted by signals are not identical to the signals themselves (Schumacher 2015, p. 4).

As an elementary form of culture, meaning is social information in action, that is, an action (and its result) that has social, material and abstract properties. This active gist of culture is missing in most of its definitions, here is an example: “…Culture is information that is acquired from other individuals via social transmission mechanisms such as imitation, teaching, or language” (Mesoudi 2011, pp. 2-3). In fact, culture cannot be reduced to information and methods of its transmission; culture is the aggregate of human actions and their results. Unlike genes, which are bound to organisms, meanings go beyond humans: they can exist not only in bodies, but also in events. However, going beyond humans, meanings can only exist in their actions. They are reproduced in human activity just as genes are reproduced in a living organism.

The self-reproduction of man as a cultural being is based on the evolution of all three aspects of human activity: abstract, social and material.

(1) The evolution of the abstract side of activity consists in the development of thinking (intelligence or reason), i.e. complex types of adaptation based on the repetition and specialization of signals (stimuli) and an enlargement of the brain. From this side, meaning is a reflection (description, mediation) of the immediate environment in the mind and activity of an animal, that is, an abstract action.

Human thinking evolved as an abstract act, but it remains a deeply emotional act rooted in animal instincts. Human activities are meaningful—they are based on gathering, sorting and processing information, accumulating knowledge and skills (experience), applying experience to solve problems. Collectively, this is called reason or intellect. But intelligence is only the tip of a vast array of dumb processes that grow out of cultural learning (cf. Henrich 2016, p. 12). We call practices those behaviors that are based on learning, such as morals, mores, techniques, customs, etc. Thousands and tens of thousands of generations of humans have produced practices that have proven to be “smarter” than the intelligence of any individual or even a group. Natural evolution affects simple processes—instincts—that allow animals to adapt to a complex natural environment. Cultural evolution also affects simple processes—practices—that allow humans to adapt to their complex natural and artificial environments. Instincts, practices and intelligence are three basic types of behavioral acts, the distinction between which goes back to the works of Darwin (Krushinsky 1986, p. 134; Zorina and Smirnova 2006, p. 42).

(2) The evolution of the social aspect of activity relies on the human ability to transmit complex types of adaptation through non-genetic mechanisms, through communicating, and above all, through learning. Meaning is a social abstraction: it exists only in the joint activities of humans as subjects of culture.

Sociality is not an exclusively human trait. Although communication among apes is thought to amount to the exchange of emotions, in reality they go beyond emotional contact and exchange referential signals: they do not only signal danger, but also indicate the type of approaching predator. This ability to give referential signals is not innate, but develops in apes as they learn at a young age (cf. King 2001, p. 33). Both animals and humans exchange signals that convey messages (information). However, the form and content of human signals differ from those of animal signals. If animal signals act as stimuli that require a direct, emotional reaction, then human signals are symbols that require an indirect, abstract reaction. Although a signal shows that something has happened and what the response might be, it does not require modeling of a situation (event) or programming of an action. In contrast to a simple signal, a symbol presupposes an event model and a response model appropriate for a particular event (cf. Friedman 2019, part 1, p. 24).

As is known, apes are able to learn symbolic language, for example, Amslen or Yerkish (Zorina and Smirnova 2006, pp. 137 ff.). But they cannot learn human language—not only because of the peculiarities of anatomy, but also because their vocal responses are involuntary and purely emotional (Zorina and Smirnova 2006, pp. 103-4). Human symbols, and especially language, evolved from gestures, sounds and other signals exchanged between animals. According to George Mead, vocal gestures were of utmost importance for the emergence of symbols, since they modeled not only the behavior of the addressees, but also that of the authors of stimuli (Mead 1972, pp. 61 ff.). According to Vladimir Friedman’s hypothesis, the stimuli shifted toward symbols when proto-symbols (“demonstrations”) differed both from animals’ immediate actions towards each other and from their emotional reactions that expressed their internal states (Friedman 2019, part 1, p. 59).

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).