Consciousness as Meaning-Making: Ontological and Empirical Redefinition of The Phenomenon of Human Consciousness

An alternative ontological formulation of consciousness is proposed by positioning it as a category distinct in principle from adaptive intelligence. The dominant approach in the literature tends to project human cognitive characteristics into animal studies, resulting in an assumption of continuity between non-human intelligence and human conscious- ness. Within this framework, consciousness is not understood as a form of high-level intelligence nor as sensory awareness, but as the reflective capacity to meaning-make experiences in ways that are not entirely determined—and in certain cases even contrary—to innate biological responses. A comparison between animal behavioral patterns across a very long evolutionary span and early human archaeological and cultural evidence indicates that only Homo sapiens consistently displays three distinguishing characteristics: (1) the emergence of sponta- neous activity irreducible to direct biological functions, (2) the production of creative surplus that surpasses adaptive needs, and (3) the transformation of experience into sym- bols and meaning structures. On this basis, a two-layer model is proposed that distin- guishes Layer 1 as a universal physical-algorithmic mode in living beings, and Layer 2 as the unique capacity for meaning-making in human consciousness.