Meaning as Experienced Relevance: A Systemic Theory of Psychological Investment, Hope, and Coherence (Short Version)

This paper presents a concise version of a broader systemic theory of psychological investment, hope, and coherence based on the concept of relevance. It argues that psychological systems allocate limited resources—such as attention, energy, time, and action—according to relevance evaluations. Relevance is defined as the weighting of information according to its expected influence on future coherence. Meaning is then interpreted as the phenomenological appearance of relevance: what appears externally as relevance is experienced internally as meaning.