From the Nature of Meaning to a Phenomenological Refiguring of Nature

I argue that reconciling nature with human experience requires a new ontology in which nature is refigured as being in and of itself meaningful, thus reconfiguring traditional dualisms and the ‘hard problem of consciousness’. But this refiguring of nature entails a method in which nature itself can exhibit its conceptual reconfiguration—otherwise we get caught in various conceptual and methodological problems that surreptitiously reduplicate the problem we are seeking to resolve. I first introduce phenomenology as a methodology fit to this task, then show how life manifests a field in which nature in and of itself exhibits meaningfulness, such that this field can serve as a starting point for this phenomenological project. Finally, I take immunogenesis as an example in which living phenomena can guide insights into the ontology in virtue of which meaning arises in nature.