Affective semiosis and micro-genesis of meaning. Scope and pertinence of the APER model. Reply to comments on “The affective grounds of the mind. The affective pertinentization (APER) model".

Taken together, these contributions call for a clearer specification of APER’s scope, in order to understand how it may respond to the challenging issues they raise. In this respect, it is crucial to recall that APER is primarily a theory of the microgenetic dynamics of the emergence of meaning. Its focus lies on the instant-by-instant processes through which experience acquires shape—namely, the affective pertinentization of the environmental situation. In this sense, APER operates, so to speak, one step prior to the level at which complex, articulated, and culturally mediated subjective meanings manifest themselves, concentrating instead on the constitutive dynamics from which such meanings arise. An analogy may help clarify this point. APER can be compared to particle physics, which investigates the elementary constituents of matter. The world of lived experience—what we perceive, know, and inhabit—emerges from these basic processes. Yet the phenomenological qualities of that world cannot be directly derived from the concepts used to describe its un- derlying constituents: knowing the subatomic particles that compose a cake tells us nothing about the experience of its taste. The remark concerning the micro-genetic focus of APER calls for several further considerations.