Meaning in Hot and Cold States: A State-Dependent Theory of Human Action

Human beings repeatedly commit to life projects under a strong sense of meaning, invest substantial time and resources, and later—after completion or motivational cooling—judge that the original meaning no longer holds under a more detached perspective. This paper argues that such experiences are not psychological accidents, moral failures, or merely post-hoc rationalizations, but manifestations of a structural property of human action systems. I propose a state-dependent theory of meaning, distinguishing between hot-state meaning and cold-state meaning, and argue that human agency systematically relies on meaning constructions that are expected, and often required, to collapse under later evaluation. Far from rendering effort futile, this mechanism explains why large portions of human achievement are produced under meanings that are later judged false, exaggerated, or unjustified—without invalidating the value of the resulting effort. The theory integrates insights from philosophy of action, cognitive science, motivational psychology, and analogies from artificial intelligence, offering a unified framework for understanding why human beings must act under meanings they will later disavow.