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I think that the whole controversy of meaning is quite interesting (aren't we just so philosophical)! I would argue
that perhaps a mind capable of creating meaning does actually have intrinsic meaning in that it possesses meaning
within itself, if only for itself (to get back into the somewhat paradoxical strange loop/recursion idea).
That's not to say that it has extrinsic meaning outside of that person's own mind, and maybe that's the only kind
of meaning that matters! Who can say. The Nihilist in me is squirming at my use of semantics to create a sense of
hopeful reassurance that my life matters, when really I am not sure! I suppose it comes down to the fact that I
don't believe there is a way to know, which also sheds light on why I am agnostic rather than atheist when it comes
to religion. Maybe it's a bit of a cop-out, a way to allow my mind to not deal with a wholly meaningless universe,
but it just feels wrong to fully dismiss something that we know so little about, and maybe can never fully comprehend!

I don't know if you read that paper I sent you on the 'harm done by tests of significance,' but it dealt with
the idea that when experimental data isn't concluded to be statistically significant (below some relative p-value),
paper authors would mistakenly assert that the null-hypothesis was true. In other words, simply because they did
not see any significant meaning or connections in the data, they positively assert that there is no meaning in
the data whatsoever. Long story short, this leads to incorrect assumptions and conclusions because an absence of
evidence should not, and maybe cannot, prove evidence of absence. A positive claim should, in my opinion be backed
up by positive evidence proving that point specifically. This idea permeates into so many interesting topics:
religion, consciousness, induction itself! I guess a caveat to this is that it's important to remember to know
when to say when, at some point we have to accept some things as true and move on. Sometimes there is enough
negative evidence that it's absolutely safe to assume - 'good enough' - but in the case of 'meaning' and
consciousness...I don't think that we know enough, or have amassed enough negative evidence yet, to say
positively that 'it doesn't exist'!