Meaning Through Identity

A Structural Alternative to Meaning-Making

What if meaning is not something we invent, pursue, or assign — but something that arises whenever identity successfully absorbs change?

In Meaning Through Identity, Matteo Bellori develops a clear and domain-independent framework in which meaning is understood as the functional effect of preserved coherence under change. Rather than approaching meaning as emotion, purpose, value, or belief, this book shows that meaning emerges structurally wherever something remains recognisably the same while undergoing transformation.

Drawing on the principle of identity as preserved coherence under change, Bellori argues that:

• Meaning cannot exist without preserved identity.
• Loss of meaning is not necessarily pathology, but a signal of diminishing integration capacity.
• Regulation and recovery alone are insufficient without expansion of coherence.
• Living systems generate meaning because their identity must be actively maintained within bounded tolerance.

This perspective connects questions of vulnerability, resilience, burnout, existential emptiness, relationships, and mental disorganisation within one coherent structural model — without reducing them to psychology, biology, or moral interpretation.

Clear, rigorous, and accessible, Meaning Through Identity offers a structural alternative to traditional meaning-making theories and provides a new way of understanding why meaning disappears, why it returns, and why it is inseparable from identity itself.