Grounding Meaning in Physics: How Landauer's Principle Complements Deacon's Information Framework, with Implications for Anthropogenesis.

Shannon's measure of information excludes semantics. Deacon's three-tier framework fills this gap but leaves the physical implementation cost unspecified. Landauer's principle supplies that cost: erasing one bit dissipates at least kT ln 2. Each of Deacon's three tiers presupposes physical operations that Landauer quantifies. Structural information requires distinguishable states whose reset carries a thermodynamic floor. Referential information requires non-random states whose reset cost is bounded below. Normative information requires that work saved exceed the finite-time cost of resetting memory. Read together, Deacon and Landauer are not rivals but complementary layers of analysis. Applied to anthropogenesis, this hierarchy suggests that symbolic cognition may reduce the frequency of physically costly resets, offering a separate thermodynamic axis for selection. The proposal constrains the cost of physical implementation only. It does not reduce meaning to computation.