The same things maintain a constant size and color in spite of changing distance, perspective and lighting; different things are taken to be examples of a single type of object (a tree, house, etc)；learning skills also refers to typical instruments and situations; finally, the constancy of meaning mediates intersubjectively between different individual experiences and actions.
This constancy gives experience directives and contexts; it is the basis of the relative reliability of the things and the familiarity of the world. As long as this identity of meaning is maintained, experience moves within a fixed framework which only allows for further determinations. What we are confronted with here is an openness within specific rule structures. The following considerations show that this constancy is not absolute.
(d) Potential change of meaning. The same thing can also appear as something different. The given meaning does not exhaust the possible significations of reality; every fulfillment of our intentions is confronted with a superabundance of the given, with an excess of reality. On this basis a redetermination is possible. Old and new meaning can complement one another (Napoleon as victor of Jena and as defeated of Waterloo) or be disjunctive. In the latter case there is a conflict or correction: that which is intended is not merely more than we intend, but other. To the extent that the reversibility of our assumptions presupposes the incompleteness of our experience, this is of fundamental importance.