Allow me to rephrase. Each of a mind’s concepts about everything internal and external to it is a rule describing a (at least possible) referent. The mind that subsumes every time has nothing external to it (Matthew 15:11) and also does not need to update its rules/concepts—zero of which are empty of content (all refer…to something it is, or something it subsumes). Nihil is not external — it resolves back to good.
A concept is holding (because wanting) a signified (evident) being/truth. True concepts/rules, unlike empty ones, describe actual referents/beings, though we may lack current and obvious evidence for them (evidence does not change truth value, but if being evident is a requirement of it being true, evidence will not be lacking*). Sometimes we want to hold concepts to protect ourselves from what makes them true.
When you are faced with something that doesn’t follow any of the rules you already know, or something stops following its rule, then you try to figure it out and see where it fits among the rules, or if the rules need adjusting. A rule without a referent is either prophetic, a false hope/fear, or its referent is currently extinct.
The formula for photosynthesis is always essentially true, even if nothing had ever turned electromagnetic radiation into chemical energy, or if all photosynthesis ceases. It is also essentially true after photosynthesis began, and while it is happening, but it takes on existential (action) import in addition to essential import at those times. It always has ontological import as long as it has existential import in at least one time, t (past, present, or future relative to our position in time—this gets complicated when information from distinct moments shares those moments, but set that aside) because ontological import accounts for every time (the whole). Something can be essentially true without having ontological import if it never actualizes in time—like a hope deferred forever (wishful thinking). Some folks hope/wish that evidence of the true meaning of life (beautiful satisfaction) will be deferred forever so that they don’t have to be accountable to others they are blocking from it—completely ignoring (inverse confirmation bias) that it is already evident.
*The truth/being of life (beautiful satisfaction) is not worthy of examining (and we are not capable of examining it) if it is not signified (a good argument/example/member). That we all hunger for it to be true is immediate signification (a good argument/example/member) that we are a priori (that just means it’s part of our tabula rasa… the human condition for the possibility of being…) capable of examining it, and that it is worthy of being examined (argued/dialogued/communicated with…defended with further exemplification… failing prosecution).
These are the justified (efficient), true (material) belief (formal/final) criteria for knowledge (a true concept). As I said, it is divine essentialism.
Back in the early days of my obsession with the is-ought-value fallacy/distinction, and reification (etc)… and the synonymous true, justified belief requirement of knowledge… I encountered an argument that if you define the good, you have abstracted away from the concretization (not just signification in timely action, but omnitemporal being/ground subsuming all timely action) that makes it a true (non-empty) set/category/rule—and therefore (according to that abstraction/reification argument) you don’t need God (concrete being who is always good) in order to do/be/value good. But that argument implies good is not true (lacks being/referent)—is a mere abstraction—an empty concept/intuition/idea hovering over (referent to) nothing (void/abyss/ungrounded)…OR over an always active argument they were selectively ignoring (failing to contact, whether or not intentionally). They wanted to defend a definition of good that rules out contact with reality (rules out its being true/referent)… whether or not it is a correct definition. The absurdity here is that it cannot BE a correct definition unless it is correctly defining or describing actual BEing (grounding all genuinely good action) (we all know fakers, and we all have personal experience with being morally imperfect—none of us contingent beings is the ground).
That argument does not rule out the possibility of a correct definition, and the correct definition does not rule out the necessity of a being that grounds it. Without being that grounds (as referent), there can be no correct definition… of anything. How goofy that argument is in retrospect!