Heh, I was reading SalmonGod's post and kept thinking, "Yes! This! So much!" And then there was the edit. But yes, this perspective shapes how I think and has been a powerful tool for understanding virtually everything I've learned about biology over the past few years - even though it's just a vague philosophical musing that doesn't produce testable results, it's still proved extremely useful to me. Besides being practical in that way, it also inspires a greater degree of awe than any religion I've ever experienced so far, although that's a scarce number.
The concept of a "chair" does not have physical meaning, as far as I'm aware - what a chair is is a particular pattern, information. But it has meaning, and not in the purely abstract sense of the word (which is something concepts like "freedom" or "happiness" seem to have). The distinction I make in the second sentence is a thought I literally just had, though, so I'm going to need to think on that for a while to see if it really means anything or if it just sounds like it.
EDIT: Oh, fuck, I'm Plato now, aren't I? Something something ideal forms something something. Well, on looking it up, not exactly - I don't ascribe them quite the same level of significance or anything like that, but maybe a similar principle.