Synthesis: Life is Good, the axiom for all value

James Dean Conroy

SYNTHESIS

1. Life as the Fundamental Axiom of Good

Life is the only frame from which value can be assessed. It is the necessary condition for all experience, meaning, and judgment. Without life, there is no perception, no action, and no evaluation. To deny this is paradoxical because denial itself is a living process.
Example: Even nihilists, who claim life is meaningless, participate in actions designed to preserve themselves. The act of breathing, eating, and communicating all point back to an unconscious, unavoidable affirmation of life’s primacy.

2. Life’s Drive for Order and Propagation

Life emerges from chaos and strives to build order. From single-celled organisms to human civilizations, the pattern is the same: life identifies opportunities to expand and persists by developing structures that enhance its survival. This drive for order is the essence of evolution.
Example: Bacteria form colonies, ants build intricate nests, and humans develop societies with laws, languages, and technologies. All these structures are extensions of life's attempt to resist entropy and sustain itself.

3. The "Life = Good" Axiom

Life must see itself as good. Any system that undermines its own existence is naturally selected against. Therefore, within the frame of life, the assertion "Life = Good" is a tautological truth. It is not a moral statement; it is an ontological necessity.
Example: Suicidal ideologies and belief systems ultimately self-terminate and are selected out. What remains, by necessity, are those perspectives and practices that favor survival and propagation. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam persist precisely because they endorse life-affirming principles, even if imperfectly.

4. Humanity as Life’s Agent

Human beings are tools developed by life to enhance its reach. Our creativity, intellect, and social structures are all mechanisms by which life attempts to advance itself. Even our pursuit of knowledge and truth serves this fundamental axiom.
Example: The development of medicine, agriculture, and technology—all aimed at improving health, longevity, and comfort - are expressions of life’s inherent drive to sustain and expand itself.

5. A Metric for Truth and Value

Truth can be measured by its ability to preserve and enhance life. Systems that do this persist; those that do not are discarded.
Example: Capitalism persists not because it is morally pure, but because it produces and allocates resources efficiently. Conversely, rigid communism failed because it could not adapt, stifling life’s ability to grow and flourish.

6. Religion and Philosophy Reinterpreted

Religious and philosophical systems are evolutionary tools developed by humanity to enhance life’s order and stability. Those that succeed are those that align best with the axiom: “Life = Good.”
Example: Judaism, with its focus on law, logic, and continuity, has developed a framework that resists entropy. The Torah’s instruction to “choose life” is an ancient articulation of this principle. Christianity and Islam, by focusing on spreading their messages, also align with life’s expansionary drive.

7. Beyond Dogma

The point where religions or philosophies go wrong is where they resist evolution. Dogma that prevents adaptation is self-defeating. To align with the fundamental axiom, ideologies must be willing to change.
Example: Judaism anticipates its own evolution - Messianic concepts and prophecies imply eventual transformation. Christianity did the same with the concept of the New Covenant. The failure of any system to acknowledge change is tantamount to denying life’s core nature.

8. A Universal Frame

The recognition of “Life = Good” provides a coherent, universal framework. Systems are judged by how well they support life’s advancement. Those that do not will fail, inevitably.
Example: Transhumanism, AI, and technological progress are all expressions of life’s continued drive to create order from chaos. These developments are inevitable extensions of the same foundational drive found in the earliest single-celled organisms.

9. Conclusion

This framework reduces all philosophical, religious, and ethical inquiry to a single question: Does it enhance life’s drive to perpetuate and thrive? If the answer is yes, it will continue. If no, it will fade. This is not merely a statement of preference; it is a descriptive reality.
Epilogue: The Implications of a Single Truth

If life is good, and we accept that as our foundational axiom, then everything changes.
Philosophy becomes simpler. Morality gains an anchor. Politics, ethics, even economics, gain a direction - not from ideology, but from a basic alignment with what fosters life, sustains it, and lets it thrive.
Conflict becomes less necessary. Arguments over dogma dissolve. The metric is no longer “What do you believe?” but “Does it support life?” Does it bring order, cooperation, creativity, beauty, joy? If not, it’s discarded. If so, it endures.
This isn’t a system to follow. It’s a lens that reveals what was always true. Every child instinctively lives it. Every healing act affirms it. Every innovation, every shared laugh, every gesture of love points to it.
We now have language for something we always felt but couldn’t quite say: Life is good. And anything aligned with life is, by its nature, good.
From this moment forward, that’s the standard. Not imposed. Not preached. Simply remembered.

Thoughts?

"Life = Good" — James Dean Conroy

Whose life?

(And welcome to the forum!)

James Dean Conroy

↪J

All life. Not individual's lives. The big picture life. The concept and the continuation of life. It's Good!

(and thanks, good to be here)

Wayfarer

The point where religions or philosophies go wrong is where they resist evolution. — James Dean Conroy

Welcome to the Forum. Ambitious opening post.

Evolution has no aim other than to survive and the propogation of the genome. That is why Richard Dawkins wrote The Selfish Gene, in which he describes every organism, including humans, as 'lumbering robots' who's only aim is propagation. h.sapiens has existed for around 100k years, and has not evolved in a biological sense during that period, although plainly there's been enormous cultural and social development and change. And those should not be conflated, they're very separate things. I sense in your post a conflation of the two senses - evolution taken as a metaphor for continuous improvement, ascent, development, and so on, which is quite a different thing from Darwin's 'theory of evolution' which has no such concerns.

↪James Dean Conroy

I thought that was probably what you meant. What other values, then, other than "life is good," would we need in order to generate an ethics, do you think? The problem is that we can't promote all life, unequivocally. Choices have to be made, preferences shown. My very first philosophy teacher opened our first class by asking, "Why do you believe your life is worth more than a Swiss chard's?" Lively discussion ensued! But no one, as best I recall, was willing to argue that there was no difference in value.

Tom Storm

aligned with life is, by its nature, good.
From this moment forward, that’s the standard. Not imposed. Not preached. Simply remembered.

Thoughts? — James Dean Conroy

To me, this seems like a personal belief system built on assumptions that support the idea that life is good. But why shouldn’t someone be free to see life as bad? Why not adopt an anti-natalist view? It makes just as much sense to hold that life is full of needless suffering with no clear purpose. In the end, all you seem to be doing is pointing to a set of values and emotional reactions to justify why life should be affirmed. But that’s not a universal truth, just a perspective.

Denying life’s value while being alive isn’t paradoxical. It's just expressing a view from within the limits of one's existence. It's not dissimilar to criticizing a game while still playing it.

2. Life’s Drive for Order and Propagation

Life emerges from chaos and strives to build order. From single-celled organisms to human civilizations, the pattern is the same: life identifies opportunities to expand and persists by developing structures that enhance its survival. This drive for order is the essence of evolution.
Example: Bacteria form colonies, ants build intricate nests, and humans develop societies with laws, languages, and technologies. All these structures are extensions of life's attempt to resist entropy and sustain itself.

3. The "Life = Good" Axiom

Life must see itself as good. Any system that undermines its own existence is naturally selected against. Therefore, within the frame of life, the assertion "Life = Good" is a tautological truth. It is not a moral statement; it is an ontological necessity.
Example: Suicidal ideologies and belief systems ultimately self-terminate and are selected out. What remains, by necessity, are those perspectives and practices that favor survival and propagation. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam persist precisely because they endorse life-affirming principles, even if imperfectly. — James Dean Conroy

Aren't these is/ought fallacies?

Just because life tends to organize and propagate doesn’t mean that it should. Evolution describes tendencies, not values. Saying that because something happens in nature, it is therefore good, risks committing the naturalistic fallacy (a form of is-ought reasoning).

James Dean Conroy

↪Wayfarer

Hi and thanks

Yes this is ambitious but not new - I've published this framework.

This is merely a descriptive, empirically grounded internally consistent framework.

If you try to parse it using an AI all at once, it will push back and say "moral prescriptions this, other considerations that". But. if you play a logic game, where you ask it to accept the premises one at a time then move on, it'll then tell you what it actually is. This is an important framework...

This is axiomatic. It's not my opinion - just an observation. The first premise being the real key to it all.

I like Dawkins, but his view is human centric - this is born in the observable facts we see and takes it out of that lens from the very start. It's biocentric.

James Dean Conroy

↪Tom Storm

Nope , no is-ought here.

This is a purely descriptive framework.

No should - just is.

And it's axiomatic.

Wayfarer

I like Dawkins, but his view is human centric — James Dean Conroy

We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. — Richard Dawkins, preface to The Selfish Gene, 2nd Edition

Nothing human-centric whatever about that.

James Dean Conroy

↪J

None. Just that one: Life is Good.

Everything else logically follows.

I'm not in the business of making moral prescriptions, this just gives a universal grounding that's axiomatic.

Just like Foucault wouldn't let us forget, moral judgements are context dependent - I'm not going to even attempt to follow that through in all permutations. It's a fools errand. Doomed to failure. A universal grounding that's axiomatic is the best we can hope for. Here it is.

James Dean Conroy

↪Wayfarer

The selfish gene, memes. His pragmatism. All human centric. Even the quote you gave me talks about us: "We are survival machines".

My framework is really what I want to discuss here, not split hairs over ol' Dickie.

James Dean Conroy

↪J

Why do you believe your life is worth more than a Swiss chard's? — J

Life has different inherent value. That's why apex predators are here. More complex expressions of life. The higher the expression potential the greater the value. Us being at the very top - for now...

Happy to elaborate if you want.

Tom Storm

f life is good, and we accept that as our foundational axiom, then everything changes.
Philosophy becomes simpler. Morality gains an anchor. Politics, ethics, even economics, gain a direction - not from ideology, but from a basic alignment with what fosters life, sustains it, and lets it thrive.
Conflict becomes less necessary. Arguments over dogma dissolve. The metric is no longer “What do you believe?” but “Does it support life?” Does it bring order, cooperation, creativity, beauty, joy? If not, it’s discarded. If so, it endures. — James Dean Conroy

I don't see how any of this is the necessary outcome of the position that life is good. The hows and whys will still be fought over.

Given that "all life is sacred" is kind of the default message of many philosophies and religions, this doesn't seem to have prevented much suffering and wilful harm, often in the name of doing good.

Can you show us how this approach can bypass ideology? Isn't any pathway to implementing "life is good" outcomes always going to end up in a value system, a series of preferences? All of them contestable.

How are you going to separate a life is good worldview from religions and philosophies which are nominally compatible with this principle but may still clash with each other over goals and methods?

Many people will commit shocking crimes to bring us order, cooperation, creativity, beauty and joy.

James Dean Conroy

↪Tom Storm

The hows and whys will still be fought over. — Tom Storm

This gives a universal lens. - not universal agreement. The context will be contested - this isn't a utopian framework. In fact, the utopian ideal is horrific to me.

Why? Because a world without contradiction - without struggle, without negative feedback - is a world where nothing means anything. It’s not peace - it’s a padded cell.
Without the threat of failure, success is hollow. Without death, life has no urgency. Without the dark, the light doesn’t shine. That’s not poetry, it’s physics, biology, consciousness. That’s how life works. Positive and negative signal then adaptation. The alternative is stagnation.

Given that "all life is sacred" is kind of the default message of most philosophies and religions, this doesn't seem to have prevented much suffering and wilful harm, often in the name of doing good — Tom Storm

This is addressed in the framework. 6 and 7. Dogma is the issue. Alignment with the axiom is precisely why they've been so successful.

Can you show us how this approach can bypass ideology? Isn't any pathway to implementing "life is good" outcomes always going to end up in a value system, a series of preferences? All of them contestable — Tom Storm

This is addressed in the framework. 6 and 7. And Yes, there will be contested interpretations. Impossible to prevent that - context matters - this isn't a utopian framework.

Many people will commit shocking crimes to bring us order, cooperation, creativity, beauty and joy. — Tom Storm

Man is imperfect. That why he needs a universal lens. All philosophers have sought this lens. Here it is. Axiomatically defined. It doesn't mean instant (or even eventual) utopia or that context disappears. But it is a common (axiomatic) starting point. Thats' valuable.

James Dean Conroy

But that’s not a universal truth, just a perspective. — Tom Storm

No, this is axiomatic. The premise is unassailable. It's an axiom.

This first axiom wasn't something cultivated to fit preference. It's where I started from.

For context, this was something that was born from an evolutionary systems model, not philosophical musing about morals then retro fitting.

Joshs

↪James Dean Conroy

For context, this was something that was born from an evolutionary systems model, not philosophical musing about morals then retro fitting. — James Dean Conroy

As an evolutionary systems model, it’s taking too reductive a stance to grasp the site of evolutionary selective pressures and order creation. The unit of evolutionary survival is not a lifeless static slab of meat, nor is it the ‘gene’. There is no such thing as a gene in isolation. A living thing is a self-organizing system whose goal is not simply static survival , but the ongoing maintenance of a particular patten of interaction with its environment. To this end, all living things are cognitive sense-makers. That is, their interactions with their world is characterized as a normative set of purposes and intentional aims. What constitutes a threat to these purposes is defined by the nature of these purposes. In other words, the organism seeks to maintain the nature of its functioning in the face of changing conditions. What is good is what is constant with the ongoing maintenance of its patten of activity, what is bad is what interrupts its activity. Human beings do t drive to maintain a body, we strive to maintain a way of life, a system of anticipatory understanding that allows us to make sense of events.

Translated into human psychological terms, we consider what is good in terms of what is consistent and compatible with our normative ways of making sense of our world, and what is bad as those events we are unable to effectively assimilate into our schemes of understanding. To say that all this is in service of the survival of the gene is to miss the fact that the ‘gene’ is only an arbitrarily abstracted element of an integrated unity of functioning, the organism as a whole in its normative sense-making. Furthermore, the organism doesn’t simply adapt itself to its environment , it modifies and defines its environment on the basis of its functioning. Adaptivity and evolutionary selective pressures move in both directions , not just from world to organism but also on the basis of the organism’s effect on its environment.

Understanding evolutionary drives this way unites our psychological desires ( what good and bad mean to us) and the aims of living things in general. Your approach, by contrast, disconnects what is good from an evolutionary standpoint (surviving and becoming more ordered) from what is good from a psychological perspective. In your model, there is no reason to assume that persons are motivated in the direction of survival, order, or anything else for that matter. Some may want to live, some may want to die, some may crave order, some may be drawn to chaos.

Janus

There is no such thing as a gene in isolation. A living thing is a self-organizing system whose goal is not simply static survival , but the ongoing maintenance of a particular patten of interaction with its environment. — Joshs

You have to admit, though, that survival, that is life, is the ultimate—without it there are no other goals, which makes other goals secondary insofar as they depend absolutely on survival.

And I'm not just talking about human survival, human life, but all life.

James Dean Conroy

As an evolutionary systems model — Joshs

This isn't one, it was born from other work I was dong. This is a framework.

We can talk about my evolutionary systems model if you like. It's called The Hedge - I wrote a series of articles. It's much more complicated (and doesn't stop at human psychology - it expands well past individuals) - certainly not a concise list of 8 premises. So the critique here is a bit of a strawman...

This thread is really to talk about this framework. In particular I was looking for logical analysis.

James Dean Conroy

You have to admit, though, that survival, that is life, is the ultimate—without it there are no other goals, which makes other goals secondary insofar as they depend absolutely on survival.

And I'm not just talking about human survival, human life, but all life. — Janus

You're right. The complexity is added with our ego, group dynamics etc, but the core biological imperative remains - good call.

Joshs

↪James Dean Conroy

So the critique here is a bit of a strawman...

This thread is really to talk about this framework. In particular I was looking for logical analysis. — James Dean Conroy

Were you also looking for a critique of your framework? I don’t understand how my comments on what you call an ‘evolutionary systems model’ don’t have any application to the framework you want to discuss in this thread.

You have to admit, though, that survival, that is life, is the ultimate—without it there are no other goals, which makes other goals secondary insofar as they depend absolutely on survival.

And I'm not just talking about human survival, human life, but all life — Janus

But no part of organism survives in a literal sense over time. It is a unified pattern of functioning that survives, and this ‘survival’ is only an abstraction. What we call ‘this’ living thing is not a thing, it is a system of interactions with a material and social environment. This whole ecology is the unit of ‘survival’, not a ready-made thing thrown into a world like a rock. The whole ecological system ‘preserves’ itself by changing itself in a self-consistent manner. One could say, then, that it doesnt survive so much as transform itself in an ordered way.

James Dean Conroy

Were you also looking for a critique of your framework? I’m don’t understand how my comments on what you call an ‘evolutionary systems model’ don’t have any application to the framework you want to discuss in this thread. — Joshs

The systems model was the thing that led me to the axiom, so does have an impact, obviously, the systems model is just more nuanced and addresses the points you raised. I'm saying i want to keep this a logical analysis of the framework.

One could say, then, that it doesn't survive so much as transform itself in an ordered way. — Joshs

You could say it that way, but you're effectively saying the exact same thing.

ChatteringMonkey

↪James Dean Conroy

You seem to be one step removed from the will to power as a basic principle.

Life doesn't seek to perserve itself, but to overcome itself into something more adaptive, something greater.

Preservation makes sense only in a static world, not in a world that changes constantly... life creates order and destroys order to create another order ad infinitum.

Nietzsche wrote a couple of books on what he thought the implications were for philosophy and morality.

James Dean Conroy

↪ChatteringMonkey

Thanks for the engagement. Respect.

That’s really close to what I’m saying - and yes, Nietzsche was pointing in the right direction with will to power, though I’d argue he stopped one layer short.

'Will to power' is what life does, but it only exists because life is. I’m just shifting the foundation one notch deeper: life is the necessary condition for value itself - including the value of overcoming, adapting, or transcending.

"Preservation makes sense only in a static world" - agreed, and that’s why I don’t frame life’s axiom as preservation, but as a drive toward order. That includes the destruction of lower orders to make room for higher ones. Life doesn’t seek stasis, it seeks better form. That’s the engine of evolution, culture, morality, and even the dialectic we’re in now.

Where Nietzsche focuses on how life expresses itself (as will, creativity, power), I’m focusing on why that expression has any value at all - because it is life that gives value a stage.

So yes:

Will to power is the engine.
Life is the frame.
And 'Life = Good' isn’t a moral claim - it’s the foundational logic that undergirds any value-based claim, including Nietzsche’s own.

Thanks ChatteringMonkey

Dawnstorm

This is so utterly against my intuition that I have a hard time figuring out what you're even saying. I'll only adress point (1), because here I'm still relatively on board with what you're saying, so I can still somewhat talk about it. From point (2) on out, you pretty much lose me completely, but maybe if I understand point (1) better, I'll find a key to unlock the other points? Experience has taught me not to be overly hopeful, but who knows.

Life is the only frame from which value can be assessed. — James Dean Conroy

At this point, I wasn't sure yet what you're talking about, so: read on.

It is the necessary condition for all experience, meaning, and judgment. Without life, there is no perception, no action, and no evaluation. To deny this is paradoxical because denial itself is a living process. — James Dean Conroy

I'm on board with this, for the most part. There is one word, though, that gives me pause: I would invoke irony rather than paradox. I simply don't a paradox. I simply see no paradox here. Part of the problem is the abstraction "life": if we're comparing a live person with a dead one, I will definitely not find a dead person denying this point. Empirically, all I can ascertain, though, is that they don't communicate; not that they have no experience. When we compare a person to a rock, it's hard for me to see what we would be talking about, empirically, if we were to say that "rocks" have experience. What's lacking here is not empirical evidence, but a theoretical framework. I'd have to put that question to a panpsychist, but I can't rule out that they have some sort of theory, or something approaching it that is empirically viable (even if it's not useful to me).

All I'm saying here is that a living person denying that life is necessary for experience, might just say that non-living things, too, have experience. The fact that they say so while alive doesn't seem to cause a paradox. Them saying that while dead would be rather surprising, sure, but that's not particularly relevant to a paradox, I feel. There's no contradiction here.

Example: Even nihilists, who claim life is meaningless, participate in actions designed to preserve themselves. — James Dean Conroy

"Designed" is a value word. If nihilists don't eat they die. But that's just a description of a process. If you set life as a goal, you could argue for hunger as a function, but it doesn't seem like that's what you're going for. In any case, we'd first have to figure out what "life is meaningless" means to a nihilist. "Hunger is unpleasant, therefore I eat," doesn't impart any value on life. It imparts some sort of value on one mode of living over another - that is all. After all, starving is something you do while you live. You can't starve while dead. In fact, dying is part of life. It's baked in at the end. (Or is it? You could invoke jellyfish, I suppose.) Basically, just like you can't have experience when not alive, you can't die when not alive.

At this point I wonder how you see the relation between the individual, the species, the clade... all living things. For instance, a conflict between predator and prey, parasite and host, etc. plays out differently on the level of the organism than on the level of the ecosystem. The life of an organism - the iteration of organisms - the branching off/dead ends during speciesation - the presence of *any* living thing at all. There's no intuitive anchor point here where value comes in to begin with.

The act of breathing, eating, and communicating all point back to an unconscious, unavoidable affirmation of life’s primacy. — James Dean Conroy

Again, I don't see any affirmation, just a process. Again, it makes sense to view hunger as a function to keep an individual alive, but to do this you need to set survival as a goal, and that, IMO, is a methodological assumption.

But then I'm fairly radical here. For example:

Evolution has no aim other than to survive and the propogation of the genome. — Wayfarer

Evolution has no aim period. Extinction is one possible outcome of evolution. Extinction of everything that evolves is the end of evolution. Does that mean that "evolution has failed"? When there's nothing that can evolve, then there's no evolution - that's all.

James Dean Conroy

↪Dawnstorm

You're mistaking the axiom for an opinion. It's not. It's an axiom.

I’m not saying "life feels meaningful" or that "living things believe in life".
I’m saying: value cannot exist at all without life.
Not human life. Not individual life.
Any life. Life as such.
All perception, judgment, preference, action - all value statements - require life.

(I have been clear and even confirmed this in the thread - please read before commenting and forcing me to repeat myself - otherwise you risk falling into the category of semantic sophist -for now I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and reiterate)

You say "there’s no intuitive anchor point where value comes in."
That’s the point. Intuition isn’t the anchor - existence is.
Without life, nothing evaluates anything.
No nihilist. No panpsychist. No moral agent.
Not even your thought experiment happens without a living frame to host it.

Calling hunger a "process" is fine.
But the moment you say "unpleasant", you’re using a value term.
Pain only means something to a living thing.
You can't smuggle value in while denying the frame that gives it meaning.

Even extinction, as you say, is only a "failure" or a "result" in a value structure we invent as living observers.
That’s the axiom: value cannot be severed from life.

Deny it?
That denial is only happening because you’re alive - thats the affirmation.
No paradox? If you like we can call it a tautology in motion.

Life is the condition for value,
Because value is only ever a function of life.

Dawnstorm

Life is the condition for value,
Because value is only ever a function of life. — James Dean Conroy

I agree with this. It's entirely opaque to me how you get from here to "life is good". As I said, this means that life is value-neutral. Once alive, you can evaluate anything, even life itself.

You're mistaking the axiom for an opinion. It's not. It's an axiom. — James Dean Conroy

I'm not. As an axiom, it's just entirely meaningless to me. I don't understand the axiom, and your posts don't help. What do you want to do with this axiom? What's the context? As my failure to communicate this demonstrates, I don't even know how to properly respond to this.

Yes: without life, no value. Fine. Now: why is life good? Because it gives rise to value? Living things evaluate things; non-living things don't. Fine. How does that make life "good". Or even before that: what do we even evaluate if we evaluate "life".

So "life is good" is an axiom. So how do you use that axiom to argue stuff? What sort of logic does this axiom tie in? How, for example, do you deal with predators killing prey? This is not disagreement. I don't see a way forward here - I don't know why I should assume the axiom.

ChatteringMonkey

↪James Dean Conroy

You're welcome.

And 'Life = Good' isn’t a moral claim - it’s the foundational logic that undergirds any value-based claim, including Nietzsche’s own. — James Dean Conroy

He wouldn't see it as a logic exactly I don't think, but as a description maybe, because he doesn't see valuing as derived from or based on a logical foundation at base, but rather coming from physiological needs... because of the type of lifeform we are.

We value from a certain point of view, not from the totality of life, and not from life as the good as an abstract principle.

Perspectivism.

Sea water is at once very pure and very foul: it is drinkable and healthful for fishes, but undrinkable and deadly for men. — Heraclitus

Janus

You're right. The complexity is added with our ego, group dynamics etc, but the core biological imperative remains - good call. — James Dean Conroy

Yes, it is only humans who can say that life is the source of all value both good and bad. but animals also have purposes and value things, probably without the self-reflective awareness that symbolic culture and language enable.

But no part of organism survives in a literal sense over time. It is a unified pattern of functioning that survives, and this ‘survival’ is only an abstraction. What we call ‘this’ living thing is not a thing, it is a system of interactions with a material and social environment. This whole ecology is the unit of ‘survival’, not a ready-made thing thrown into a world like a rock. The whole ecological system ‘preserves’ itself by changing itself in a self-consistent manner. One could say, then, that it doesnt survive so much as transform itself in an ordered way. — Joshs

This reads like sophistry to me. Organisms are born, live for a time and then die. Surely you are not going to tell me that you didn't come into existence and will pass out of existence again one day? Did you have goals before you existed? Will you have goals when you no longer exist? Are you going to say you don't primarily want to survive, you wouldn't care if you knew you were to die tomorrow?

Joshs

↪Janus

Are you going to say you don't primarily want to survive, you wouldn't care if you knew you were to die tomorrow? — Janus

I’m not afraid of death, I’m concerned about quality of life. Survival for survival’s sake carries no appeal for me. I would rather not be alive than live a life with no purpose. I won’t know when I’m dead so it has no relevance for me.

Janus

↪Joshs

It's easy to say you are not afraid of death when your life is under no threat. I doubt that if you suddenly found you had a terminal illness you would not be afraid. There is no such thing as a life without purposes, however humble those purposes may be. All purposes are geared towards either sustaining life, or fulfilling desires, even if only, in extremis, one's own life and desires.

James Dean Conroy

↪Dawnstorm

I appreciate the chance to try to illuminate this for you.

Can I ask you a few questions to establish where the disconnect is?

1. When I say "life is the source of value", do you hear "life feels valuable to humans"?
(Or do you interpret it as a structural claim - about how all value originates from being alive?)

2. When I say "life is good", do you think I mean "life is morally right" in the human ethical sense?
(Or do you see that I mean "good" as in the precondition for goodness to exist at all?)

3. Do you believe there’s such a thing as value without any life to perceive or act on it?
(If yes, how? If no, then you already agree: life is the necessary condition.)

4. When I say "morality emerges from the structure of life", do you think I mean “animals have moral systems”?
(Or do you see that I’m saying morality is a refined strategy for multi-agent survival over time?)

5. When I equate survival-optimised behaviour with morality, do you hear "murder is fine if it helps survival"?
(Or do you understand that moral systems optimise survival under social, complex, recursive constraints - and that’s why they evolve towards things like empathy, fairness, reciprocity?)

6. When I say value is not "subjective" or "objective" but "emergent", do you hear that as vague fluff?
(Or can you imagine value as something arising from pattern persistence in systems capable of preference?)

I'm hoping to get this across, I'm not being awkward. Answering these would help me know where you're at

Synthesis: Life is Good, the axiom for all value

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Categories

More Discussions