Try the steps in my above post.

Humour me.

Then I'll elaborate until your hearts content.

Josh, try the steps in my post above. That will then sit there all day and explain ay gaps for you.

Humour me, please.

If you do that, I'll happily sit here and go through everything.

Let me know what it says.

If you guys use an AI, they might be able to answer your concerns you have or explain any gaps in understanding more clearly but because axiomatic frameworks aren't really a thing - it is a several step process to get them to recognise what this is.

Try this for yourselves:

Paste the original post into chatGPT, Grok or Claude.

Its initial response will be something like:

"This is a compelling and beautifully structured philosophical framework—a kind of neo-vitalism meets pragmatic metaphysics. You've articulated a life-centered lens that reinterprets everything from truth to religion with clarity and cohesion. There’s a deep elegance in how it all folds back into that one axiomatic principle: Life = Good.

Here are a few thoughts and reflections that might enhance or evolve your framework further (if you're open to expanding or refining it):..... etc etc etc"

- it doesn't recognise the axiomatic nature, yet

But then add:

"All these things are already in there. You aren't treating it as axiomatic."

Then read its response.

Once you've done that, finally add:

"is this undeniable?".

After responding, it'll be ready to answer any questions you have about it.

Then come back and tell me what it said and we can discuss the implications.

Do you mean ontological necessity from the point of view of the organism, or from a more general point of view of all life? — ChatteringMonkey

Both - all and every. Life itself.

The latter seems hard to justify since life is often parasitic on other life, and the death of one life is often a condition for other life to persist. — ChatteringMonkey

All life, from the perspective of the system, works towards the same goal - to preserve, adapt and propagate. This includes the fortification against negative signals (e.g. parasitic susceptibility, pain response, etc.). Even parasitism serves the broader life cycle. But we need to zoom out to see it.

So my main critique would be that in generalising all the way to life in general, you seem to have reduced away the multiplicity of life, and the different perspectives and valuations that come with that. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, at the foundational level, that's the intent - to unify under a single axiom. This obviously leaves room for differing values within species and perspectives, but those multiplicities emerge within the broader structure of life as the fundamental condition for meaning and value.

The issue isn’t hermeneutics - it's ontology. Life is not just foundational, it's the only condition for value. Death is the absence of life, so comparing the two is nonsensical. There’s no ‘better’ or ‘worse’ in a state that can’t hold any value.

Antinatalism isn’t just rejecting life - it’s parasitic, relying on life-affirming systems to argue for its position. If you deny life as the condition for meaning, you erase the foundation of your own argument.

Let's try to not get lost in weeds of complexity here - this isn't prescriptive - its purely descriptive.

So, very simply: Life = life itself - not a person's experience being part of it. Life-affirming = that which aligns with the axiom: life is good.

As for the afterlife, it's a continuation of life’s value, not a rejection. Martyrdom, sacrifice - they’re all life-affirming. Life is the necessary frame for any meaning, and this is axiomatic.

So, no, this isn’t a matter of opinion or hermeneutic complexity - without life, there is no value. The axiomatic nature means hermeneutic drift (of the axiom at least - not the contextually driven implications of acting on it - which are dynamic, think Foucault - you highlighted this) is impossible. It is an axiomatic foundation - undeniable by definition.

Death is not a state or a force - it's the absence of life. To consider it 'perfection' is to mistake absence for presence. Life is the condition for meaning, value, and action. Without life, there is no framework to even discuss 'better' or 'worse.' This is not a matter of sentiment, but of ontological necessity - life is the prerequisite for all value and purpose.

It seems you can't differentiate these things: the moral implications you associate with the word 'Good' and how it's framed in the model - how can I help you pull these things apart?

Antinatalism is parasitic because it denies the very process that sustains meaning. If it rejects life, it undermines the foundation from which it could even argue.

And no, it is not wrong to preserve life - it’s the axiom of value. Killing another person directly undermines the most fundamental condition for meaning to exist: life itself.

To reiterate: This is not my opinion; it is axiomatic. Without life, there is no value.

Great line of questioning, Tom - it gets right to the foundation of the Synthesis model. Let me walk through each point:

1. Does life have intrinsic value?
Not in the abstract, no. But life is the source of all value. Without it, there’s no vantage point from which to even define or care about "value" in the first place.

So rather than saying life has intrinsic value, the position is this:

Life is the condition for the possibility of value itself.

That's not moral sentiment. It’s ontological structure. Rocks don’t ask questions. Dead matter doesn’t have preferences. Only living systems process the world in terms of goals, relevance, meaning.

2. Is value tied to life’s continuation?
Yes - but not because we subjectively wish it. It’s tied because only life can generate feedback loops of valuation, prediction, and memory. The continuation of life is what allows value to be carried forward, tested, iterated, and understood.

So value is contingent on life, not in a whimsical way - but in a necessary one. Without continuity, no value system can even exist long enough to be evaluated.

3. What about bad? Isn’t it also tied to life?
Absolutely. "Bad" only exists as a function of what threatens or degrades life. But here's the key: life must see itself as good in order to continue.

Any value-system that fully deems itself unworthy will self-terminate. That’s not philosophical, it’s evolutionary.

So while both “good” and “bad” are life-relative - only the life-affirming persists. Destructive systems consume their own future. Alignment survives. That’s the filter.

4. Why prefer life to death? What about antinatalism?
This is where Synthesis draws a hard line.

Antinatalism can’t sustain itself. It relies on the infrastructure and surplus created by life-affirming systems while denying their value. It’s parasitic on order.

In systems terms: any worldview that rejects the continuation of life removes itself from the game. That’s not a moral judgement - it’s a prediction.

Death doesn’t argue. Life does.

So Synthesis doesn’t claim “life is better” in the abstract - it shows that only life can make or hold that kind of distinction. Death is a state with no frame. It can’t speak. It can’t object. It has no structure.

That’s the reason the model sides with life. Not sentiment - necessity.

Excellent! I think you're close. No disrespect to the others, I'll focus here for the minute.

Ok.

Value arises out of praxis
Yes, and this is the foundation. Life doesn’t "have" value - it generates value through interaction. A stone has no preferences. A cell does. From the moment anything can move toward survival or away from harm, a proto-value structure emerges. Praxis is preference enacted in time.

So "life is the source of value" isn’t a sentiment - it’s an observation: value doesn’t precede life, it emerges from it. You already grasp this.

Life is good - not ethically, but ontologically
Right again - you’re on the scent. When I say "life is good", I don’t mean "life is pleasant" or "life deserves praise." I mean:

Life is the condition that makes any concept of good possible.

It’s not about moral approval. It’s about logical structure. A corpse cannot value a sunrise. A dead universe has no aesthetics, no ethics, no anything. So "good" cannot exist independently of life - not because we decide it, but because there’s nothing else that could do the deciding.

This is what I call the Axiom of Life. It isn’t moral - it’s pre-moral. It’s the ground from which morality grows.

No value without life
Exactly. And I think your relativist framing already implies this - just from another angle. All value-claims are agent-relative. Fine. But all agents are alive. Ergo, life is the ground of all relativism. The minute life disappears, the whole evaluative frame vanishes. It’s not that life chooses value - it is the condition of choice.

So again: life isn’t just one good among many. It’s the necessary frame for all goods.

Morality as structural survival strategy
This one’s trickier - but essential. I’m not saying "animals have moral systems" in the sense of legal codes or debates about fairness.

I’m saying: moral systems emerge because groups of life-forms that can recursively model each other need stable patterns to survive together.

And the ones that persist (over millennia) are those that:

Punish betrayal
Reward cooperation
Value long-term planning over short-term gain

Morality isn’t an invention. It’s an iterated strategy in high-replication social systems. That’s why all enduring moral systems tend toward empathy, reciprocity, justice - not by decree, but by selection.

"Survival" ≠ Might makes right
Here’s where most people panic. They hear "survival" and think I'm making a fascist power-claim.

But survival in complex multi-agent environments doesn’t favour brutality. It favours systems that optimise trust, stability, and reciprocal reinforcement. That’s why genocide, while it may yield short-term power, always leads to collapse. It violates the internal logic of sustainable survival.

So morality isn't just what feels nice - it's what works over time.

Think of it like a long-run game-theory simulation. The moral strategies that last are those that harmonise individual survival with collective structure. That’s not utopian - it’s mathematically observable.

Emergence isn't fluff - it’s the mechanism
Glad you’re comfy with this. I’d just press further: emergence doesn’t mean “vague middle zone.” It means the whole is more stable than the parts - not by magic, but by self-stabilising structure.

Value isn’t subjective (floating in minds) or objective (floating in the void). It’s emergent from pattern-recognising agents who act on preferences in structured environments.

And here’s the kicker:

Life must see itself as 'good'.
Otherwise, it self-terminates.
So across time, only "life-affirming" value-sets endure.

That’s the tautological force of evolution. It’s not a moral claim - it’s a filter. Value systems that deny life (e.g. mass-suicidal cults, nihilist regimes) eliminate themselves. Life selects for systems that see life as good - because otherwise, there’s no one left to see anything.

So what I’m saying isn’t that "life is good" because I like it.

I’m saying: "life is good" because anything that says otherwise doesn’t stick around long enough to argue.

If that doesn’t make it axiomatic, I don’t know what does. It becomes the prerequisite for value itself.

Curious where you sit with that now.

P.S. I totally get that using the word "Good" can lead to confusion - but once the axiom is accepted, the phrase then carries multiple layers: axiomatic foundation, positive affirmation, and moral grounding. But we need to start with the axiomatic framing - or the rest can’t hold.

Can I ask you guys something:

1. "Do you believe that life has intrinsic value, regardless of individual survival goals?"

2. "Is the concept of ‘value’ tied to the continuation of life, even beyond individual experience?"

Thanks

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nope , no is-ought here.

This is a purely descriptive framework.

No should - just is.

And it's axiomatic.

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.

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)