Living systems must continuously distinguish conditions that support persistence from those that threaten breakdown.
Evaluation emerges from this requirement.
In APS, organisms evaluate internal states, environmental conditions and possible actions relative to viability. This evaluative activity guides regulation, adaptation, learning and behaviour.
Evaluation therefore precedes many forms of meaning, normativity and semiosis.
Without viability-oriented evaluation, there would be no biological basis for functional success or failure, adaptive significance, or meaningful response to the environment.
APS thus interprets evaluation as a foundational activity of organised persistence.