APS Box — Viability Is Not Yet Normativity

Viability and normativity are closely related within APS, but they should not be confused.

Viability refers to the organisational conditions under which continued persistence remains possible. A living system is viable when it remains capable of maintaining the organisation necessary for its continued existence.

Normativity refers to distinctions between better and worse states, activities, and outcomes relative to those conditions. Normative distinctions emerge when a system differentiates between what supports viability and what undermines it.

Viability therefore provides the organisational basis for normativity, but is not itself normative.

A rock can remain within conditions compatible with its continued existence without evaluating those conditions. Living systems differ because they actively maintain viability through organised activity. Once viability-oriented agency gives rise to evaluation, distinctions emerge between successful and unsuccessful activity, functioning and malfunctioning organisation, adaptive and maladaptive outcomes.

In APS, normativity is therefore not added to viability from outside. It emerges from the evaluative organisation required by viability-oriented agency.

Viability specifies the conditions of persistence.

Evaluation differentiates those conditions.

Normativity emerges from those distinctions.