Glossary

Accountability makes responsibility answerable.

Adaptation is the ongoing reorganisation of living organisation that sustains viability through change.

An affordance is a viability-relevant possibility for action.

Ageing is the progressive transformation of biological organisation across time that alters the capacities supporting viability and persistence.

Architectural Dependency provides a framework for identifying and evaluating organisational conditions of possibility.

Autonomy is the capacity of a system to participate in maintaining the organisational conditions required for its own continued persistence. It does not imply independence from the environment, but active self-maintenance through viability-oriented organisation.

Autopoiesis explains living systems as self-producing organisations that maintain themselves through their own activity.

Awareness is sensitivity to significant conditions.

Behaviour is how biological agency is expressed in action. It consists of the context-sensitive responses and activities through which living systems interact with conditions that matter for organised persistence.

Biological agency is viability-oriented self-maintaining activity, not intention, consciousness, or intelligence.

Biological design is the organised structure of living systems shaped by viability.

Biological evaluation is the process through which living systems distinguish what matters for continued functioning and adaptive persistence.

Biological explanation seeks to understand the organisation that makes living systems possible.

The biological imperative is the fundamental tendency of living systems to maintain themselves and persist through changing conditions.

A biological individual is a viability-oriented and organisationally integrated system that maintains coherent continuity through change.

Biological meaning is the significance that something has for a living system. It arises when conditions matter differently for viability, functioning, and adaptive persistence, allowing organisms to distinguish among opportunities, resources, threats, and constraints.

Biological organisation is the dynamically maintained organisation of processes through which living systems sustain viability.

Biological values are patterns of importance that emerge when living systems repeatedly evaluate conditions according to their significance for viability, functioning, and adaptive persistence. They help explain why some conditions matter more than others and guide behaviour and regulation throughout the living world.

Causation is how processes contribute to maintaining or changing biological organisation.

Classification is the practice of organising and describing patterns of biological organisation.

Closure is the reciprocal organisation of mutually sustaining relations within a system.

Cognition is the integrated, temporally extended organisation of semiosis and evaluation relative to viability-oriented persistence.

Communication is a mechanism of coordination through which living systems organise activity and sustain continuity.

Consciousness is a specialised and highly integrated mode of cognition emerging within some viability-oriented living systems.

Constitutive dependency exists when a later form of organisation is inseparable from organisational structures already present in an earlier form.

A constraint is an organisational relation that stabilises activity without fully determining it.

Constraint closure is the reciprocal regeneration of viability-sustaining constraints through ongoing organised activity.

In APS, continuity refers to the preservation of viability-oriented organisation across time through ongoing transformation, adaptive reorganisation, and persistence-maintaining activity rather than through static sameness or unchanging identity.

Coordination is the organised alignment of activity that contributes to organised persistence.

Counterfactual depth is the extent to which present regulation is shaped by non-present but viability-relevant conditions.

Coupling is the reciprocal dynamic relation through which systems or processes become mutually influential.

Cultural inheritance is the process through which cultural continuity is reproduced across generations.

Culture is socially distributed organised persistence maintained across generations through shared practices, meanings, and symbolic systems.

Dependency hypotheses are organisational claims represented by APS pathway architectures.

Development is the ongoing reorganisation of constraint-closed processes that sustain and transform viability through time.

Developmental organisation is the coordinated continuity through which living systems remain developmentally viable across change.

Developmental plasticity is the regulated reorganisation of development that preserves viability across changing conditions.

Developmental regulation is the coordinated maintenance of viable developmental continuity across changing conditions.

Developmental scaffolding is the organised support structure through which developmental continuity becomes possible and stabilised.

Diagnosis is the evaluation of a system’s viability-oriented organisation through its response to perturbation.

Domination occurs when social power becomes organised in ways that systematically undermine legitimate participation, accountability, standing, or treatment.

Ecological organisation concerns the organised relations between organisms and their environments that sustain biological persistence.

In APS, ecological resilience concerns the continuity-preserving reorganisation of ecosystems and ecological relations under perturbation. Ecological resilience is not merely resistance to disturbance, but the capacity of distributed ecological systems to reorganise persistence across interacting environmental and multiscale continuity structures.

Ecology concerns the continuity relations through which living systems sustain viable persistence.

In APS, ecosystems are not merely collections of organisms within an environment, but distributed ecological continuity structures through which persistence, adaptation, perturbation, resilience, and environmental coupling become organised across interacting scales.

Emergence describes higher-order organisation, but in APS it is explained through viability-oriented organisation, not treated as a primitive.

Enabling dependency makes a later form of organisation possible while preserving its organisational distinctiveness.

The environment is the active field of viability-relevant conditions constituted through coupling.

Environmental responsibility emerges where agents possess the power to shape conditions that matter to present and future forms of life.

Environmental value explains why environmental entities and conditions can become objects of concern beyond their immediate contribution to organismic viability.

Ethics investigates morality.

Evaluation is the process of distinguishing what matters relative to a particular criterion, norm, goal, or standard.

Evolution is the historical transformation of viability-oriented, persistence-sustaining organisation across generations.

The integrated historical architecture through which life maintains continuity across generations while remaining capable of transformation.

The orientation of explanation toward parts or toward organisation.

Explanatory grammar is the structure that determines how explanation works.

Explanatory realism is the view that successful biological explanations work because they identify real organisational relations involved in maintaining viability-oriented organised persistence rather than merely providing useful descriptions or predictive tools.

Fitness is the context-dependent capacity of organised living systems to sustain continuity across generations. In APS, fitness concerns the differential continuity of organised persistence under changing conditions.

Fragility is the vulnerability of organised persistence to disruption or failed reorganisation.

Function is the viability-relative contribution of structures or processes to organised persistence.

Functional lineage refers to the continuity of biological roles or capacities despite differences in their structural realisation.

A gene is a functional component of developmental and regulatory organisation.

A goal is a state or outcome toward which biological activity is directed in support of viability and organised persistence.

Holism is the view that biological systems must be understood as organised wholes rather than as mere collections of isolated parts. APS shares the anti-reductionist insight motivating holism but rejects vague appeals to irreducible whole-properties. Biological organisation is explained through viability-oriented, constraint-closed processes distributed across scale and time.

Homeorhesis is the maintenance of a viable trajectory through change.

Human values identify what matters within human forms of life.

Information becomes biologically significant only within systems already organised around viability-oriented persistence. Information is therefore derivative of evaluation and semiosis rather than foundational to life itself.

Inheritance is the reliable reconstitution of viability-oriented organisation through which organised persistence is reproduced across generations.

Institutions are distributed constraint systems that stabilise social continuity.

Integration organises what matters into coherent functional relations.

In APS, intelligence is a specialised organisational development within life, not the defining basis of life itself.

Learning is experience-dependent modification of future activity.

Levels of organisation are epistemic partitions of continuous biological organisation, not real hierarchical layers of being.

Life is viability-oriented organisation sustained through agency across process and scale.

A life-cycle is the temporally organised trajectory through which living systems sustain continuity across changing forms and conditions.

Lineages are the historical continuities through which living organisation persists and evolves.

In APS, malfunction refers to continuity impairment within organised persistence. Malfunction is not merely the failure of an isolated component, but the disruption of organisational relations required for sustaining viable continuity across interacting biological processes and scales.

Mattering is the viability-relative significance of differences within organised living activity.

Meaning is the viability-relative significance that differences acquire within organised biological activity.

Mechanisms explain how biological processes operate, but their biological significance depends upon viability-oriented organisation rather than isolated causal activity alone.

Memory is the persistence of past influence within present organisation.

Mind is the integrated organization of evaluative cognition through which an agent maintains a coherent relationship with itself and its world.

The process through which norms become subject to moral assessment and justification.

Moral Legitimacy concerns whether organised conduct can be justified rather than merely explained, accepted, effective, lawful, or persistent.

Moral standing concerns who or what counts within moral evaluation and why.

Morality organises collective life around obligations, responsibilities, legitimacy, and moral concern.

Morphogenesis is the organised developmental production and maintenance of viable biological form.

Morphology is the organised biological form through which living systems express and sustain viability-oriented continuity.

Multi-scale causation is the scale-coupled operation of causation across interacting processes in biological systems.

Natural selection is the differential stabilisation of viable organisation across generations.

A niche is the dynamic organism–environment configuration through which viability is sustained.

Niche construction is the active reorganisation of environmental conditions through which living systems help sustain their own continuity and that of other systems.

Norm Formation explains how recurring patterns of Shared Evaluation acquire social continuity and become stable normative organisation.

Normativity is the viability-relative distinction between what supports or undermines organised persistence.

Ontogeny is the organised developmental continuity through which biological individuals persist across time.

Organicism is a tradition in biology and philosophy that treats living systems as integrated wholes rather than mere collections of parts. APS shares organicism’s rejection of reductionism and its emphasis on organised biological unity, but differs by grounding organisation in viability-oriented, constraint-closed processes rather than in organismic essences or holistic vital principles.

Organisational continuity is the maintained coherence of viability-oriented biological organisation across continual transformation through time.

Organisational coupling is the reciprocal integration through which organised systems become mutually dependent.

Organisational dependency identifies conditions of possibility within organised systems.

Organisational realism holds that biological organisation is a genuine explanatory feature of living systems without implying holistic or metaphysical entities.

Organised persistence is the maintenance of living continuity through viability-oriented organisation across ongoing change.

An organism is a viability-oriented, constraint-closed biological individual that sustains its own persistence.

Organisms and environments reciprocally organise one another through ongoing relations of activity, constraint, and viability.

Organismality is the degree to which a living system exhibits the integrated, coordinated, and self-maintaining characteristics associated with organisms.

Persistence is the active maintenance of organisational continuity through ongoing viability-oriented activity.

Perturbation is the probing of a system’s viability-oriented organisation through targeted disturbance.

Physiology is the coordinated, present-tense activity of processes that sustain viability.

Plasticity is the capacity of living systems to reorganise themselves while remaining viable.

Process is the ongoing organisation of activity through which living systems sustain viability-oriented organisational continuity across time and scale.

A processual individual is an individual maintained through organised continuity across ongoing transformation.

Purpose is the viability-oriented organisation of activity that sustains organised persistence.

Reason supports reflective evaluation and judgement.

Reductionism explains systems through their parts; APS retains material grounding but locates biological explanation in organised, viability-oriented systems.

Reflective agency is the capacity to reflect upon and modify one's own goals, beliefs, evaluations, and actions.

Reflective evaluation is the deliberate assessment of what matters and why.

Regeneration is the large-scale organisational reconstitution through which living systems restore continuity after substantial disruption or loss.

Regulation is the maintenance of viability through adaptive adjustment.

Repair is the restoration of viable organisational continuity after damage or disruption.

Representation is a derived form of cognition in which evaluative semiosis becomes stabilised across non-immediate conditions.

In APS, resilience refers to the continuity-preserving capacity of living systems under perturbation. Resilience is expressed through regulation, compensation, recovery, adaptive flexibility, and organisational reorganisation that sustain viable persistence across changing conditions.

Resolution is the granularity of explanatory or observational description.

Responsibility identifies who is answerable for what.

Scale is the spatiotemporal extent and coordination of viability-oriented biological organisation across interacting processes.

Scale-coupling is the reciprocal integration of organisation across spatial and temporal scales.

Selfhood is the organized continuity through which a living system persists as a distinct centre of significance.

Semiosis is the viability-relative structuring of meaningful difference within organised activity through which biological meaning emerges.

The process through which individual evaluations become socially organised.

Significance is what matters to an agent.

Collectively sustained expectations that organise behaviour within a community.

Social organisation is coordinated organised persistence among interacting living systems.

Social Power is an organisational feature of social systems through which participation, opportunity, authority, and constraint are structured.

Spatiotemporal organisation is the structured distribution and coordination of activity across space and time in maintaining viability.

A species is a historically continuous lineage of organised persistence.

Symbolic coordination uses shared symbolic systems to stabilise and extend coordinated organised persistence.

A taxon is a classificatory designation applied to organised persistence.

Technology externalises and extends organisational capacities through continuity-preserving structures embedded in the environment.

Teleology, in APS, is the organisation of activity in relation to viability, not externally imposed purpose or mere appearance.

Teleonomy describes apparently goal-directed biological organisation without invoking conscious intention or external design. APS incorporates this insight while grounding purposive organisation more directly in viability-oriented persistence.

The temporal field is the continuity context within which organised systems persist, transform, and remain viable over time.

Temporal organisation refers to the coordinated regulation of biological processes across time through which living systems maintain viability, persistence, and organised continuity.

In APS, temporality refers to the organised persistence and transformation of living systems across interacting timescales through which continuity, adaptation, development, and viable organisation are sustained across time.

Time in APS is organised duration—the medium through which living systems sustain and transform their viability.

Transformation is the change of viability-oriented organisation over time.

Umwelt is the organism-specific domain in which environmental conditions acquire viability-relevant significance.

Values stabilise what matters for an agent or community and organise the evaluative patterns through which decisions, judgments, and forms of social coordination become possible.

Variation is the structured generation of organisational differences within viability-oriented systems.

Viability specifies the conditions under which organised persistence can be sustained and regenerated across time.

Viability-orientation is activity organised relative to the conditions of viable persistence.

A virus is a biologically active replicator that depends upon host organisation for persistence.

Vulnerability identifies conditions under which harms, burdens, exclusions, or losses become morally relevant and therefore contributes to Moral Evaluation.