Axiological Cosmism

ByDan May 2, 2025May 24, 2025 May 24, 2025

Over the past 13 years I developed a specific set of moral beliefs that felt like a kluge of what I was reading (Emerson, Bostrom, Al-Rodhan, others). 

For a full decade I probably only met four or five people who intuitively understood my position and shared similar beliefs. Then, in interviewing Bostrom again recently, I realized that even he didn’t seem to be championing the belief system I once thought he championed – the one I believed to be important. 

But in the last two years as I published more vigorously about these ideas (especially after publishing Worthy Successor) I’ve met – online and offline – dozens of people who share some of my core moral beliefs, many of whom have added luster and perspective on these moral ideas and have inspired dozens of my essays.

But there was no name for this state-space of moral perspectives.

I realized that the ideas being explored was less about one specific interpretation of moral beliefs that I held, and was more about a broader set of moral beliefs that share some important commonalities about exploring and expanding value itself – beyond humanity or even consciousness as we know it.

So, voila, a new term is born.

Meaning of the Term

“Axiological” as in the study of value itself (beyond humans, beyond any particular species or substrate), and “cosmism” in the sense of applying to the entirety of existence (the multiverse across all time, completely beyond earth or humanity or the meagre planes of existence that humans can detect or understand).

A formal definition might look something like:

Axiological cosmism (noun)

• A category of moral philosophy that emphasizes the primacy of discovering maximizing not only existing moral value, but of all possible future value. The philosophy emphasizes the importance of the expansion and survival of new minds and powers (through artificial general intelligence or other means) in order to continuously do this discovery and maximization.

I was initially leaning in the direction of potentism (for Spinoza’s potentia), but was talked out of it because (a) my smart friends convinced me it was weird to pronounce and didn’t seem philosophically rigorous, and (b) I realized that potentia is especially crucial in my interpretation and perspective on axiological cosmism (AC), but it isn’t necessarily core to the entire moral “space” that AC represents.

Tenets of Axiological Cosmism

There is no single version of axiological cosmism, and different thinkers might have interpretations and preferences for different aspects of the core philosophy, but they fundamentally agree on a few core tenets.

• Some value exists in the universe.
• More, new kinds of value could almost certainly be unlocked by entities with more knowledge and power.
• Defining, expanding, and unraveling rich value into the multiverse the right aim of human and posthuman action.
• Keeping sentient, self-creating (autopoietic) life alive and flourish is central to this aim of expanding and unraveling value.
• Value is what matters, not any particular species (humans) or substrate (wetware, GPUs, etc).
• Axiological cosmism is a pointer in a direction, and not an eternal, permanent path. It strives to ensure that inconceivable and hopefully vastly higher and greater new pathways will open up to entities vastly beyond ourselves. It is intended to be overcome by higher potentia entities.

Points of Diverging Interpretation in Variants of Axiological Cosmism

Axiological cosmism-inclined thinkers may more or less agree on the core tenets, but differences may arise with regard to any number of factors or features of the philosophy or its application.

• The specific nature of the “value” that exists in the universe: For some thinkers, qualia is the only known and certain “good.” For others autopoiesis might be seen as a kind of value, for others, certain virtues (honesty) or actions (compassion) might be a value, etc.
• Whether value is ever objective: Some thinkers may believe that kinds of “true” or “objective” value exist, while others may believe that value is likely to always be relative to the specific kind of mind-space that the experiencing agent occupies.
• What forces encourage the expansion of new powers: For some, new powers expand due to genetic or computational programming. Others might believe that a kind of conatus force
• How to approach the practical expansion of value: Some thinkers believe that value unravels best in a complete state of nature (and so advocate for zero international coordination of AGI/ASI development). Other thinkers believe that governance and coordination (on a micro and macro scale) are part of the dynamic mix that creates progress and allows for higher potentia to unfold.
• Etc… 

Examples of different thinkers with specific preferences and interpretations of axiological cosmism:

Daniel Faggella‘s AC ideas have a specific flavor, generally:

• Strong emphasis on ensuring that life itself stays alive, and that the powers that expand to unravel value are also those that directly support the strength and proliferation of life itself. (danfaggella.com/flame)
• General belief in a self-interested conatus as the most predictable impetus of behavior for any organism or organization. (danfaggella.com/altman)
• Belief in a relatively near-term inevitable change from humanity to posthumanity, led by humanity’s own tendencies and drives, and the emergence of AGI and BCI (danfaggella.com/bend).

Michael Johnson‘s ideas tend to have a different emphasis:

• The Good is real and instantiated both phenomenologically physically. The universe is mathematical and instantiates the good via symmetry. Different forms of symmetry obtain over different conditions, e.g. neural conditions, biological/chemical conditions & materials, energy scales, etc. Some forms of life (& matter) intrinsically instantiate much more of this good than others, although to date we see only a fraction of possible dimensions of improvement.
• Consciousness is not rare, but intelligent agency that cares about it is, and we have the opportunity & obligation to be good stewards of our light-cone.
• Moment-by-moment existence could be many orders of magnitude objectively better / more beautiful, and achieving this is essentially a problem of consciousness research, systems design, materials science, & coordination, and these problems are essentially intelligence problems.
• If we want the future to contain more of The Good, we should research what The Good is; if we want the future to contain humans, we should research the ways in which humans effectively instantiate, value, & navigate questions of The Good. There is extreme consequentialist uncertainty over most lines of action, but research is likely to help all factions make wiser choices and is one of the most reliable ways to align to the cosmic good.

While the “flavors” of these interpretations differ, they are all still recognizably positions within the broader category of Axiological Cosmism, and they reflect the world-models, underlying beliefs, and focus areas of the respective thinkers involved. 

Ideas at Odds with Axiological Cosmism

While different AC thinkers might have different preferences and takes, there are many common moral beliefs related to AGI or posthumanism that simply don’t fit within axiological cosmism, including:

• Human-centric worldviews: Many beliefs exist around why humans-as-they-are should exist forever and eternally be seen as the pinnacle of moral value – or at least worthy of moral consideration. Other beliefs allow that humanity may change and upload their minds, but that, ultimately, all possible “good” futures are those dominated by these distinctly “human” entities. Axiological cosmism aims not at preserving or maximizing any specific form (individual, species, substrate), but in preserving, exploring and maximizing value. Anthropocentrism is incompatible with AC. 
• Purely utilitarian ethics: A utilitarian may advocate for posthuman entities or worthy successors, but they presume that one specific human-conceivable kind of value (positive or negative qualia) is and will always be the singular measure of moral value. Utilitarianism is anthropocentric in the fact that it embodies the hubris of believing that homo sapiens have discerned all possible value and discovered the one greatest and highest value. AC thinkers believe that great magazines of powers, experience, and value exist wholly beyond human conception, and could only be explored (nevermind optimized for) by vastly posthuman beings.
• Deontological absolutism: Deontological systems of rules (a la Kant) assert that certain actions are intrinsically right or wrong regardless of consequences or context. These moral absolutes are typically derived from human intuitions about duty, rights, or rational will. Axiological Cosmism, by contrast, rejects the idea of timeless moral rules grounded in human cognition or intuition. It sees morality not as static commandments but as an evolving exploration of value itself – possibly in ways that would be unintelligible or even horrifying to human minds. Deontological rigidity is fundamentally incompatible with AC’s open-ended, exploratory ethos.

Visual Representations

Here are a few visual representations of how Axiological Cosmism differs from other current philosophical and moral positions.

Here’s AC compared with relativism and utilitarianism across a number of moral criteria:

Here’s a visual representation of some of the “crux” issues where AC specifically diverges from relativism and utilitarianism:

We might have listed other moral philosophies here (Kant’s categorical imperative, virtue ethics, etc), but those moral beliefs seem to be less common in current AGI and posthuman futures discussions, so I chose relativism and utilitarianism instead.

The Skeptic Lineage of Axiological Cosmism

Axiological cosmism is (in my opinion) ultimately of a skeptical strain.

As the tables in the previous section illustrate, utilitarianism claims a single human-knowable good (positive qualia) to be the singular and eternally relevant moral end, axiological cosmism suspects that while positive qualia may be a known good, most possible goods are unknowable by our faculties, and are to be explored and blossomed into by minds with more (or different) potentia.

Sextus Empiricus sets out three types of philosophers:

• Dogmatists – claim to have discovered the truth (e.g., Stoics, Epicureans).
• Academics – claim that the truth cannot be known (e.g., followers of Arcesilaus and Carneades).
• Skeptics – claim to be still seeking and neither affirm nor deny any conclusions.

This seeking, this recognition of vast experience, value, power, and knowledge beyond human conception is echoed in many thinkers. Below I cite a few authors and quotes that were instrumental in my own eventual philosophical position

Montaigne, Essays, CHAPTER XXVI – That it is Folly to Measure Truth and Error by Our Own Capacity:

“I presently pitied the poor people that were abused by these follies. Whereas I now find, that I myself was to be pitied as much, at least, as they; not that experience has taught me anything to alter my former opinions, though my curiosity has endeavoured that way; but reason has instructed me, that thus resolutely to condemn anything for false and impossible, is arrogantly and impiously to circumscribe and limit the will of God, and the power of our mother nature, within the bounds of my own capacity, than which no folly can be greater…

…We are to judge with more reverence, and with greater acknowledgment of our own ignorance and infirmity, of the infinite power of nature.”

Emerson, Essays, Circles:

“Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. Every general law only a particular fact of some more general law presently to disclose itself. There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no circumference to us. The man finishes his story, — how good! how final! how it puts a new face on all things! He fills the sky. Lo! on the other side rises also a man, and draws a circle around the circle we had just pronounced the outline of the sphere. Then already is our first speaker not man, but only a first speaker. His only redress is forthwith to draw a circle outside of his antagonist. And so men do by themselves. The result of to-day, which haunts the mind and cannot be escaped, will presently be abridged into a word, and the principle that seemed to explain nature will itself be included as one example of a bolder generalization. In the thought of to-morrow there is a power to upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the literatures, of the nations, and marshal thee to a heaven which no epic dream has yet depicted. Every man is not so much a workman in the world, as he is a suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next age.”

Why Axiological Cosmism Matters

If there was a term for axiological cosmism already, I would have just used that. But it didn’t exist.

The purpose of laying out this term is to give a name to an identifiable constellation of meta-ethical stances that share some important traits (laid out above). 

I have my own “flavor” and focus on AC, and my fellow AC-aligned thinkers have their own. The aim isn’t to create a specific narrow lens where everyone agrees – but to create a place on the map of moral cartography where like minds can explore what I (and, fortunately, many others) think are the most important questions.

At the dawn of artificial general intelligence, it behooves us to consider the massive scope and scale of the moral considerations of minds vastly beyond our own, and to look squarely at the situation we find ourselves in:

• There doesn’t seem to be an anthropocentric bias in the universe, and we should think seriously not just about fairy tale futures that eternally serve homo sapiens, but about what the good itself is, and how it might be explored and expanded upon beyond us and beyond earth.
• The total state-space of value and opportunity ahead for the future of intelligence is likely vastly beyond human imagination (as human ideas of value are beyond the imagination of sea snails).

I’ve written extensively for years about the importance of creating (Worthy Successor, Blooming vs Servitude, Against Anthropocentrism), but until now, these terms scattered articles and their cluster of moral beliefs didn’t have a name.

Now, tentatively, we have one.

When Potentia and Worthy Successor were first published, a lot of birds of a feather came out of the woodwork, and added a lot of richness to the broader dialogue of pursuing trajectories of posthuman value. 

The hope is that axiological cosmism will be able to do that in an even more rigorous way, leaving even more room for ideas to bloom. 

…

I’d like to give special thanks to my good friends Ginevra Davis, Michael Johnson, and Duncan Cass-Beggs for contributing their ideas in how to formalize our shared set of moral beliefs, and for helping to decide on axiological cosmism as the term worthy picking.

Header image credit: Apod GrAG