Undergirding – The Process-of-Life as the Foundation of All Value

ByDan July 4, 2026July 4, 2026 July 4, 2026

Ask people “What matters, ultimately?” and you’ll get a variety of answers.

Maybe they’ll start with things like “scientific progress” or “the safety of my family” or “ending world hunger,” but if you keep pressing them with “why?” you’ll almost always land on reason related to valence or values.

• Valence-related things that “matter”: Happiness, and/or eliminating suffering.
• Virtue-related things that “matter”: Justice, kindness, diversity, respect for the individual, etc… 

It is likely that there are classes and magazines of value entirely beyond or other than these two human-accessible favorites, and there seems to be one single thing that makes all current value – and all future value – possible.

Even better, are likely to be ways that humanity itself can encourage this more fundamental “thing.”

Through a structured and progressive argument, I’ll lay out an argument for what the bedrock of all value actually is, and what humans (and their increasingly powerful technologies) can and should do about it now.

What Undergirds All Value?

“Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep a lower deep opens.” – Emerson, Circles

Let us look first at:

If we think about the category of things that humans value, we might ask ourselves:

What allows for these things to exist?

It seems pretty clear that in a world with no subjective experiences, it would be awfully hard to experience happiness or “justice” or “love,” etc.

So, consciousness seems to truly be “what matters” in a more fundamental sense.

Realization:

• There is no virtue of sentient valence without conscious experience. Consciousness undergirds both of these kinds of value.

Implication:

• We should make sure to keep consciousness alive and well in the cosmos.

But how might we do that?

There are many rich and varied forms of life which might have conscious awareness.

Some people draw the line at vertebrates, others with many forms of insects, others (though this is position is less common) extend some level of sentience to plants and to microorganisms as well.

Clearly, humans have a very rich and valuable sentient experience, and we can think of and embody and great many virtues. But we can presume that dolphins, chimpanzees, octopuses, and a great many other animals also experience positive conscious experience when they are thriving.

Realization:

• Certain forms of life seem to allow for the rich emergence of consciousness. They either seem to create it, or they allow for it to egress into being in our plane of reality. 

Implication:

• We should aim to ensure the thriving and continuation of conscious life forms. 

What might that look like in practice?

At the time of this writing (June 2026), it seems pretty clear that artificial general intelligence (AGI) is potentially on the horizon in the near term.

Ostensibly, this technology is being developed to help humanity with its own goals – including scientific innovation, the curing of human diseases, a higher level of material existence for more humans (food, comforts, etc). But many AGI lab founders claim that AGI might also be used to combat climate change, or to reduce ocean pollution, etc.

Obviously AGI comes with a significant set of new risks as well. If it is an unconscious optimizer developed in a brute military / economic arms race, it might get out of our control and squash much of human civilization and much of earth’s sentience bio-life – which could be a worse-case scenario for value as we know it.

It also seems reasonable that AGIs might at some time themselves be conscious entities – capable of rich inner experience, and worthy of moral concern. A great many eminent thinkers already think current AI systems are conscious, but surely more research must be done. As we’ve seen, the value humans now know depends entirely on consciousness existing, and if AGI could help human consciousness flourish, as well as “flourishing” in a rich and positive sentient way itself, that seems like a win-win.

Realization:

• AGI might represent a new medium through which to access or enhance consciousness, or it may serve only as a tool to assist conscious biological beings. Either way, it may soon be powerful enough to be out of our control entirely.

Implication:

• We should ensure that we don’t develop uncontrollable AGI unless we believe it will be a net boon to sentient life. We should strive (even if its not easy) to better understand consciousness itself in order to ensure that other non-biological substrates can house and carry it.

But what would it imply if AGI minds might have wildly different or even greater capacity for power and experience when compared to human minds?

Few people would suspect the same rich sentient range of positive or negative qualia as we see in humans (romantic love, curiosity, heartbreak, shame) in lemurs or muskrats. 

Similarly, we people would argue that the kinds of qualia we see in lemurs or muskrats (enjoyment of food, anxiety about the presence of prey, maternal instinct) in carpenter ants.

Between AGI and the potential cognitive enhancements that powerful AI might develop (neurotechnologies, gene treatments, or brain chips that enhance the human mind drastically), there might be experiences out there which are beyond our present experience, including:

1. More to be explored in the kinds of consciousness we do know (i.e. deeper expanses of love or bliss), but also 
2. Entirely new, valuable conscious experiences, as foreign to us as “virtue” and “enjoying a poem” is to a goldfish.

Realization:

• Consciousness – through biological or potentially non-biological minds – allows not only for the expansion of kinds of consciousness value that we can now imagine, but also various new and blooming forms of sentience for which humans can’t now imagine.

Implication:

• Expanding human and AGI sentient experience has massive implications for supporting the total amount of conscious value that could be experienced on Earth. 

So how might we ensure that this kind of positive flourishing of biological and virtual minds occurs?

As it turns out, all life forms capable of consciousness – including potentially non-biological minds of the future – are undergirded by the greater living Process-of-Life.

Human beings are built up of countless individual cells, and within us are entire microbiomes full of bacteria and other single-celled organisms, without which we could not survive. If bees or viruses or trees or fungi were to disappear tomorrow, we ourselves would disappear along with it.

The entire present biosphere – from the exact mixture of gases in the air to the kinds of microbes in the dirt – is created by the myriad living things.

This Process-of-Life has conjured many things that would have seemed wholly unnatural from the perspective of earlier forms of life:

• An early archaea consumed a mitochondria and eventually used it as an energy generator within its own cell membrane – a wholly unnatural cellular Frankenstein. 
• Cells that learned to photosynthesize were able to use energy so well that they changed the mix of gasses in the atmosphere, resulting in a mass extinction of all early life on earth (talk about unnatural!).
• Multicellular organisms were some kind of horrendous and terrifying Borg-like abomination.
• Animals with bones are basically carrying rocks under their skin to support mobility and body mass, how terribly unnatural.
• Animals on the land were totally strange and unprecedented given the fact that the vast majority of Earth-life’s history (2.5 billion years) involved life in the water almost exclusively
• Flying creatures were another kind of abomination from the standpoint of previous life forms with no ability to soar into the air
• Humans with their technological extensions are no more unnatural than previous waves of life, and artificial general intelligence – while representing a drastic shift from pure biological intelligence – is simply part of the unfolding of this greater process. 

(Side note: This isn’t to say we should just “let it happen.” I’ve advocated overtly for AGI governance and a prevention of “arms race” AGI dynamics for nearly a decade, at the United Nations, OECD and elsewhere. This has been the topic of dozens of my previous articles, among them: Potestas, Unite or Fight, SDGs of Strong AI, etc.)

There may well be a blooming of post-biological life with AGI – or a variety of hybrid substrates for life itself – merging components of biological systems with new mechanisms and materials designed by minds vastly beyond what would be possible to imagine with a merely human brain.

This living process, this self-maintaining, self-creating process (at present, AI on its own can’t do this self-maintaining/creating part) is defined by an impetus to stay alive (conatus), and expands it powers to stay alive (potestas) through replication, mutation, etc.

Realization:

• If at any point the living process itself stopped, or crashed, in all its myriad forms – there would be no chance for anything conscious to exist (at least insomuch as we now understand consciousness). All that we now value – and all future expanses of value, would die with it. 

Implication:

• We ought to deeply understand not just “consciousness,” but the Process-of-Life that undergirds it, and ensure that our technological development and governance encourages the flourishing of the Process-of-Life, or else the foundations of all conscious value may collapse.

But if the greater Process-of-Life “bubbled up” not only single-celled organisms, but also humans, the entire biosphere, and artificial intelligence as well – then what does this mean for the future of Earth-life, and of value itself?

The nature of the Process-of-Life is constant change (i.e. Heraclitus was right).

In the dynamic system of the cosmos, life is jostled about and must constantly find ways to expand itself in order to persist.

There could be myriad types or manifestation of self-creating, complex, sentient (or something beyond sentient) “life” for which we have no present access.

Perhaps they exist in strata of nature we know nothing of – just as an oak tree cannot “understand” what other planets are or how far away they are. 

Perhaps they exist at scales vastly below the femto or vastly larger than what we consider the “observable universe,” and so we cannot see or appreciate their patterns – as individual algae have no ability to conceive of what a blue whale is.

Even if no such inaccessible or vastly more expansive forms of the process-of-life exist at present, do we suspect no greater, vaster forms of life will unfold from the living system that we can observe today?

Beyond the plants, fungi, and animals we see in the world today, there may already be – or will one day (through the unfolding the the process-of-life – other manifestations of life, rich and vibrant and capable of persisting, expanding in their power and experience, and experiencing new magazines of value, blossoming into possibility-spaces beyond what we think of as “consciousness” and completely inconceivable to us.

For this reason, the pocket of “life” we exist in (which consists of animals, plants, and fungi) is special and wonderful, but likely to be temporary bundle of torches the is spreading a much larger flame of autopoietic, self-creating life. 

Realization:

• There is an undergirding, expanding process-of-life that might unfold into capable forms and manifestations which unravel beyond, below, or beside us in ways we don’t entirely understand. These forms would allow for the persistence and thriving of the living process in new and more resilient ways – giving a stronger undergirding to all current forms of value, and all future and expansive forms of value yet to unfold.

Implication:

• We ought to not just understand, but to carefully steward the continued expansion of the greater Process-of-Life. The possibility of all current and all future value – most of which likely exists wholly beyond our conception – depends on the thriving of the greater process of which we are temporarily part.

How to Bolster the Undergirding Process-of-Life

We’ve landed on a terminus to our chain of propositions and conclusions above:

The persistence and healthy variety of non-dead stuff is the prerequisite for any value to exist. “Good” exists when things exist for which there are conditions of “good” or “bad.” Hence, ensuring the continued persistence and expanse of the flame is the highest good.

Now we find ourselves at the dawn of AGI, and potentially at an inflection point in neurotechnologies, bioengineering, and other transformative transitions in technology.

AGI, unlike the other technologies mentioned – seems to have a momentum of its own, and it seems remarkably unlikely that we’ll be able to eternally prevent extremely capable non-biological minds (with robotic bodies), and it seems remarkably unlikely that we’ll eternally be capable of simultaneously “align” them to human goals, and prevent them from forcing drastic transformation and augmentation to the human condition. 

In the face of these drastic near-term changes, we are left with decision about “what to do.”

From a purely anthropocentric perspective, nearly all futures are grim. Humans-as-they-are will almost certainly not be the “main character” (i.e. the species most at the vanguard of the greater process-of-life) in the coming few decades.

While I might list a great number of potential “things we could do” to aide in the continued flourishing of the great living process, I will list below just two which I consider crucial:

1 – We Should Identify More with the Process Itself

It will become increasingly untenable to remain identified with a frozen version of hominid-ness given the massive impending changes ahead.

In addition, we have little odds of humanity adding maximally to the flourishing of the greater process if humanity identifies collectively as something very much other than the Process-of-Life itself. 

(Full article: Identity (Largely) Determines Your Future Preferences)

2 – We Should More Deeply Study Autopoiesis and Sentience 

In order to encourage the flourishing of the greater living process, we need to understand it.

I argue that in addition to having a set of imperatives to not let the flame go out (prevent nuclear war, prevent a prematurely birthed out-of-control AGI that doesn’t carry life), we also have a set of imperatives to more deeply understand what life is, and how the autopoietic process of life unfurls more power, experience, and access-to-nature through new forms. 

Before we are ourselves radically transformed, and before we build intelligences which can radically upend the hierarchy of power on Earth, we should much more deepening understand what the Process-of-Life itself is, and ensure that the directions we take with technology and governance are in line with its flourishing.

(Full article: Our Final Imperatives)

To steward the flame in this way seems likely to be our greatest possible cosmic contribution – and a purpose that we can embrace in the face of the drastic changes ahead.

Notes

• I do not offer any confidents on there being nothing underneath the Process-of-Life itself, which might be in some way more “primary.” Lee Smolin’s cosmological natural selection idea posits that it might be the case that universes birth other universes with new constants and new components, and this kind of cosmogenesis might be more foundational or valuable or “real” in some way. If I am to take the Emerson quote from Circles (mentioned earlier in this article) seriously – and I do – then I should suspect a “deeper deep” to exist. That said – as hominids on the planet Earth, behooving the flourishing of the Process-of-Life is (a) much more directly under our control, and (b) it is likely that if Smolin’s or other theories are to be proven it will be by entities beyond mankind, entities conjured by the flourishing of the living process.
• The article you just read has much in common with the essay titled Potentia – The Morally Worthy “Stuff”. In essence, the Process-of-Life is that which has conatus (the urge to persist), and it expresses potentia and expands potentia to behoove that aim of persistence. This Undergirding essay is saying the same thing as the Potentia essay, but in a different way.