Text based on Andringa & Denham (2021a)
| | Concepts | Core cognition key concepts with definition |
|---|---|
| Core Cognition | The cognition shared by all of life |
| To live | Self-maintaining being different from the environment |
| Death | End of self-maintained difference from the environment |
| Need satisfaction | Acquiring and executing the necessities (food and energy) for life (self-maintaining being different from the environment) |
| Agent | “An autonomous organization that adaptively regulates its coupling with its environment and contributes to sustaining itself as a consequence.” (Barandiaran, Di Paolo, & Rohde 2009, pp. 1) |
| Behavior | Agent-initiated and context-appropriate activities with expected future utility that counteract life’s precariousness and maximizes agent and habitat viability. |
| A need | Something that, when satisfied, protects or increases agent viability |
| Viability | Probabilistic distance from death (i.e., discontinued agency) |
| Agent viability | Agent probabilistic distance to death. To persist, all life needs to optimize viability |
| Threat | a perceived reduction of context appropriate behavioral options to include only those that allow the agent to survive. |
| Agency | The ability, or a measure of the ability, to self-maintain viability (through need satisfaction) for survival and thriving |
| Cognition | The ability to select behavior in the service of the agent’s continued existence and flourishing. |
| Coping and co-creation | Two complementary forms of cognition. Coping is in the service of continued existence and co-creation in the service of flourishing. (These two forms of cognition are opposed in the two ontologies tabel |
| Stigmergy | Building on the constructive traces that past behaviors left in the environment (increasing habitat viability) |
| Authority | Expressing stigmergy |
| Habitat | The environment from which agents can derive all they need to survive (and thrive) and to which they contribute to ensure long-term viability (of self and others), Note that we use the term habitat to include other agents, but to exclude the agent. Hence, we can speak of agent + habitat to refer to the whole of existence relevant to the agent |
| Habitat viability | A measure of the degree to which the habitat can satisfy the conditions for agentic existence (i.e., satisfies its needs) |
| Biosphere | The sumtotal of all agentic traces left in the environment. Since the biosphere grew from fragile and small, to robust and extensive we can conclude that life is a net constructive force and co-creation has been dominant |
| Carrying capacity | A measure of the sum-total of the life activities that a habitat can sustain |
| Original perspective | A perspective on the world originating as the yet undeveloped ability to separate individual viability from the combined viability of self and habitat, which allowed primitive life to optimize the whole, while addressing selfish needs and creating the conditions for more agentic life |
| Purpose of life | The (Emergent) purpose of life is to produce more life |
| Well-being | Process of co-creation leading to high viability agents, increased habitat viability, and long-term protection of the conditions on which existence depends. Note that this is a process, not a state or the evaluation of a state. |
| Context | Agent’s assessment of the (current) state of the habitat |
| Behavioral repertoire | The set of all context-appropriate behaviors the agent has access to. Appraisal activates context appropriate subsets of the repertoire |
| Learning | The process to extend the behavioral repertoire and tune the effectivity of individual behaviors to the context |
| Worldview | The set of all that an agent takes as reliable (true) enough to base behavior on |
| Appraisal | A worldview-based motivational response to the perceived viability consequences of the present that activates context appropriate behavioral options |
| Core affect | Mood level action readiness based on the appraisal of indicators of (un)safety and situationally appropriate activation of behaviors, expressed as motivations to avoid or end (coping) or motivations to perpetuate or to aim for (co-creation). |
| Resilience | “The capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks” (Walker et al., 2004) |
| Realism | A measure of whether individual behavior leads to intended and/or viability enhancing outcomes |
| Identity | A theory of me-as-actor-in-the-world |
References Andringa, T. C., & Denham, F. C. (2021a). Coping and co-creation: one attempt and one route to well-being. Psychology in Russia, 14(2), 152–170.
This is a table with two contrasting self-consistent ontologies that arise from the defining properties of coping and co-creation. Ideally the ontology of thriving dominates with continual focused contributions of the ontology of survival. But it is also possible that coping starts to dominate to the exclusion of the other ontology: a coping trap
