This is really an addition to the previous essay, “Definitions of Life”. It is a further comment on Stuart Kauffman’s book “Investigations”.

In discussing the semantics of autonomous agents (primitive life forms), Kauffman comments that they already distinguish “yuck and yum”, i. e. poisons and food, or later, predators and prey. (Those that didn’t, didn’t survive.) Which reminds me of the most prominent dimension of Osgood’s semantic differential, “good and bad”. It is most prominent even for humans, when he interviewed people from many cultures. It is a transcultural universal. It now seems it is a trans-species universal for all life on Earth, maybe for life in the Universe, if any. Good and Evil are “Principalities and Powers”, in a theological sense.

This distinction is certainly basic for survival under natural selection, by Darwin’s laws. However, it leaves me wondering about the other two prominent (though less prominent) dimensions of the semantic differential: strong vs. weak, and active vs. passive (or fast vs. slow in some cultures). These too seem to be linked to survival. As Osgood remarked, “bad” things come in two varieties, the lion and the virus (both active, but one strong and one weak), and also a train approaching on the tracks (strong and active) and an immovable obstacle, like a wall or a river, as you are driving unaware of it (strong and passive). Any autonomous agent, primitive or advanced, had better look out for all of these varieties of evil.

Similar distinctions hold for “good” things. A strong good is “cool clear water” when you are thirsty in the desert; a weak good is a snack when you are just bored. An active good is your lover, a passive good is a nice hot bath. I could make all these less material and more spiritual, but I am trying to make it applicable to all kinds of life forms.

An autonomous agent of any size or degree of evolutionary advancement also seems to have a primitive free will, as already implied in the word “autonomous”, and in Kauffman’s favorite example of a bacterium swimming up a glucose gradient. It is chemical, of course, but it resembles purpose and intention. Why not give them credit for it? It satisfies Occam’s razor (preference for simple explanation) better than the Darwinian circumlocutions, which remind me of Ptolemaian epicycles.