Ethics as a Science of Viability: Life-Value Onto-Axiology and the Conditions of Human Flourishing | ChatGPT5.2 & NotebookLM

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Executive Summary

Modern societies routinely proclaim commitments to wellbeing, justice, growth, and sustainability, yet these commitments often coexist with declining health, ecological degradation, social fragmentation, and widening inequality. The recurring failure of well-intentioned systems suggests a deeper problem than moral disagreement or poor governance: the absence of a shared, objective standard for evaluating value itself.

This white paper introduces Life-Value Onto-Axiology as that missing foundation. Developed by John McMurtry, this framework defines value not in terms of price, preference, or belief, but in relation to life’s basic requirements. The Primary Axiom of Value states that something is valuable if and only if it expands the coherent range of human thought, feeling, and action, and disvaluable insofar as it diminishes these capacities. This axiom functions as a universal orientation, applicable across cultures, domains, and historical contexts.

The paper shows how this axiom necessarily unfolds into a concrete framework for real-world evaluation. Universal human life necessities — such as clean air and water, nourishing food, shelter, care, education, meaningful work, and social inclusion — are identified as the material and social conditions required for life capacities to exist at all. Social and economic success is therefore redefined in terms of secure access to these necessities, rather than aggregate monetary growth.

To prevent value from undermining itself over time, the framework introduces life-value principles of measurement, progress, capital, and efficiency. Progress is assessed through the development of civil commons rather than GDP; capital is understood as life capital that regenerates rather than depletes; and efficiency is defined by ecological integrity, reduced material and energy inputs, and the expansion of human capability. Together, these elements form a closed, testable system in which ethical claims are evaluated against observable life outcomes.

By integrating ethics, economics, health, and ecology within a single life-coherent logic, the paper reframes ethics as a science of viability — the disciplined study of what allows living systems to persist and flourish without destroying their own foundations. The result is not a political program or moral doctrine, but a shared compass for navigating complex decisions in a finite world.

Core Principles and Concepts of Life-Value Onto-Axiology

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Principle or Concept	Definition/Aim	Criteria for Value	Measurement Metric	Key Examples	Human Capacity Impact
Primary Axiom of Value	The ground of all valuation; defines value as the expansion of life capacities.	Something is valuable if and only if it enables a more coherently inclusive range of thought, feeling, and action.	Expansion or reduction of the coherent range of thought, feeling, and action.	Internal ability to form concepts (thought), sensation/care (feeling), and capacity to create (action).	Increases the fundamental field within which humans meaningfully exist, choose, and act.
Principle 1: Organizing Aim	The ultimate objective of a life-coherent society or economy.	Secure provision of life goods that are otherwise in short supply.	Reliable access to means of life over generational time.	Clean air, safe water, nourishing food, shelter, care, education, and meaningful work.	Ensures the basic material and social conditions required for capacities to exist at all.
Principle 2: Means of Life	Distinguishing life goods from junk goods based on objective effects.	A good is a means of life if and only if it enables life capacities/abilities that would not exist without it.	Functional enablement of life capacities versus waste or diminution of capability.	Literacy education vs. addictive commodities or products that degrade health.	Determines whether a good supports or undermines the long-term integrity of human capability.
Principle 3: Universal Human Life Necessities	Specifying the concrete conditions required for human flourishing across time and place.	Provision of atmospheric, bodily, home, environmental, caring, educational, vocational, and social justice means.	Presence or absence of the specific set of universal necessities.	Breathable air, social inclusion, healthcare, art/play, and self-governing choice (social justice).	Directly maps to and supports the expansion of thought, feeling, and action.
Principle 4: Sufficiency	Measuring adequacy of provision without reliance on market prices.	Greater or lesser sufficiency in meeting life needs directly.	Accessibility, purity, and reliability of goods; safety and adequacy of space; conditions of work.	Measuring water by purity and accessibility rather than willingness to pay.	Ensures that real requirements of life are met so capacities are not contracted by deprivation.
Principle 5: Civil Commons Development	The measure of social progress based on shared life-support structures.	Expansion of full and secure access to life goods for all members of society.	Development of civil commons (public systems) compared to earlier states or alternatives.	Public healthcare systems, libraries, clean water infrastructure, and protected ecosystems.	Reorients social evaluation toward what actually matters for shared human flourishing.
Principle 6: Life Capital	Identifying the primary wealth of a society as regenerative capacity.	Stock of life goods and capacities that can reproduce and grow over time without loss in yield.	Regeneration rate of ecosystems, trust in institutions, and expansion of shared knowledge.	Healthy ecosystems and knowledge systems vs. weapons manufacturing or speculative finance (false capital).	Preserves and expands the real wealth and future capacity of human systems.
Principle 7: Life-Value Efficiency	Condition of non-self-destruction; ensures gains do not collapse into delayed losses.	Ratio between life gains and life costs (ecological, physical, and human).	Reduction of waste/externalities and expansion of capability per input.	Organic agriculture, closed-loop manufacturing, and investment in education.	Increases productive power while enlarging the range of possible human lives.