Glossary

action

Something an agent or system does that changes its own state or its environment. Every action is an irreversible physical event, so it always leaves some trace in the world that another observer could, in principle, read — though that trace becomes information only for an agent equipped to read it.

actor

Anything that performs an action — but not necessarily an agent. An actor may act with no intention, learning, or stake in the outcome (a falling rock is an actor); its actions leave traces in the world, but those traces carry no meaning and serve no purpose unless the actor is also an agent. (Contrast agent.)

adaptability

The capacity of actors within a system to influence resilience or adapt in response to challenges or opportunities.

agency

The capacity of a system to act on its own behalf — to perceive, interpret, and predict, and to steer toward the states its values-model prefers using its methods-model, learning from the consequences as it goes. Agency comes in degrees and grows: the more an agent folds what happens back into its models, the more its coherence widens across contexts of meaning and scopes of effectiveness. (Contrast actor; see agent.)

agent

An actor that has agency: one that not only acts but takes in the consequences of its actions to refine what it values (values-model) and what works (methods-model), and so behaves in a purposeful, future-oriented way. The bacterium climbing a gradient is the minimal case; a person, or a whole culture, an enormous one. (Contrast actor.)

coherence

How well a model hangs together and holds up — few internal contradictions, strong connections among its parts, and good agreement with the agent’s experience and the world. A coherent model is what lets an agent make sense and act reliably. (See increasing coherence, coherence over a widening context.)

coherence over a widening context

The book’s one-line direction for better: the drive to make what an agent values and how it acts more consistent and more deeply understood, while the reach of its concern widens rather than shrinks. The thesis phrase — distinct from plain coherence (a property of a model at a moment) and increasing coherence (the refining process), both of which it builds on. Its reverse — coherence won by narrowing the reach — is the counter-dynamic.

consciousness

The felt, first-person side of being an agent — there being something it is like to be it. AoM treats consciousness not as a second source of worth set beside agency, but as the felt inside of the perspectival, indexical self that agency already requires: a perspective that has folded back to include itself among the things it models — the observer that is also the observed. The weight it carries is real, but graded along the same axis as agency — a richer interior to value with, and a richer perspective for other agents to perceive and integrate — not a separate standing a being carries on its own. (Distinguish sentience, the narrower capacity to feel; and the minimal, unfelt value of a self-maintaining cell. Placed in full in the Supplemental essay The View From Inside; on why standing stays agent-relative rather than riding on consciousness, see Standing, and the Widening Circle.)

consequences

The actual effects an action produces — intended and unintended, near and far, many of them hidden from the agent in advance. In AoM consequences are not the fixed yardstick of the good (see consequentialism) but the feedback by which an agent tests and refines its models: the world’s reply, from which coherence is earned or lost.

consequentialism

The family of views that judge an act by its consequences; utilitarianism — the greatest aggregate well-being — is its best-known form. AoM keeps the core insight, that consequences are where value actually shows up, but declines the fixed, view-from-nowhere ledger: “good outcomes” are always good for agents, over some context and some reach of concern, and the full consequences of anything are mostly hidden in advance. What AoM tracks is not a fixed quantity of good produced but the direction of the process — concern widening or narrowing. Reframed in Chapter 6.

constructivism

The position that an agent’s knowledge, meaning, and values are built — actively assembled out of its contact with the world — rather than found lying ready-made in it. One of AoM’s three epistemological foundations, alongside perspectival realism and functionalism. But made is not arbitrary: constructions are built against a shared world that pushes back and are disciplined by what works, so a model can still be plain wrong, and better and worse constructions can be told apart. (See perspectival realism, functionalism, meaning-making; developed in Chapter 2, “made is not arbitrary.”)

context

The web of factors — internal to an agent and external in its environment — against which anything is interpreted. A context fixes what information signifies, governs which methods apply and how well, and sets the relevant scope and hierarchy of an agent’s values. It is not the background scenery of meaning but closer to its engine: strip the context away and you do not reach a purer, context-free meaning underneath — you reach silence. Meaning is always made within one.

counter-dynamic

The signature of the arrow running backward: greater coherence bought by a shrinking reach of concern — a worldview made airtight by walling out whatever might disturb it (the cult, the echo chamber, the hardening ideology). The mirror image of coherence over a widening context, and what lets the framework tell a saint from a fanatic without appeal to any fixed creed.

diversity

In the systems sense (not the social-policy one): the variety and variation within a system that supplies the raw material for adaptation and exploration. Diversity is what lets a system try many things and discover what works; too little starves it of options. AoM treats a healthy spread of perspectives and approaches as part of what keeps coherence growing rather than calcifying. (See resilience, pluralism.)

drives

Deep, largely pre-conscious motivational pushes rooted in an agent’s biology and evolutionary heritage — hunger, fear, the pull toward others. The rawest layer beneath the felt and the valued; see values for how the layers compare.

duty-ethics (deontology)

The view that an act is judged by its adherence to duties or rules, regardless of outcome — keep your promises; do not treat a person as a mere means. AoM honors what this gets right: a good rule is compressed coherence, hard-won wisdom so reliable across contexts that we are usually wise to follow it without recomputing from scratch. But it locates the error too — mistaking that compression for bedrock, and forgetting the rule is answerable to the coherence it summarizes and revisable when the territory changes. Reframed in Chapter 6.

dynamic balance

A state of equilibrium characterized not by stasis, but by ongoing negotiation, adjustment, and fluctuation between the competing forces of unity and diversity.

effectiveness

The degree to which an agent’s methods actually bring about the change they aim at — whether “what works” works. Effectiveness is judged not against a fixed yardstick but by results in the world, across the scope of contexts a method must serve. It is the methods-model’s analogue of coherence on the values side: a method grows more effective as it is refined against feedback over a widening scope. (See methods, scope.)

emergence

The appearance, when simpler parts combine, of capacities and properties that none of the parts has alone — water’s wetness from hydrogen and oxygen, value from a cell’s self-maintenance, a self from the activity of many. The engine of the book’s whole ascent: synergy throws up the new, selection keeps what holds together, and each emergent layer becomes the platform for the next. (Ch 1.)

emotions

Fast, embodied appraisals that register how a situation bears on what an agent values — value-detection felt as bodily signal (fear, anger, joy) that orients attention and readies action. See values for how the layers compare.

entropy

A measure of disorder — of energy no longer available to do work — the quantity the second law says tends to increase. AoM’s interest is the twist of Chapter 1: order is not a doomed exception to the slide toward entropy but one of the ways the slide happens, since energy flowing through matter spontaneously builds structure that dissipates it faster. (The term has both a strict thermodynamic sense and an observer-relative, information-theoretic one; AoM leans on the first while granting the second.)

eudaimonia

Flourishing understood as a trajectory rather than a prize: living well in the ongoing sense of an agent whose values grow more coherent across a widening context, not the reaching of a fixed final state. AoM borrows the classical term but reads it as a direction of travel — in keeping with morality as a direction, not a destination.

EvoDevo

A systems-theory framing in which every complex self-organizing system — cosmic, biological, cultural — is shaped by two opposing but complementary forces:

Evolution (the tree): unpredictable, branching exploration that throws up novelty, variety, and local adaptation — the engine of possibility (genetic mutation, cultural invention, market competition).
Development (the funnel): predictable, convergent constraint that guides systems toward hierarchical levels of complexity and functional maturity — the engine of probability (star formation, an embryo building a heart, the emergence of complex intelligence).

extensibility

As an attribute of theories or models, refers to their capacity to be broadened, modified, or applied to new domains, novel problems, or emerging data without sacrificing their core conceptual integrity or fundamental explanatory power. It signifies potential for growth, adaptation, and enduring relevance in a dynamic world.

feelings

The consciously experienced side of emotions — what an emotion is like from the inside, once it surfaces into awareness. See values for how the layers compare.

function

What a thing does — what it affords, connects to, makes possible or forecloses. To understand something, on AoM’s view, is to grasp its function: to see its edges, where its powers begin and end. Function comes first; essence, if there is any at all, a distant second. (See functionalism.)

functionalism

The commitment to understanding things by what they do rather than by some hidden inner essence — to grasp a knife by its cutting, a mind by what it accomplishes, a value by the work it does for an agent. One of AoM’s three epistemological foundations, alongside perspectival realism and constructivism. Its key consequence: if a thing is what it does, the same role can in principle be filled by very different stuff — so minds, agency, and moral standing need not be tied to any one material. (See function; developed in Chapter 2, “seeing the edges,” and Chapter 4 on methods.)

good

An action is perceived (by an agent) to be good to the extent that it is perceived as promoting the agent‘s values within a present context. (Compare right-in-principle and moral.) It is the first and most local rung of a three-step ladder — good → right-in-principle → moral — asking only whether values are served now, with no demand for coherence or for any widening of concern.

homeostasis

A system’s holding of its internal conditions within the narrow range it needs to keep functioning, against everything the environment does to push it elsewhere — the body holding its temperature, a cell its chemistry. In AoM it is the minimal form of an agent acting on its own behalf: the self-maintenance from which value first arises. (See agency; Ch 1, the cell against the candle.)

identity

What makes an agent the same agent over time, despite the constant turnover of its materials and states. AoM locates identity not in a fixed substance but in the continuity of a process — the ongoing activity of a self maintaining and rebuilding its own boundary and models. You are not the stuff; you are the carrying-on. (See self-identity, nature; cf. Juarrero, Deacon.)

increasing coherence

The ongoing work of refining a model — values-model, methods-model, or picture of the world — by folding in new experience: adjusting, re-fitting, and restructuring it to reduce contradiction and align it better with reality, so it grows more robust and more widely effective across contexts of meaning and action. The process; coherence is the property it improves, and coherence over a widening context is the direction it ideally runs.

information

Not raw data but difference that makes a difference to an agent — a pattern that shapes its capacity for coherent, purposeful engagement with the world. The same physical signal can be mere noise to one agent and rich information to another, depending on what each can detect and what each has at stake; information is therefore relational, not a stuff the world simply contains. Every action, being an irreversible physical event, leaves a trace that could inform some observer — but a trace becomes information only for an agent equipped to read it. (Compare meaning: information bears on what an agent can do; meaning is how it matters.)

intelligence

An agent’s capacity to build and refine models that work — to perceive, predict, and act effectively across a widening range of contexts. On AoM’s functional reading, intelligence is not a fixed quantity or a human monopoly but a matter of degree and kind: how well, and how widely, a system can make sense of its world and bring about valued change in it. (See agency, methods, effectiveness.)

intentionality

An agent’s capacity to direct its attention and action toward something — an object, a goal, an outcome it represents to itself — as steered by its values and carried out through its methods. The “aboutness” of a mind: the way an agent’s states are of or about things in its world. (See purpose, agency.)

meaning

The significance an agent constructs by interpreting a perception, symbol, or experience in light of its values — how something matters to it, given its purposes and its situation. Meaning is not a property sealed inside objects (the way mass is) but relational: it lives in the meeting between a thing and an agent that cares, and it is always made within a context. Strip away every caring agent and you are left not with a world of unread meanings but with bare patterns and no meaning at all. (Distinguish significance, the degree and direction of mattering; and sense-making, getting right what merely is.)

meaning-making

The active process by which an agent renders its world significant — sorting perceptions and events into what is worth caring about, and how much, by reading them through its values within a context. AoM deliberately pairs it against sense-making (rendering the world intelligible — getting right what is going on): meaning-making feeds the values-model, sense-making feeds the methods-model. The two lean on each other but are not the same work, and an agent can be strong in one and weak in the other.

metaethics

The branch of philosophy that asks not which acts are right but what moral claims are — whether values are discovered or made, what “good” refers to, whether moral judgments can be true. AoM is first of all a metaethics: it relocates value from a fixed property of the universe (and from mere human projection) to something that emerges with self-maintaining agents and is refined through coherence over a widening context. (Contrast normative ethics, which asks what to do.)

methods

An agent’s working knowledge of what gets the job done — the skills, strategies, and know-how for bringing about valued change, where what counts as “valued” is set by its current values. Methods are the practical side of an agent: how it actually moves from a less preferred state toward a more preferred one. (See methods-model, effectiveness.)

methods-model

An agent’s model of its methods — of what works for enacting valued change. With ongoing experience the methods-model is continuously updated and refined, tending toward increasing coherence over an increasing scope of effectiveness. (For what the model is a model of, see methods.)

morality

An action is perceived (by an agent) to be increasingly moral to the extent that it is perceived as promoting the agent’s values, increasingly coherent over increasing context of meaning, via methods increasingly coherent over increasing scope of effectiveness. The top rung of the ladder: right-in-principle with the frame opening outward — morality as a direction, not a place. (Compare good and right-in-principle.)

nature

What an agent characteristically values, and how it tends to act on those values across different contexts. Know an agent’s nature and its circumstances, and its behavior becomes largely predictable. A nature is shaped both by what the agent is born with and by how it has developed. (See values, values-model.)

normative ethics

The branch of moral philosophy that asks which actions are right or wrong and what sort of person one should be — seeking principles for assessing conduct, character, and institutions. Where the traditional normative theories each fix a single standard (consequences, rules, or character), AoM offers a process account rather than another fixed criterion: not a final measure of the good but a direction — coherence over a widening context — against which any such standard can itself be assessed. (Contrast metaethics, which asks what moral claims are; see also process ethics.)

perspectival realism

The position that while an objective, mind-independent reality exists (Realism), our knowledge, perception, and representation of that reality are always shaped by our specific viewpoint, conceptual scheme, historical context, or other situational factors (Perspectival). It rejects the possibility of a “view from nowhere” or a single, absolute description of reality, but also rejects pure relativism by maintaining that different perspectives engage with the same objective world and can be evaluated for accuracy or adequacy in capturing aspects of it. In essence, reality is objective, but our access to it is always situated and framed.

perspective

The situated vantage from which an agent meets the world — the particular window, fixed by its senses, history, needs, and context, through which alone it has any access to reality. There is no view from nowhere; every model is somebody’s model. To say knowing is perspectival is not to call it arbitrary: different perspectives open onto one shared world and can be tested and corrected against it. (The keystone of perspectival realism; see also Umwelt.)

pluralism

Referring to the variety in perspectives, identities, values, knowledge systems, approaches, and lifestyles, including epistemic diversity, cultural pluralism, and value pluralism.

preferences

Comparative leanings between options that fall out of an agent’s values in a given context — values expressed as ranking, this over that. See values for how the layers compare.

principles

The consciously held, articulable distillations of an agent’s deeper values — “justice,” “fairness,” “freedom” — compressed names for key aspects of the underlying complex. See values for how the layers compare.

process ethics

An approach that locates the moral center of gravity in the ongoing process — how choices are reached, revised, and learned from — rather than in a fixed outcome or rule. AoM is a process ethics in the fullest sense: morality is not a possession but an activity, the continual refinement of what an agent values and how it acts across a widening context. The interpersonal practices often linked with the term (open communication, collaboration, mutual understanding) are one expression of this at the scale of people; the same process runs at every scale, from a single agent to a whole culture. (See morality, coherence over a widening context.)

progress

Real directional improvement, as distinct from mere change — a word AoM uses with care. There is no final destination being approached; but there is a direction (coherence over a widening context), and movement along it is genuine progress, while movement against it (the counter-dynamic) is genuine regress. So the book affirms progress without a finish line.

purpose

An agent’s built-in orientation toward ends — the end-directedness that lives in how its values-model and methods-model are organized, inclining it to act so as to reach and hold the states it models as valuable. Not a goal stamped on it from outside but one that arises from how the agent is put together. (See teleonomic, teleologic, intentionality.)

resilience

The capacity of a system (social, ecological, epistemic) to absorb disturbances and reorganize while retaining essential function, structure, identity, and feedbacks

right-in-principle

An action is perceived (by an agent) to be right-in-principle to the extent it is perceived as promoting the agent’s values, coherent over a given context of meaning, via methods coherent over a given scope of effectiveness. (Compare good and moral.) The middle rung of that ladder: coherence is now required, but only over a given, held-still frame — morality judged as though it were a fixed place. Let the frame widen and right-in-principle becomes moral.

scope

The breadth of contexts across which an agent’s methods stay effective — how widely “what works” actually works. Methods coherent over a narrow scope succeed only in the situation they were tuned for; methods coherent over a wide scope carry across many. Scope is the methods-side counterpart to context on the values side: morality is assessed as coherence over an increasing context of meaning and an increasing scope of effectiveness. (See methods, effectiveness.)

self-identity

An agent’s model of itself — the part of its world-model that represents the agent to itself: its boundary, its history, and what it takes itself to value. Where identity is the fact of continuity, self-identity is that continuity modeled from the inside; it can be more or less accurate, and it shapes how the agent acts. (See identity.)

sense-making

The work of rendering a situation intelligible — getting right what is going on (that the shape in the grass is a snake, that the ice will hold). AoM deliberately separates this from meaning-making, which renders a situation significant (what it matters). The two lean on each other but are not the same: a con artist makes excellent sense of you while making nothing of your welfare. Sense-making is the line that runs, two chapters on, into the methods-model; meaning-making runs into the values-model. (Used more narrowly here than in enactivism, where “sense-making” covers what AoM calls meaning-making.)

sentience

The capacity to feel — to have experiences with a positive or negative tone, such as pleasure and suffering. AoM distinguishes it sharply from the minimal, unfelt value of a self-maintaining cell (which sorts help from harm without feeling anything) and treats sentience as a later, richer development that weighs heavily in moral concern — not as a standing the subject emits on its own, but as it is perceived and valued within some agent’s widening context. (See consciousness; Ch 1‘s caution that to value is not yet to feel.)

shared values

Encompassing collective goals, social cohesion, common frameworks, ethical consensus, and coordinated action necessary for societal functioning. (identified as commonality at some meaningful level of the hierarchy)

significance

How much, and in what direction, something matters to an agent — the weight and likely consequence it attributes to a perception or event, read through its values within a context. Significance is the direct output of meaning-making: where meaning is that something matters, significance is how much and to what end — the quantity that lets an agent rank and choose.

synergy

The combined effect of parts acting together that none could produce alone — an outcome that is genuinely new, or simply greater than the sum. Synergy is the engine of emergence and a key driver of evolution: from molecules to cells to societies to ecosystems, things that combine into a working whole gain advantages that selection can favor. (See emergence; Ch 1.)

teleonomic

Apparently purpose-like behavior that is really the product of evolution and mechanism, not of any goal held in mind — the heart that is ‘for’ pumping blood without intending anything. AoM uses it for the end-directedness that genuine agency grows out of. (Contrast teleologic.)

teleologic

Pertaining to genuine ends — behavior directed by a represented goal an agent actually holds, not merely the as-if purpose of a teleonomic process. AoM is interested in how the second grows out of the first: how purpose that is merely apparent becomes purpose that is owned. (Contrast teleonomic; see purpose, intentionality.)

Umwelt

The slice of reality that an agent’s senses and needs disclose to it — the whole of what it can detect and act upon, and so the only world it has. A tick’s Umwelt has three signals; a dog’s is a vast landscape of scent; ours feels seamless and total but is itself a narrow band, assembled by the brain into what we take for the world. Every Umwelt feels complete from the inside; none is the world entire. (The on-ramp to perspectival realism; Ch 1.)

values

What matters to an agent, and how much: the multi-dimensional, naturally hierarchical and fine-grained complex from which meaning is derived and which motivates behavior (including decision-making) in any given context. For a person, food and shelter sit closer to the core than music; within music they might lean to rock over classical, and within classical to Bach over Beethoven. Not to be confused with principles — “justice,” “fairness,” “freedom,” “love” — which are the consciously recognized distillations of key aspects of the underlying complex. (How the neighbors compare: drives, emotions, and feelings are the felt and motivational layers; values are what matters; preferences and principles are values expressed as ranking and as articulated rules.)

values-model

An agent’s hierarchical model of its values — of what matters to it and how much. With ongoing experience the values-model is continuously updated and refined, tending toward increasing coherence over an increasing context of meaning-making. (For what the model is a model of, see values.)

virtue-ethics

The view that locates morality in the character of the agent — the virtuous habits and traits from which good action flows — rather than in rules or outcomes. AoM reads character as an agent’s values-model and methods-model grown stable: the settled dispositions that make good action reliable. It honors the insight while marking the limit — real virtuous people disagree, and no virtue stands available to umpire the others — which is why character still needs the wider process to adjudicate. Reframed in Chapter 6.