Part I: Foundations

Viability Manifolds and Proto-Obligation

Introduction
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Viability Manifolds and Proto-Obligation

A system SS has something like a proto-obligation to remain within V\viable, in the sense that the viability boundary defines the conditions for persistence:

s∈V  ⟺  system persists\mathbf{s} \in \viable \iff \text{system persists}

Note carefully what this does not claim. It does not derive obligation from persistence—that would be circular. The biconditional merely defines the viable region. The normativity enters at the next step: when the system develops a self-model and thereby acquires valence (gradient direction on the viability landscape), the system cares about its viability in the constitutive sense that caring is what valence is. You cannot have a viability gradient that is felt from inside without it mattering. The "why should it care?" question is confused: a system with valence already cares; the valence is the caring. The is-ought gap appears only if you try to derive caring from non-caring. The framework denies that such a derivation is needed: caring was never absent from the system; it was present as proto-normativity from the first asymmetric probability, and it became felt normativity the moment the system acquired a self-model.

The boundary ∂V\partial\viable also implicitly defines a proto-value function:

Vproto(s)=−d(s,∂V)V_{\text{proto}}(\mathbf{s}) = -d(\mathbf{s}, \partial\viable)

States far from the boundary are "better" for the system than states near it.