Biogenic Ethics: Living Within the Logic of Life
A new kind of ethics
Biogenic Ethics is a dynamic, systems-oriented approach to morality. Instead of commandments, purity codes, or strict cost–benefit calculations, it is rooted in the same processes that sustain life: self-organisation, self-production, and self-correction. These are the recursive patterns through which cells, ecosystems, communities— and you—remain coherent under pressure.
In this model, ethics isn’t just an abstract overlay humans impose on the world. It’s a feedback-regulating function embedded in life, meant to keep systems viable. Good actions are those that restore feedback, enable repair, and sustain coherence across scales—from personal to planetary.
Why ethics needs updating
Most inherited moral systems were designed for small, homogenous groups. Now, our choices ripple through supply chains, ecosystems, digital networks, and future generations. Traditional models fall into traps: rigid rule-keeping, “anything goes” relativism, or mathematical utilitarianism that overlooks long-term complexity. All struggle with feedback—they ignore slow or hidden consequences, reward surface virtue over systemic repair, and treat ethics as separate from life’s processes.
Biogenic ethics asks: How does this action impact the system over time? Whose feedback loops are supported—or broken—by this choice?
Life as a moral foundation
Life’s defining dynamics are:
Self‑organisation – order from local interaction.
Self‑production – maintaining and building that order internally.
Self‑correction – sensing disruption and restoring balance.
From this perspective, “right” actions are those that support these three capacities within the systems they influence. A community is ethical when it organises without coercion, produces shared resources, and transparently repairs harm. A healthcare system is ethical when it restores patients’ ability to self-correct, rather than merely suppress symptoms. Even a conversation can be ethical when it allows both sides to adjust instead of collapsing into dominance or withdrawal.
Feedback loops as the heart of morality
Every living system survives by detecting change, sending the signal to the correct place, acting to restore balance, and learning from it. Break any part of this cycle, and coherence begins to fall apart. Ethics, in this context, is loop repair—at every level.
The multi-scale coherence test asks: Does this enhance feedback capacity for all the nested systems involved—not just the dominant part? A regime that silences dissent may preserve local order but fails ethically by breaking wider loops.
Morality as emergent repair
Morality likely evolved as a social repair mechanism—balancing individual liberty with group coherence. Emotions like guilt, shame, empathy, and forgiveness act as feedback signals that help mend relationships before they become beyond repair.
Ethical behaviour, in this context, is being aware of the loops you inhabit—acting to maintain or restore them. Evolution favoured groups that were proficient at this kind of maintenance.
Suffering as broken feedback
Pain is a natural warning; suffering occurs when that warning fails to lead to healing. Chronic illness, oppression, or unresolved grief all involve feedback loops that are stuck or blocked.
This shifts compassion from sentiment to action: supporting others in reclaiming their self-correction. It also redefines ethics as reopening loops—whether that means listening to silenced voices, redesigning institutions, or giving systems space and structure to adapt.
Not all discomfort signals dysfunction—grief or challenge can be a form of adaptive stress that enhances a system’s ability.
Practice across domains
Biogenic ethics applies in many arenas:
Health – Focus on coherence before cure. Support upstream conditions (housing, food, relational safety) alongside treatment. Success = restoring autonomy and stability.
Justice – Shift from fault to feedback. Treat harm as loop disruption. Use restorative processes to reintegrate feedback for all parties.
Education – Value error as information. Design classrooms as adaptive systems that help students self‑organise and self‑correct.
Rights – See rights as structural safeguards for feedback capacity: shelter, speech, rest.
Ethics becomes design work—shaping institutions to enable feedback, adaptation, and shared flourishing.
Mediating loop conflicts
Coherence at one level can harm another. Biogenic ethics calls for “meta‑feedback” structures to track and resolve such conflicts, making power and signal flow transparent.
Biogenic virtues
These are not fixed moral traits but maintenance capacities:
Resilience – self‑correcting under pressure.
Compassion – supporting others’ repair without overriding them.
Humility – staying open to feedback.
Foresight – anticipating patterns before breakdown. Other virtues—integrity, generosity, accountability—fit the same pattern: keeping loops open and viable.
A living code
A static code can’t serve a dynamic world. Biogenic ethics offers no commandments, only orienting questions:
What patterns am I reinforcing?
What feedback am I blocking or enabling?
What coherence am I helping to sustain or evolve?
This is ethics as a process, not a position—adaptive fidelity to life’s deeper purpose: persistence, evolution, regeneration. It accepts uncertainty, invites revision, and focuses on the health of the whole.
In short: Biogenic ethics isn’t about moral perfection. It’s about keeping the loops open—maintaining feedback, humility, care, and resilience that allow living systems, including us, to endure with grace.