Part of the series: APS and Contemporary Theories
This article examines a major framework in biology or cognition and shows why it does not fully account for life as viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation. For the positive account, see What Is Life?.
The Appeal of Information Processing
Across biology, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence, it is increasingly common to describe living systems as information processors.
Cells detect signals, organisms perceive their environments, and nervous systems encode and transform sensory inputs. From this perspective, life appears to be fundamentally about the acquisition, processing, and use of information.
This view is powerful. It unifies diverse phenomena under a common language and connects biology to computation and engineering.
It is therefore tempting to conclude that life itself is a form of information processing.
APS agrees that living systems process information.
But it rejects the stronger claim that life is information processing.
What Information Processing Explains Well
Information-based approaches successfully describe:
- signal detection and transduction
- neural encoding and communication
- behavioural responsiveness
- learning and adaptation
- regulatory coordination
These accounts have transformed modern biology, particularly in molecular biology, neuroscience, and systems biology.
Where living systems already exist as organised entities, information processing provides a powerful description of how they interact with their environments and regulate their behaviour.
But, as with other frameworks, it presupposes something it does not itself explain.
Information Presupposes a System
To process information, a system must already exist.
It must:
- have boundaries that distinguish it from its environment
- possess structures capable of detecting and responding to signals
- maintain the conditions under which signals can be interpreted
- treat some differences as relevant and others as irrelevant
These conditions are not generated by information processing.
They are conditions for information processing to occur at all.
APS therefore asks a prior question:
What makes there be a system for which information could matter?
Why Information Is Not Fundamental
Information is often treated as if it were a basic property of the world, independent of the systems that use it.
APS reverses this perspective.
In living systems, information is not primary. It is derivative of organisation.
A signal is informative only if:
- it makes a difference to the system’s continued existence
- it can be integrated into ongoing regulatory activity
- it affects the conditions of viability
Without a system whose persistence depends on such differences, there is no meaningful sense in which information exists for that system.
Information does not generate organisation.
Organisation makes information possible.
Normativity Is Not Information
Information-based accounts often attempt to ground biological meaning in representation or coding. Signals are treated as carrying information about the world, and systems are said to interpret these signals.
APS rejects this framing.
In living systems, normativity does not arise from representation.
It arises from viability.
States are better or worse for a system not because they encode accurate information, but because they support or undermine the system’s continued existence.
Information may track these differences.
It does not create them.
Information Does Not Sustain Itself
Information processing describes transformations of signals.
It does not explain how the system that processes those signals:
- maintains its own structure
- repairs damage
- regulates its own conditions
- persists through time
A system could process information perfectly and still not be alive if:
- its organisation is externally maintained
- its persistence does not depend on its own activity
- its failure has no consequences for its continued existence
Living systems differ in that their continued existence is at stake in their activity.
Information Without Life
Modern technology provides many examples of information processing systems:
- computers executing programs
- networks transmitting data
- artificial agents responding to inputs
These systems process information, often with great sophistication.
Yet they are not alive.
They do not:
- sustain themselves
- regulate their own conditions of existence
- cease to exist as themselves when processing fails
This demonstrates that information processing is not sufficient for life.
The APS Perspective: Information as Activity Within Life
APS does not reject information processing.
It situates it.
In APS:
- information processing describes how systems coordinate activity
- coordination presupposes organised, constraint-closed systems
- constraint closure presupposes viability-oriented agency
- agency grounds normativity, function, and persistence
Information is therefore one aspect of biological activity.
It is not the defining feature of life.
Life is not the processing of information.
Information is one of the ways life maintains itself.
Summary
Information-based approaches provide powerful tools for understanding how living systems sense, communicate, and adapt.
But life is not information processing.
Living systems are not defined by the signals they process, but by the organisation that makes those signals matter.
In APS, life is viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation sustained through ongoing activity. Information processing occurs within this organisation, but it does not explain why the organisation exists or persists.
Key Point
Living systems process information, but information is meaningful only within viability-oriented organisation; life is not defined by information processing but by the activity that sustains the system in which information can matter.