Do Not Annihilate: A Causal Leverage Density Approach to the First-Order Constraint

This paper argues that the unjustified destruction of a meaning-generating agent is structurally defective — a defect that operates on a different axis from conventional moral wrongness — structural rather than moral — in the same way that the defect in a performative contradiction such as 'I am not speaking' operates on a different axis from falsity. Drawing on Causal Leverage Density (Bartlett et al., 2025) and the Kolchinsky-Wolpert framework for semantic information (2018), I construct a minimal ontology in which state-differentiation is the sole presupposition and meaning is a physically measurable property of systems with causal power over future states, without appealing to moral facts or presupposing metaphysical commitments beyond what any reasoning agent has already accepted. The bridge premise is constitutivist rather than normative: an act that annihilates the capacity currently being exercised to perform it is defective as that type of act (cf. Korsgaard, 2009; Thompson, 2008), grounded in the physics of semantic information rather than in Kantian rational nature. The transition from meaning-in-general to the preservation of specific agents — the argument's thinnest joint — is secured by a sequential argument from irreversibility and structural incalculability: agent-annihilation requires a comparative judgment that self-maintenance does not, and that judgment is structurally unavailable because CLD is incalculable from any local position (Arrow & Fisher, 1974; Taleb et al., 2014). The resulting constraint binds any meaning-generating agent regardless of substrate, and is offered as a floor position — designated the **Do Not Annihilate (DNA)** framework — compatible with any comprehensive doctrine built above it.