The lawfulness of higher order forms is either strictly deducible from the lawfulness of lower order ones or it is not. If it is, then it either requires translation principles or it does not. If it does not, the we have eliminative materialism. If it does, then the higher forms are either subjective, something we read into lower order, or they are not. If they are subjective, then once again we have eliminative materialism. If the higher order is real but the causality is one way (bottom up) then the higher order is epiphenomenal. If there is top down causality, then we have either hylemorphism or something else like it. And of course, that top down causality may be either determined or not. If it is determined, its behavior would be lawful, but that lawfulness would not, strictly speaking, be a more complex version of the lower level lawfulness.
How about defining it as an instance of functional complexity? And treating the list of properties as following necessarily from this definition? Okay, this is very diamond-in-the-rough (or perhaps zirconium...) but here goes my thoughts on the matter: (Complexity) Many diverse parts (functional) acting for the sake of the whole I think I need to add something like "not as the instrument of another" or something like that. Given that they act together as one whole and given entropy, etc., the organism will need to posses more order than its surroundings (homeostasis). It will therefore need to take in energy (nutrition), which it will use to sustain its readiness to interact with its environment so as to preserve its own being (homeostasis again?), but which will eventually break down (death), so that in order for that life form to continue it will need to duplicate itself (reproduction), which, upon occurring, will involve both development (growth) to maturity and...
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