RE: The Survival Instinct - Does it Exist?
My use of life (as a general principle) as adaptation is the opposite of "survival instinct" (in the individual).
As you note, a (non-self-aware) organism is incapable of formulating such a goal - there is only pain avoidance and pleasure approach (pick your terms - EVERY organism has a means of apprehending and responding to its environment).
It is LIFE that adapts. The individual (organism, species, etc) is just . . . a tool and if one tool is not up to the job (of adapting to its EVER (usually slow) changing environment) another is "selected" (by that environment) until eventually (one might assume :-), the perfect adaptation engine is produced.
In the same manner the big bang eventually "produced" hydrogen (and the other elements, and then molecules, and then ...) - everything that can be tried/combined is tried until only that which works - given the true nature of the universe - falls out (survives to tell the tale).
It is hard to talk intelligently about such things without using terms that SEEM like anthropomorphizations :-) I am not sure the "big bang" is capable of "trying" to do anything but it is easier than saying "shit was all bent, feld, spindled, shaken, stirred, mutilated and pressed together until certain stuff stuck together better than other stuff" :-)
Exactly. And sometimes those anthropomorphizations, that we employ consciously and think there's no harm in that, lead us into errors of thinking. We can't stop using them, but we should always be on our guard against all metaphors and such.
Life can adapt to environmental changes in limited degrees. The Darwinian conception of evolution, in which genetic traits incrementally change or "progress" towards improved adaptation has been challenged 50 years ago by "Punctuated Equilibrium" of Eldrige and Gould. Darwin's theories were likely influenced by perceptual matrix of Western thoughts of Alchemy, Platonic duality, and Christianity to assume that change has directional purpose.
Life merely exists. To impute a purpose like survival to life behavior, as the OP writes, reveals more about the belief system of thle theorist, rather than objective reality.