Lines of inquiry — A named line of the record’s own argument, so that a line can be set aside as a whole and what depends on it can be found. Retracting a line is a status change on its members, never a deletion (ADR-032).
Distributed agency — what an organized whole is, and how its operative direction relates to its members’ — where the essay started.
26 of 100 TERM documents. Back to the full index.
| # | Title | Summary | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| TERM-044 v3 | agent (at a level of description) | A factor of a system, at a stated level of description and for a stated target, that is one system there, whose behaviour is better described as pursuing goals than as an input-output device by more than the Occam cost, and whose policy would adapt if its actions’ consequences changed. The general tier, wider than a willed agent and narrower than a control system. | Active |
| TERM-047 v2 | jurisdiction of a will-organization | The set of action-generating regimes whose practical efficacy a given will-organization governs: those for which it maintains the conditions under which they acquire, retain, lose or alter efficacy. Its outer reach, as distinct from TERM-017’s jurisdiction, which is one relation inside a will-organization. | Active |
| TERM-048 | willed agent | An agent (TERM-044) whose behaviour is governed by a will-organization (TERM-023) over several action-generating regimes, and which is individuated as that will-organization’s jurisdiction (TERM-047). The middle tier between agency and selfhood; the owner’s name, 2026-10-11. | Active |
| TERM-049 | combined form | A candidate system drawn from more than one member (two dancers, a person and a tool, a firm’s teams), counted as one system relative to a stated target while it clears the threshold criterion of CLAIM-157. The record’s neutral word for what such a whole is, used before asking whether it is an agent or a self. | Active |
| TERM-051 v2 | drive profile | How the drive of a described system is apportioned, at a time and for a stated macro-variable and target, along two axes. Within a level: one member drives, the members drive each other, or the drive is diffuse. Across levels: aggregate, top-down, bidirectional or emergent, read from the information decomposition’s downward-causation and causal-decoupling terms. A profile is time-indexed. | Active |
| TERM-053 | endorsement, between an organization’s processes: any effect one process has on another’s share of future influence, of which an explicit vote is one case | The owner’s “vote” at U2, generalized at A5 §7 to an effective causal relation. Process i endorses process j in region x to the extent that an intervention of i raises j’s chance of acquiring influence there. Opposition is negative endorsement. Attending to j’s output, keeping it active, passing it resources and suppressing its rivals are all endorsement. The term is about authority among processes. It is not Frankfurt’s identification with a desire. | Active |
| TERM-054 | canvas temperature: the rate and spatial spread of placements that follow no coalition’s plan, modelled as a stochastic field on the canvas rather than as agents | The owner’s proposal: treat unaffiliated participation on r/place as a property of the canvas, a noise field T(x, t) that corrupts any pattern left unmaintained, instead of as a population of operators. That makes the need for maintenance explicit. T falls over the event as uninvested participants leave. Which placements count as unaffiliated is relative to the plans in play, so the field is defined against a set of plans. | Active |
| TERM-055 | operational availability, of a resource for an action: the chance that an agent–environment system, given the cue it actually has, deploys the resource for the task before the deadline | A17 §3’s α, with A19’s cue added. Named because the exchange used it in five turns (A16 to A19, and A23 §II) under “available”, “accessible” and “deployable”. The term separates the deployability of a resource from its presence and from knowing it is present (CLAIM-296). | Active |
| TERM-060 v2 | frustration, of an organization’s demands: the failure of the demands it maintains to be jointly realizable under its admissible transformations and its governance | A33 of the exchange of 2026-10-17, at the owner’s U33, made ordinal by the owner’s U37 correction. The demands an organization maintains are frustrated when no admissible transformation meets them all (structural) or when one exists and the organization’s governance does not select it (governance-induced). In its basic form it is an empty intersection of acceptance sets and needs no common scale. It is distinct from strain, where the demands are jointly realizable at a cost, and from distress, a possible integrated response to either. It is not CLAIM-153’s physics sense, though it shares that sense’s three-demand minimal obstruction. | Active |
| TERM-063 v2 | agent, as an individual that is the active source of modulations of its coupling with its environment and regulates them against norms its own organization sets (Barandiaran, Di Paolo and Rohde) | THEORY-071’s three conditions (LIT-566, read in NOTE-458) as a candidate definition of “agent” beside TERM-044. The owner at U11 of the exchange of 2026-10-20 asked for “(potentially competing) TERM entries”; A11’s worked example was this one (“This entry could have rivals: [TERM-044] once filed”), and A12 and A14 kept it. It rivals TERM-044 because the two give different verdicts on cases the record holds: the thermostat with its designers and a trained policy’s training process pass TERM-044 and fail here. Proposed: recorded, not adopted. THEORY-071’s own promotion test would settle it. | Proposed |
| TERM-064 v4 | legibility, of a distinction to an observer for a task: whether the observer, with the rules, categories and resources it actually has, can recover the distinction from what it is given and bring it to bear on the task; a relation among a representation, an observer’s rule class, its resources and a task, bounded above by what the source makes possible for an ideal receiver, and directed, since what is legible to a governing institution and what of its governing is legible to others are different relations | The owner’s, U22 of the exchange of 2026-10-20: “a theme we seem to be touching on that I’m not sure is laid out clearly in our current account is the role of legibility”. A22 defined it and proposed three TERMs; one is filed, with the regime and the direction in its body. Its formal core is CLAIM-199’s usable information. CLAIM-081 holds the record’s earlier use. Adopted by the owner on 2026-10-21. It recurs through A23 to A27. | Active |
| TERM-066 v5 | interpretive capture, of an organization’s evaluation: the condition in which the processes that read evidence, score constituents and allocate authority are driven by the interpretation or party being evaluated more than by evidence independent of it, so that authority amplifies or holds an interpretation without a gain in fidelity; judged against a standard specified apart from the captured process | The record uses “capture” in several entries (CLAIM-330, CLAIM-340, CLAIM-342, CLAIM-359, QUESTION-100, CLAIM-277) with no definition, and the exchange of 2026-10-20 used it at A20, A21, A22, A25 and A26 in two senses: a loop’s outcome, and an institution’s diversion from its purpose. Proposed: the first, with the second’s requirement of an outside standard. Not adopted; not concentration, and not merited trust. | Proposed |
| TERM-070 v2 | organizational closure, as closure of constraints: a set of constraints each of which depends directly on another in the set and has another depending on it (Montévil and Mossio 2015), distinct from informational closure and from a flame’s maintenance of the conditions of its own combustion | Montévil and Mossio’s definition (LIT-582, read in NOTE-468), as CLAIM-395 states it. CLAIM-395 (Active, demonstrated) is stated in it without a TERM to use, and THEORY-072’s demarcation of organisms and THEORY-071’s “autonomy” turn on it. Asked for at A10, A11, A12, A13 and A14 of the exchange of 2026-10-20, with A12’s condition: “The definition must explicitly distinguish the proved structural constraints from the still-Proposed claim that the definition demarcates organisms.” Sense 6 of TERM-068. Adopted by the owner on 2026-10-21. | Active |
| TERM-071 v2 | persistence, of an organization, and which sense: state, dynamical, historical, viable and reinstatable | CLAIM-329 recorded three persistences from A9 of 2026-10-16. They return in the exchange of 2026-10-20 as A10’s five “continuities” (§10), A12’s “individuality, and which continuity”, and A13 and A14’s “organizational reconstitution”. A14’s merge condition: “the entries must preserve the distinctions between a stable state, a viable state, a self-maintaining organization, and a historically persisting individual.” This term lists the senses so that a claim using “persist” says which, as TERM-045 does for “self”. On the owner’s U13 (“definitions we’ve crystallized that are not currently in conflict”). Adopted by the owner on 2026-10-21. The exchange’s name “organizational reconstitution” is not adopted. | Active |
| TERM-074 v2 | organization, and which sense: relational arrangement, organizational maintenance, collective institution or organizational closure | ”Organization” does more unacknowledged work in this record than any other word, and the exchange of 2026-10-22 leaned on it in at least four senses: an arrangement of relations, the activity that maintains one, an institution, and closure of constraints. A proposal the owner relayed on 2026-10-22 asked for the senses to be listed, with the first as the default in “organizational perspective”. A claim using “organization” or “organized” should say which. | Active |
| TERM-075 v2 | attributed self, and which sense: held, imagined, imagined audience or appropriated | The record’s selves (TERM-045) are all held or given by the person, the presented self included. CLAIM-415 needs four further objects it had no names for: what others take a person to be and act on, what the person takes them to take them to be, who the person takes “them” to be, and the attribution taken up by the person as their own. They can come apart, and the claim depends on their doing so. Filed 2026-10-22 at the owner’s request, gathering two phrases from the exchange of that day (“socially operative identity” and “recursive social self-modeling”) that were first left unfiled. Adopted 2026-10-29. | Active |
| TERM-080 | collective intention, and which sense: participatory shared intention, institutionally constituted intention, or attributed collective intention | The owner’s, U12 of the exchange of 2026-10-26. A12’s sense map for an intention directed at a joint or group course of action, which several participants producing one outcome does not establish. The third sense is an observer’s attribution, not an instance of the first two. Rival criteria (Bratman, Gilbert, Tuomela, List and Pettit) are kept, not merged: the record holds all four, mostly unread. Used at once by the CECOT case, where two governments coordinated without one intention. Proposed. | Proposed |
| TERM-081 | moral worth, and which sense: intrinsic moral value, status-based dignity, or moral merit | The owner’s, U12 of the exchange of 2026-10-26. A12 would not let “moral worth” carry several meanings: the value a being has in itself, the respect owed to it by its status, and the praiseworthiness of its conduct. They come apart: blameworthy conduct does not lessen the respect owed, and an organization can produce valuable outcomes without a person’s standing. Standing itself is TERM-083. Proposed. | Proposed |
| TERM-083 v2 | moral standing: being owed moral consideration directly, for one’s own sake, and not only for one’s effects on others | The owner’s, U12 of the exchange of 2026-10-26. A12 split “moral worth” into this and a sense map (TERM-081). A claim of standing names its bearer, the interests or claims in question, the ground of standing and what follows. It does not entail consciousness as its only ground, collective agency, legal personhood or moral responsibility, and keeps moral patients apart from moral agents. Used at once by the Chagos case: the displaced are owed consideration whether or not they form one agent. Proposed. | Proposed |
| TERM-084 v3 | descent, and which sense: provenance, lineage, common ancestry or causal descent | ”Descent” carries at least four historical senses in the record’s claims, and they differ in what the claims turn on: whether the relation is directed, whether it carries a fidelity, and whether it implies continuation. CLAIM-210 and CASE-054 had let two of them meet, which the owner’s review of 2026-10-27 resolved; this term lists the senses so a claim says which. It does not cover descent in optimization (gradient or common descent directions). Adopted by the owner on 2026-10-27. | Active |
| TERM-085 v2 | correctability, of an institutional arrangement for a corrective objective: the chance that the arrangement, starting from the description of the problem it actually has, finds, authorizes, coordinates and carries out a plan achieving the objective before the deadline and within its resources | A10’s α_J, from the exchange of 2026-10-26, on the owner’s U10 tying the “correctability frontier” to “if I can’t find it, it isn’t there”. It is TERM-055’s operational availability with a corrective objective in place of a resource and an institutional arrangement in place of an agent: search, authorization, coordination and execution compete for the same time. Named because the exchange used the object in four turns (A7 to A10) under “remedial reach”, “effective remedial capacity”, “effective answerability” and “correctability frontier”. Adopted 2026-10-29. | Active |
| TERM-086 | organizational achievement, of a specified target: its attainment or maintenance, under declared conditions, where an identifiable arrangement of relations among components makes an explanatory difference that a comparison with admissible alternatives can show, as an episode, a maintained capacity or the reproduction of what sustains that capacity | The owner’s, U11 of the exchange of 2026-10-26: “we should probably engineer a TERM for ‘organizational achievement’, and/or terms in that neighborhood.” A11 found the phrase already doing work for authenticity, corrective capacity and effective action, and gave it a target-relative, causally discriminating definition with three modes. An attribution, not a compliment: a coercive apparatus can have one. Proposed: adoption is the owner’s. | Proposed |
| TERM-088 | individuation, and which sense: descriptive (an inquiry can distinguish and track it), dynamical (its organization persists under specified dynamics and perturbation, with robust identity and boundaries), constitutive (its relational organization helps fix its identity and boundary), and organizational autonomy, the further achievement of contributing to the maintenance of its own constitutive constraints | A18 of the exchange of 2026-10-27 named four claims about a candidate individual and said they “are neither four necessary stages nor four universally ranked degrees of existence. They are different claims requiring different evidence”. A23 §VI split them further. The owner’s second review insisted that individuation not be read as requiring endogenous maintenance: “A persistent externally sustained pattern may still be a dynamically individuated entity.” This term lists the senses so that a claim saying “individual” says which. Organizational autonomy is TERM-070’s closure, named here as the sense it is not. Proposed. | Proposed |
| TERM-090 v2 | effective boundary constraint, of a composite: the relation its interconnected parts impose on the variables an outside system can reach, once the interior is eliminated; approximately instantaneous or history-dependent, and, independently, possibly of a kind the parts’ relations could not state | What CLAIM-480 demonstrates and CLAIM-474, QUESTION-283 and CASE-179 use. A composite presents the systems that interact with its boundary with a relation among its accessible variables. Its examples are the series spring’s k₁k₂/(k₁ + k₂), Baez and Fong’s black box, a memory kernel, and Hansen and Ghrist’s three-way v₁ = v₂ + v₃. The term fixes three points: the relation is a constraint whether instantaneous or history-dependent; it is effective, not a new fundamental law; and it can exceed the parts’ relational vocabulary. Adopted 2026-10-29. | Active |
| TERM-093 v3 | correspondence structure, and how it is held: the maps that say which local states or descriptions of interacting systems count as agreeing, distinct from the physical coupling between them, and held as formed, discovered or adapted | The object CLAIM-471, QUESTION-282, CLAIM-474 and CASE-179 all turn on. It is a family of comparison maps from local descriptions into shared spaces, whose joint kernel (the global sections) is what “compatible” and “glued” mean. It is not the coupling that moves the states. How a correspondence structure is held is one of three ways: formed by physical interconnection, discovered by measurement, or adapted by an apparatus. A claim using “gluing” should say which. Adopted at the thirteenth status review, once the formed sense was stated as the maps that wiring sets and not the joint behaviour they admit. | Active |
| TERM-096 | group entity, as distinct from a category of members | A group entity is a collection taken as one bounded whole, by configural relations among its members, typically shared mental states; a category of members is a set whose members share a property and are, with respect to it, interchangeable. Membership in a category does not make someone part of a group entity, and the members of a group entity need not be alike. | Proposed |