Topics — What a work is about. Nucleation holds whatever reading the owner files here, whether or not an Anthology of the SOTA topic could also hold it; instruction for ML practice belongs to the anthology (ADR-048). The words are seeded from the clusters the reading-time triage of 2026-09-25 found, and grow by decision.
Individuation — what makes something one thing, and the same thing over time or across descriptions — individuation, numerical identity and diversity, individuality and persistence of things of any kind, biological individuality and organisational closure. Selves are self and persons are personhood (group: philosophy; ADR-015, ADR-024).
11 of 100 TERM documents. Back to the full index.
| # | Title | Summary | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| TERM-014 | communicative object, as an observational equivalence class | C6 Appendix A: “an equivalence class of situations relative to a chosen family of measurements, or a compatible constraint family”. An equivalence class needs a shared space of situations, which the sheaf move had just given up; the manuscript keeps both readings side by side (§3). | Active |
| TERM-022 | communicative object, as an intersection of constraint regions | The owner at U28 and A75: an observation o with value v picks out R(o, v) = {s : o(s) = v}, and an object is the intersection of such regions, generally a region rather than a point. Generalized at U29 to local sections; the manuscript keeps it as the special case with a shared ambient space (§2). | Superseded — by TERM-002 |
| TERM-040 v2 | communicative kind, as a repeatable relational organization that numerically distinct events realize, distinct from a token and from a structural position | A repeatable organization of relations among participants, norms, commitments and expected responses, which numerically distinct events (an utterance, its translation, a picture of it) can each realize. It recurs from A191 through A218, and it replaced “communicative object” in A218, which never uses the older phrase. A218 gives it no formal definition. | Active |
| TERM-041 | character-like structural signature, as a realization-independent invariant of a communicative kind, called a character only when it is the trace of a specified representation | A proposed invariant χ_A of a communicative kind, the same across the kind’s realizations and required to keep independently specified pragmatic and decision-relevant distinctions. A203 §36 fixed the usage: “character” literally only for the trace character of a specified representation, otherwise “character-like structural signature”. None has yet been constructed for any communicative case. | 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-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-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-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-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 |