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.
Philosophy of science — what science is and what its theories say about the world — realism and structural realism, explanation, causation and evidence, the interpretation of physical theories (group: philosophy).
5 of 100 TERM documents. Back to the full index.
| # | Title | Summary | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| TERM-037 | observable | Manuscript §2: “a reproducible elicitation or coding procedure that assigns outcomes to communicative realizations”, some “constituted through contrasts with alternatives”. New in C7; the crystallized argument spoke only of observational procedures. | Active |
| TERM-038 | descriptive, causal and constitutive relations of a communicative act | A three-way distinction drawn by the assistant at A191 §11: relations that are observed, relations that say what would happen under changed conditions, and relations that make an act the kind of act it is. It recurs at A203 §16 and A218 §2, and A191 §4 pairs it with three kinds of identification. None of the three entails the next. | Active |
| TERM-065 v3 | effective-description regime: the system, query family, intervention family, resource bounds, tolerance and horizon under which a candidate description’s adequacy is assessed, ℛ = (X, 𝒬, ℐ, ℬ, ε, τ), kept apart from the description T it evaluates, so that rival descriptions are compared under one regime and whether each is adequate, Adequate(T; ℛ), is settled once the regime is stated | The exchange of 2026-10-20 returned to this signature five times. A3 proposed the six-tuple 𝔈 = (X, T, 𝒬, ℐ, ℬ, τ) so that an ablation could not “succeed simply by moving the goalposts”. A5 added the tolerance ε in the predicate Adequate(T; 𝒬, ℐ, ℬ, ε, τ): “Adequacy is relational, but whether the relation holds can be objective.” A11 named it, and A12, A13 and A14 kept the seven-tuple; A13: “our own organizing convention rather than an established term of art”. The owner’s second review took T out of the tuple, ℛ = (X, 𝒬, ℐ, ℬ, ε, τ), so that descriptions are compared under one regime. Adopted by the owner on 2026-10-21. It would add a name for what CLAIM-152, CLAIM-302, CLAIM-387 and THEORY-424 each relativize to; it replaces nothing. | Active |
| TERM-087 v3 | cut, and which sense: a Cartesian cut, Pattee’s epistemic cut, or Barad’s agential cut, enacted by an apparatus | Three senses of “cut” the exchange of 2026-10-27 used, which A9 §4 said “are not interchangeable concepts”. The Cartesian cut is a separation of observer from observed taken as given before any measurement. Pattee’s epistemic cut (LIT-1190, read in NOTE-952) is the functional separation of symbolic description from the dynamics it measures or controls, and is epistemic, not ontological. Barad’s agential cut (read first-hand only in her 2012 essay, LIT-1869; LIT-1653 and LIT-1657 unavailable) is a differentiation enacted within a phenomenon by an apparatus, through which boundaries and properties become determinate. Proposed: the record had no word for them, and they recur in CLAIM-476. | Proposed |
| TERM-089 v2 | apparatus, in the operational sense: a realized organization that selectively couples differences in one system to distinguishable outcomes in another; by function it may differentiate, retain, enforce and revise, and the four come apart | The sense of “apparatus” the exchange of 2026-10-27 converged on from U19 to U23, stated so that no observer and no constitutive metaphysics is presupposed. An apparatus makes some differences in a system produce distinct outcomes in another (differentiation), and may keep them (retention), let them change what happens next (enforcement), and change its own criteria of discrimination (revision). Proposed: the record uses “apparatus” in CLAIM-476 and TERM-087 in Barad’s sense, and needed a weaker one that a thermometer, a bacterium, a sensor network and luria all fall under without argument. | Active |