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CLAIM-045: Architectural, dynamical and goal-directed accounts of distributed agency are complementary components of one account, each answering a different sub-question

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Properties9
StatusActive
Version2
Rolethesis
Warrantinterpretive
Tagsagency, complex-systems
Linedistributed-agency
GroundsTHEORY-689 — A mobile robot built from parallel layers of simple finite-state machines, each linking sensing to action by itself and combined only by one layer suppressing or inhibiting another's signals, avoids obstacles, wanders and heads for distant places with no central world model, goal list or controller; shown at insect scale, on three layers of one physical robot, LIT-439 — The Computational Boundary of a "Self": Developmental Bioelectricity Drives Multicellularity and Scale-Free Cognition
Objects toCLAIM-110 — Brooks's architecture, Kelso's coordination dynamics and Levin's bioelectric selves are three different ways of understanding what an organized whole is
Corroborated byTHEORY-069 — Rhythmic bimanual coordination switches from anti-phase to in-phase through a nonequilibrium phase transition in relative phase, captured by the HKB equation, with critical fluctuations and critical slowing as early warning

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The claim

U7: “These three views are perfectly mutually compatible. They are not different things. They absolutely can be treated as complementary components of one theory.”

A10 assigned each its sub-question: Brooks, how coherent behaviour arises without a central executive; Kelso, how interaction produces collective variables and regime transitions; Levin, how a higher-scale goal-directed boundary forms.

What it does not say

That the three are one theory already. It says they do not compete, which is why the record wanted a complements relation. It has one between its own claims; between a claim and a THEORY it waits on a luria fix (dmarx/luria#358), so the accounts are premises here.

Note of 2026-10-27: the edge says what the claim uses

The status review of this date (ADR-057, ADR-058) moved THEORY-069 from grounds to corroborated_by, the cross-scheme relation the body was waiting for (ADR-058). The claim uses what Kelso’s account is about, and not HKB’s empirical claims.

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