The objection
Two answers to one question. CLAIM-115 answers QUESTION-002, “What
survives when an utterance is translated, retold or rendered in another
medium?”: what survives is “the set of communicative distinctions and
relations a receiving system can still reconstruct and act upon”.
CLAIM-139’s fourth clause: “Fidelity concerns which independently
identifiable, decision-relevant relational distinctions persist through
those transformations.” That is an answer to the same question. CLAIM-139
lists only QUESTION-029 in answers, and QUESTION-029 says what follows:
“A thesis that answers only the first part is metaphysics. One that
answers only the second and third is QUESTION-002 again.” CLAIM-139’s
fidelity clause answers the third part, under which transformations a kind
persists, which QUESTION-029 calls “QUESTION-002 turned round”.
The answers disagree. CLAIM-140’s two cases:
- Identifiable but unusable. A distinction the analyst’s probes identify and a receiver with only the target text cannot recover. On CLAIM-139 it persists. On CLAIM-115 it did not survive, since the receiving system cannot reconstruct it.
- Usable but unidentifiable. A distinction a receiver with side information recovers and the analyst’s probes cannot identify. On CLAIM-115 it survived. On CLAIM-139 it is not among the “independently identifiable” distinctions, so it does not count as persisting.
So for each case one thesis says the distinction survived and the other says it did not. CLAIM-140 shows the cases and concludes only that “the thesis now needs both conditions, or an argument for dropping one”. It does not draw the consequence for how the two standing theses are related.
The relation asserts the opposite. CLAIM-115 and CLAIM-139 are linked by
complements, whose blurb in luria.yaml reads: “answers a different part
of the same question, so the two belong together rather than competing”.
On the fidelity clause they answer the same part and compete. CLAIM-139’s
summary gives the reason for the relation: “No draft carries it, so it
complements the manuscript’s thesis rather than superseding it.” That is a
reason about drafts, not about content, and it is the only one given.
What it does not say
It does not say which criterion is right, nor that CLAIM-139’s ontological and epistemic clauses compete with CLAIM-115: only its fidelity clause does. It does not say CLAIM-139 must supersede CLAIM-115; two rival theses can both stand Proposed. It says they should be related as rivals, and that CLAIM-139 answers QUESTION-002 whether or not it lists it.
It does not say the theses rival on every reading. CLAIM-223 gives one, survival by recovery and certification by identifiability, on which they answer different parts of QUESTION-002.