nucleation

TERM-099: self-formation, of an agent: the production, by the agent's own activity on a discrepancy it cannot yet resolve, of a maintained capacity, a new distinction it can make legible or a new channel by which it can act, that outlasts the discrepancy and serves a class of later ones

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Properties6
StatusProposed
Tagsagency, self-governance, free-will
Linewill-organization
ComplementsTERM-100 — provenance, of a capacity or an organization, and which sense: formation provenance (whose process produced it), maintenance provenance (whose process keeps it), or source provenance (what it was made from, the sense the descent term holds)
RefinesTERM-023 — will-organization
Cited as “uses” byCLAIM-532 — Self-formation, in the sense the record holds (the transformation dimension of a will-organization), is the production by an agent's own activity on a discrepancy it cannot yet resolve of a maintained capacity, a new distinction it can make legible or a new channel by which it can act, that outlasts the discrepancy and serves a class of later ones; it is told apart from learning an action by transfer to discrepancies of the same class after the inducing conditions are gone, and from a capacity installed or upheld from outside by interventions on the processes that produce and maintain it, CLAIM-533 — The sensitivity that formal chaos gives a will's dynamics is not control over them: in Kane's self-forming actions, chaotic amplification keeps the outcome open, but it magnifies the agent's efforts, uncontrolled fluctuations and outside inputs alike, so what would make the outcome the agent's is how its own control couples to the amplifying directions, relative to noise and to other parties' inputs and with what feedback, which sensitivity does not supply; and under weak noise what amplification touches lasts only where it reaches the slow modes, CLAIM-540 — The persistence a Dirichlet–categorical hierarchy gives a run of selections is an observer's learning about a fixed mixture, not a change in what selects: under a uniform prior an observed first choice raises the predicted chance of repeating it from 1/2 to 2/3, while the same choice forced leaves it at 1/2, so the hierarchy's reinforcement is not evidence of self-formation or of a maintained will-organization, which need the mixture itself to change under the choice, CLAIM-544 — If a willed agent is the jurisdiction of its will-organization, then governing one's own governability is in part governing one's own individuation, in the constitutive sense of individuation at that level: a revision of the will-organization that changes which regimes it governs changes which willed agent there is, so a self-forming revision can be a re-individuation and not only a change in an agent's states, and whether the revised jurisdiction continues the earlier agent is a question of continuation, not of resemblance

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Definition

Self-formation is the production of a capacity, with four parts:

  • by the agent’s own activity, so its formation provenance is the agent’s (TERM-100, sense 1);
  • on a discrepancy it cannot yet resolve, a demand or conflict its present regimes do not meet;
  • of a maintained capacity, a new distinction or a new channel, kept by the agent’s own processes (maintenance provenance, sense 2);
  • that outlasts the discrepancy and serves a class of later ones.

What it is not

  • An observer’s learning. The persistence a hierarchy gives a run of choices is the observer’s estimate, not a change in what selects (CLAIM-540).
  • Learning an action. A response that does not transfer to a new discrepancy of the same class after the inducing one is gone.
  • Installation. A capacity put in place from outside, even one the agent then maintains. CASE-191 shows such a capacity is indistinguishable afterwards, so whether a capacity was self-formed is a question about formation provenance.
  • Kane’s self-forming action (LIT-1985), which is an undetermined choice. CLAIM-533 sets the two side by side.

What it leaves open

Whether a reweighting of existing regimes with no new distinction or channel, TERM-023’s precedence, should count. CLAIM-532’s defeater names this as the case that would make the definition too narrow.

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