80 lines
4.2 KiB
Markdown
80 lines
4.2 KiB
Markdown
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# Charter: Moral/Legal Personhood — A Separate Companion Research Line
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**Workplan:** SOUL-WP-0009-T05, resolved 2026-09-28
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**Status:** charter only — this note scopes a future companion line; it does
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not attempt the mapping itself.
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## Why this needs its own charter
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`SCOPE.md` names "silent moral/legal personhood claims" as explicitly out of
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scope for the core Soul Frame research program, routed instead to "law/
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governance literature map only; no premature derivation." Soul Frame's
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descriptive core (Being, Personhood-descriptive, Recognition) is built to
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answer "what is this, structurally" without answering "what follows morally
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or legally" — collapsing the two would violate the framework's own design
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boundary (`concepts/personhood.md`'s four-kinds table: descriptive, social,
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moral, legal, never collapsed).
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The paper's research agenda (draft §17 item 4) nonetheless flags that
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readers will want the "so what follows" answer. This charter exists so that
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work can proceed on that question **without** loosening the descriptive
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core to get there — by defining a companion line with its own scope.
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## Scope (what the companion line would cover)
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1. **Legal personhood precedent survey** — corporate personhood, animal
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welfare/rights law, AI legal-personality proposals (e.g. EU robot-
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personhood debate), personality/publicity rights (`SF-R110`), digital
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estates (`SF-R111`) — building outward from the existing gap sketch in
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`research/law-governance/sp-gh-legal-gap-sketch.md`.
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2. **Moral status literature survey** — moral patienthood conditions
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(sentience-based, interest-based, relational accounts), independent of
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Soul Frame's descriptive Beinghood — checking where descriptive
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Beinghood profiles *correlate* with existing moral-status arguments
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without *implying* them.
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3. **Explicit non-derivation statement** — for each descriptive Soul Frame
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concept (Being, `Sp.`, `Gh.`, Persona), a companion-line entry stating
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what moral/legal conclusion, if any, commentators have tried to draw
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from a structurally similar concept, and why Soul Frame's descriptive
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core does not itself license that conclusion.
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4. **Jurisdictional variance tracking** — law/governance material is
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explicitly jurisdiction-specific (`sp-gh-legal-gap-sketch.md` already
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flags this); the companion line should track variance rather than
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average it into one global claim.
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## Non-goals (what the companion line must not do)
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- **Must not** feed conclusions back into `Terminology.md`, `Claims.md`, or
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`concepts/*.md` as if they were descriptive findings. A moral/legal
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finding is filed in this companion line's own output, cross-referenced
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from the descriptive concept files, never merged into them.
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- **Must not** be used to argue that a system with a high descriptive
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Beinghood profile therefore *has* moral standing or legal rights, or the
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converse (low profile → no standing). The correlation question (item 2
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above) is explicitly weaker than a derivation.
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- **Must not** attempt a single universal legal position — jurisdictional
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variance is tracked, not resolved into one answer.
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- **Must not** become a gate for the descriptive paper's publication —
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`paper/draft.md` already states its ethical/legal section (§14) as a
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bounded sketch, and the companion line does not need to mature before
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the descriptive paper proceeds through its own pathway (SOUL-WP-0009-T06).
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## Relationship to existing work
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- Extends `research/law-governance/sp-gh-legal-gap-sketch.md` rather than
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duplicating it.
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- Cross-references `concepts/personhood.md`'s four-kinds table as the
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boundary this charter exists to respect.
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- Does not extend or modify `paper/draft.md` §14 (Ethical and Legal
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Implications) — that section stays a bounded sketch in the descriptive
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paper; deeper treatment belongs here.
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## Next step
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This charter is not itself a workplan. If pursued, it should become its own
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future workplan (e.g. `SOUL-WP-0010` or later) with its own task breakdown,
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scoped narrowly enough (e.g. "legal personhood precedent survey only" as a
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first slice) to avoid re-opening the whole moral/legal question at once.
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Not opened now — SOUL-WP-0009-T05's done condition is this charter existing,
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not the companion line's work starting.
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