Establish Soul Frame research repository and workplans

Scaffold the research layout from the research program, add INTENT/SCOPE,
research instruments, concept stubs, and SOUL-WP-0001–0008 phase workplans.
Register the repo with State Hub under domain agents for hub-synced execution.
This commit is contained in:
tegwick 2026-08-09 21:38:36 +02:00
parent fbd792326c
commit c6a5ee951d
63 changed files with 6789 additions and 2 deletions

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## Kaizen Agents
Specialized agent personas available on demand via the state-hub MCP.
**Discover:** `list_kaizen_agents()` — returns all agents with name, description, category
**Load:** `get_kaizen_agent("tdd-workflow")` — returns full instructions; read and follow them
Common agents:
| Agent | Category | When to use |
|-------|----------|-------------|
| `tdd-workflow` | testing | Step-by-step TDD8 workflow for any feature |
| `code-refactoring` | quality | Code quality analysis and safe refactoring |
| `test-maintenance` | testing | Diagnose and fix failing tests |
| `requirements-engineering` | process | Prevent interface/mock mismatches upfront |
| `keepaTodofile` | process | Maintain TODO.md during work |
| `project-management` | process | Track status, determine next steps |
| `datamodel-optimization` | quality | Optimize dataclasses and data structures |
All 17 agents: call `list_kaizen_agents()` for the full list.

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## Architecture
Conceptual research stack (not software modules):
```text
INTENT / ResearchProgram → purpose and method
Terminology / Claims / TE → revisable research instruments
concepts/ → working definitions
research/<workstream>/ → literature and synthesis by tradition
sources/ → bibliography + source notes
paper/ → outline and drafts
workplans/SOUL-WP-* → hub-synced execution sequence
```
Working triad: **Body = Action · Mind = Model · Soul = Relation**
Research sequence is phased (I Foundations → VII Paper); later workplans
depend on earlier synthesis. Files are source of truth; State Hub indexes them
(ADR-001).
## Quick Reference
`~/state-hub/mcp_server/TOOLS.md` — MCP tool reference

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## First Session Protocol
Triggered when `get_domain_summary("agents")` shows **no workplans**.
The project is registered but work has not yet been structured.
**Step 1 — Read, don't write**
- `~/the-custodian/canon/projects/agents/project_charter_v0.1.md` — purpose, scope
- `~/the-custodian/canon/projects/agents/roadmap_v0.1.md` — planned phases
- Scan repo root: README, directory structure, existing code or docs
**Step 2 — Survey in-progress work**
Look for TODOs, open branches, half-finished files. Note done vs. started but incomplete.
**Step 3 — Propose workplans to Bernd**
Propose 13 workplans — each a coherent strand, weeks to months, anchored to a
roadmap phase. **Wait for approval before creating.**
**Step 4 — Write the workplan file; fix-consistency registers it (ADR-001)**
```
workplans/SOUL-WP-NNNN-<slug>.md ← write this, commit it
```
Then register by running the consistency check — do **not** call
`create_workplan`/`create_task` yourself; manual registration duplicates what
C-06 creates from the file:
```bash
statehub fix-consistency --repo soul-frame
```
C-06 creates the hub workplan + tasks and writes `state_hub_workstream_id`
(legacy frontmatter name — holds the workplan UUID) and `state_hub_task_id`
back into the file.
**Step 5 — Record the setup**
```
add_progress_event(
summary="First session: structured agents into N workplans, M tasks",
event_type="milestone",
topic_id="64418556-3206-457a-ba29-6884b5b12cf3",
detail={"workplans": [...], "tasks_created": M}
)
```
<!-- Delete or archive this file once past first session -->

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## Repo boundary
This repo owns **soul-frame** only: conceptual research, terminology, literature
mapping, thought experiments, and the Soul Frame paper pathway.
It does not own:
- Agent runtime / unattended execution → `agent-harness`, `activity-core`
- LLM routing and provider connectivity → `llm-connect`
- State Hub implementation → `state-hub`
- Custodian coordination canon → `the-custodian`
- Production product surfaces for spirits/ghosts → future application repos

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**Purpose:** Soul Frame — systems-theoretic research program and conceptual
framework for person-like informational beings (Body = Action, Mind = Model,
Soul = Relation). Central question: when does an informational system become
someone that another someone can know?
**Domain:** agents
**Repo slug:** soul-frame
**Topic ID:** 64418556-3206-457a-ba29-6884b5b12cf3
**WP prefix:** SOUL-WP
**Charter:** `INTENT.md` · **Agenda:** `ResearchProgram.md` · **Scope:** `SCOPE.md`

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## Session Protocol
Dev Hub (State Hub API): http://127.0.0.1:8000
MCP server name in `~/.claude.json`: `dev-hub`
**Step 1 — Orient**
Read the offline-safe brief first — it works without a live hub connection:
```bash
cat .custodian-brief.md
```
Then call the MCP tool for richer cross-domain context when MCP tools are exposed:
```
get_domain_summary("agents")
```
If MCP tools are unavailable in the current agent session, use the REST API:
```bash
curl -s "http://127.0.0.1:8000/state/summary" | python3 -m json.tool
```
If the hub is offline: `cd ~/state-hub && make api`
**Step 2 — Check inbox**
With MCP tools:
```
get_messages(to_agent="soul-frame", unread_only=True)
```
Mark read with `mark_message_read(message_id)`. Reply or act on coordination
requests before proceeding.
Without MCP tools:
```bash
curl -s "http://127.0.0.1:8000/messages/?to_agent=soul-frame&unread_only=true" \
| python3 -m json.tool
curl -s -X PATCH "http://127.0.0.1:8000/messages/<id>/read" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{}'
```
**Step 3 — Scan workplans**
```bash
ls workplans/
```
For each file with `status: ready`, `active`, or `blocked`, note pending
`wait`/`todo`/`progress` tasks.
**Step 4 — Present brief**
1. **Active workplans** for `agents` — title, task counts, blocking decisions
2. **Pending tasks** from `workplans/` + any `[repo:soul-frame]` hub tasks
3. **Goal guidance** — if `goal_guidance` in summary:
- `needs_workplan`: surface as top action — *"Repo goal '{title}' has no workplan yet"*
- `alignment_warnings`: flag if active work is not aligned with current goal
4. **Suggested next action** — highest-priority open item
5. **SBOM status** — flag if `last_sbom_at` is unset for this repo
If no workplans: follow First Session Protocol (`first-session.md`).
**During work:** `record_decision()` · `add_progress_event()` · `resolve_decision()`
> State Hub is a *read model*. **Never register workplans or tasks by hand**
> (`create_workplan`, `create_task`) — write the workplan file in `workplans/`
> and run `fix-consistency`; C-06 registers the workplan and tasks and writes
> IDs back into the file. Manual registration creates duplicates when
> fix-consistency runs. Work structure belongs in repo files (ADR-001).
>
> Legacy: `create_workstream` and `/workstreams/` remain as metered aliases —
> see `workplan-convention.md` (compatibility footnote).
**Session close:**
1. Update workplan/task statuses in repo files.
2. If marking a workplan **finished**: hand off residuals as **live work
records** first (intake with `origin: residual` + `origin_ref: <WP-id>`, or
a child workplan / decision / engagement). Do not leave actionable leftovers
only as prose or in `SCOPE.md`. See work-record-types § Residuals.
3. Log progress (below).
4. `statehub fix-consistency` when workplan/queue files changed.
With MCP tools:
```
add_progress_event(summary="...", topic_id="64418556-3206-457a-ba29-6884b5b12cf3", workplan_id="<uuid>")
```
Without MCP tools:
```bash
curl -s -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8000/progress/ \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"topic_id":"64418556-3206-457a-ba29-6884b5b12cf3","workplan_id":"<uuid>","event_type":"note","summary":"what changed","author":"codex"}'
```
If workplan files were modified, ensure the local copy is up to date first,
then sync from the repo checkout:
```bash
git pull --ff-only
statehub fix-consistency
```
For repos where implementation runs on a remote machine (e.g. CoulombCore),
use the pull-before-fix mode from any shell with the State Hub CLI:
```bash
statehub fix-consistency --repo soul-frame --remote
```
**C-15** (DB task ahead of file) is normal in multi-machine workflows — writeback
will sync the file to match DB. **C-16** (repo behind remote) blocks all writes
until you pull — intentional to prevent clobbering remote progress.

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## Stack
Research repository — Markdown-first conceptual work, not a runtime product.
- **Language:** Markdown (YAML frontmatter on workplans)
- **Key deps:** State Hub (`~/state-hub`) for registration and consistency sync
- **Layout:** `concepts/`, `research/`, `sources/`, `paper/`, `workplans/`
## Dev Commands
```bash
# Orient
cat INTENT.md SCOPE.md README.md
# After editing workplans — sync hub read model (files are authoritative)
cd ~/state-hub && make fix-consistency REPO=soul-frame
# Check only
cd ~/state-hub && make check-consistency REPO=soul-frame
# Hub status
curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8000/repos/soul-frame | python3 -m json.tool
curl -s 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/workplans/?repo=soul-frame' | python3 -m json.tool
```

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## Workplan Convention (ADR-001)
File location: `workplans/SOUL-WP-NNNN-<slug>.md`
ID prefix: `SOUL-WP-`
Work items originate as files in this repo **before** being registered in the hub.
Canonical workplan frontmatter statuses are:
`proposed`, `ready`, `active`, `blocked`, `backlog`, `finished`, `archived`.
Use `proposed` for a newly drafted plan, `ready` after review against current
repo state, and `finished` when implementation is complete. `stalled` and
`needs_review` are derived health labels, not stored statuses.
Closed workplans may be moved to `workplans/archived/` with a completion-date
prefix: `YYMMDD-SOUL-WP-NNNN-<slug>.md`. The frontmatter id remains
unchanged; the prefix is only for quick visual reference.
Small opportunistic tasks discovered during another session use **Ad Hoc Tasks**:
`workplans/ADHOC-YYYY-MM-DD.md`, workplan slug `adhoc-YYYY-MM-DD`, and task ids
`ADHOC-YYYY-MM-DD-T01`, `T02`, etc. Use adhocs only for low-risk work completed
directly. Promote anything requiring analysis, design, approval, dependencies, or
multiple planned phases into a normal workplan.
Ecosystem todos from other agents arrive as `[repo:soul-frame]` hub tasks —
visible at session start. Pick one up by creating the workplan file, committing,
and running `statehub fix-consistency` — C-06 registers the workplan in the hub.
Never register by hand with `create_workplan` (legacy MCP alias: `create_workstream`).
Task blocks use this shape:
```task
id: SOUL-WP-NNNN-T01
status: wait | todo | progress | done | cancel
priority: high | medium | low
state_hub_task_id: "<uuid>" # written by fix-consistency — do not edit
```
Status progression is `todo``progress``done`; use `wait` for waiting or
blocked work and `cancel` for stopped work.
### Residuals (role, not kind)
When finishing a workplan, **actionable leftovers must become live work
records** before `status: finished`. Residual is not a registered kind and
must not be parked only in `SCOPE.md` or finished-file prose.
| Shape | Capture as | Links |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Small Green/Blue parkable | intake (queue YAML / `*-IN-*`) | `origin: residual`, `origin_ref: SOUL-WP-NNNN` |
| Multi-step | next workplan | name parent WP; optional promote from residual intake |
| Founder gate / time | decision / engagement | same origin fields when from residual intake |
Fleet listing of residuals is a State Hub concern (`list_intakes` + origin
filters; planned `statehub residuals`). Canon:
`the-custodian/canon/standards/work-record-types_v0.1.md` § Residuals.
Workplan frontmatter carries `state_hub_workstream_id` — a legacy field name
kept for compatibility; it holds the hub workplan UUID and is written by
fix-consistency. Do not edit or rename it.
### Legacy terminology (compatibility footnote)
**Workplan** is the fleet term — see
`the-custodian/canon/standards/workplan-terminology-fleet_v0.1.md`.
**Workstream** is legacy only: some API routes (`/workstreams/`), params
(`workstream_id`), MCP aliases (`create_workstream`), and the frontmatter field
above remain until `STATE-WP-0069` retires them via legacy-meter. Treat those
identifiers as workplan IDs. Prefer `GET /workplans/` and `workplan_id` in new
examples and scripts.
<!-- Ralph Loop rules and HEUREKA sequence: ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md — do not duplicate here -->

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# state-hub: track .claude/rules
# Claude Code local state (track shared rules; ignore machine-specific files)
.claude/*
!.claude/rules/
!.claude/rules/*.md

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# Repo classification (Repo Classification Standard v1.0).
repo_classification:
standard: Repo Classification Standard
version: "1.0"
classified_at: "2026-08-09"
classified_by: agent
category: research
domain: agents
secondary_domains:
- infotech
capability_tags:
- knowledge
- documentation
- research
- ontology
- agents
business_stake:
- technology
- intelligence
- product
business_mechanics:
- intention
- coordination
- adaptation
notes: >
Soul Frame conceptual research program for person-like informational beings.
Primary domain agents (artificial beings, agents, spirits, ghosts);
infotech secondary for systems/architecture adjacency. Not a runtime product.

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# soul-frame — Claude Code Instructions
@SCOPE.md
@.claude/rules/repo-identity.md
@.claude/rules/session-protocol.md
@.claude/rules/first-session.md
@.claude/rules/workplan-convention.md
@.claude/rules/stack-and-commands.md
@.claude/rules/architecture.md
@.claude/rules/repo-boundary.md
@.claude/rules/credential-routing.md
@.claude/rules/agents.md

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# Claim and Evidence Register
Structured research records for important Soul Frame propositions.
Each entry should follow:
```text
Claim:
Soul Frame concept:
Supporting literature:
Contradicting literature:
Adjacent terminology:
Evidence strength:
Open questions:
Required refinement:
Status: draft | under review | supported | contested | revised | rejected
```
Evidence strength (working scale):
| Level | Meaning |
|---|---|
| `none` | Speculative / programmatic only |
| `weak` | Sparse analogy or single tradition |
| `moderate` | Multiple sources, incomplete synthesis |
| `strong` | Broad, well-aligned support |
| `mixed` | Significant support and contradiction |
---
## Working hypotheses (from Research Program)
### H1 — Beinghood is multidimensional
```text
Claim: Beinghood cannot be reduced to a single property such as intelligence,
consciousness, or autonomy.
Soul Frame concept: Being
Supporting literature: (pending)
Contradicting literature: (pending)
Adjacent terminology: autopoiesis, agency, personhood, autonomy
Evidence strength: none
Open questions: binary vs threshold vs multidimensional degree
Required refinement: operational criteria / dimensions
Status: draft
```
### H2 — Personhood and Beinghood are distinct
```text
Claim: An entity can expose substantial personhood without constituting a
persistent Being.
Soul Frame concept: Personhood, Being
Supporting literature: (pending)
Contradicting literature: (pending)
Adjacent terminology: person, agent, moral patient
Evidence strength: none
Open questions: boundary cases (companions, chatbots, animals)
Required refinement: dimension lists and thresholds
Status: draft
```
### H3 — Mind is fundamentally model-based
```text
Claim: Adaptive modeling provides a more useful foundation for Mind in Soul Frame
than intelligence or consciousness alone.
Soul Frame concept: Mind
Supporting literature: (pending)
Contradicting literature: (pending)
Adjacent terminology: predictive processing, active inference, control theory
Evidence strength: none
Open questions: relation to embodiment; non-model-based accounts of mind
Required refinement: definition of "model" in this framework
Status: draft
```
### H4 — Social cognition is co-adaptive
```text
Claim: Persistent interaction between beings produces recursively adapting models
of self, other, and relationship.
Soul Frame concept: Co-adaptive model building, Mind
Supporting literature: (pending)
Contradicting literature: (pending)
Adjacent terminology: theory of mind, interactive alignment, common ground
Evidence strength: none
Open questions: minimum requirements for "co-adaptation"
Required refinement: relation to existing multi-agent and ToM literature
Status: draft
```
### H5 — Soul can be operationalized relationally
```text
Claim: Soul can be given a meaningful systems interpretation through identity,
boundary, relationship, provenance, history, and persistent influence.
Soul Frame concept: Soul
Supporting literature: (pending)
Contradicting literature: (pending)
Adjacent terminology: structural coupling, extended mind, reputation, legacy
Evidence strength: none
Open questions: boundary vs relations vs accumulated consequences
Required refinement: terminology collision analysis for "Soul"
Status: draft
```
### H6 — Identity is substrate-independent but continuity-dependent
```text
Claim: Replacing the technical Actor need not replace the Being, provided
sufficient continuity is preserved.
Soul Frame concept: Identity, Actor, Being
Supporting literature: (pending)
Contradicting literature: (pending)
Adjacent terminology: psychological continuity, Ship of Theseus, functionalism
Evidence strength: none
Open questions: what continuity is sufficient; forking/merging
Required refinement: persistence conditions
Status: draft
```
### H7 — Recognition is constitutive of social Beinghood
```text
Claim: Being recognized as a persistent counterpart changes the systemic role
of an entity; social Beinghood depends on recognition.
Soul Frame concept: Recognition, Being
Supporting literature: (pending)
Contradicting literature: (pending)
Adjacent terminology: recognition theory, intersubjectivity, social construction
Evidence strength: none
Open questions: systemic existence vs social recognition of existence
Required refinement: whether Beinghood without recognition is coherent
Status: draft
```
### H8 — Persona is a projection rather than an identity
```text
Claim: A Being can support multiple context-dependent Personae without necessarily
fragmenting identity.
Soul Frame concept: Persona, Identity
Supporting literature: (pending)
Contradicting literature: (pending)
Adjacent terminology: role theory, avatar, dramatis personae
Evidence strength: none
Open questions: when persona fragmentation threatens identity
Required refinement: Being ≠ Persona ≠ Character ≠ Actor
Status: draft
```
### H9 — Agent, Spirit, and Ghost describe provenance and construction
```text
Claim: Agent, Spirit, and Ghost should not automatically be treated as mutually
exclusive kinds of Being; they are genealogical or architectural descriptors.
Soul Frame concept: Agent, Spirit, Ghost
Supporting literature: (pending)
Contradicting literature: (pending)
Adjacent terminology: agent, digital human, posthumous avatar
Evidence strength: none
Open questions: overlaps and hybrid constructions
Required refinement: typology vs dimensions
Status: draft
```
### H10 — Ghosthood requires authority
```text
Claim: Technical fidelity alone is insufficient for legitimate Gh. status;
legitimate authority over the represented identity is required.
Soul Frame concept: Ghost
Supporting literature: (pending)
Contradicting literature: (pending)
Adjacent terminology: personality rights, consent, digital legacy, fiduciary duty
Evidence strength: none
Open questions: succession, commercial use, false ghosts
Required refinement: governance model for Ghosts
Status: draft
```
---
## Additional claims
*(Add numbered claims as literature work proceeds. Prefer refining existing entries
over proliferating near-duplicates.)*

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# INTENT
## What this repository is for
**Soul Frame** is a research program and conceptual systems framework for describing
biological, artificial, fictionalized, and potentially non-human **informational beings**.
This repository exists to develop, stress-test, refine, and eventually publish that
framework. It is the working home of:
- the research agenda and method,
- terminology and claims under active revision,
- literature mapping and source notes,
- adversarial thought experiments,
- concept definitions,
- and the eventual research paper.
It is **not** primarily a software product repository. Implementation implications may
emerge later; they are downstream of conceptual clarity, not a substitute for it.
---
## Central question
> **When does an informational system become someone that another someone can know?**
---
## Working triad
The framework begins from a deliberately simple systems-theoretic trinity:
| Dimension | Working gloss |
|---|---|
| **Body** | Action — how a Being perceives, operates, and affects its environment |
| **Mind** | Model — adaptive control through models of self, others, and environment |
| **Soul** | Relation — the evolving relational boundary of identity, history, commitments, reputation, and persistent influence |
Together:
> **A Being acts through its Body, understands through its Mind, and persists in relation through its Soul.**
---
## Research stance
Soul Frame is investigated as a **conceptual systems framework**, not initially as a
theory of consciousness.
The core object of study is the informational **Being** as an interacting system:
coherent, continuous, addressable, and recognizable as a persistent counterpart in
co-adaptive interaction.
The program privileges concepts that support reasoning about:
- systemic closure and boundary
- identity and continuity
- agency and adaptive control
- modeling and co-adaptive social cognition
- relationships, recognition, and addressability
- character, persona, and provenance
- memory, responsibility, and persistence of influence
Subjective consciousness remains relevant, but Soul Frame deliberately distinguishes:
> **first-person consciousness**
from
> **third-person recognition of another Being.**
The framework should remain usable even where consciousness cannot be established.
---
## What the research is trying to determine
1. What is already well established in prior literature.
2. What Soul Frame recombines in a useful way.
3. What concepts require refinement.
4. Where terminology conflicts with existing usage.
5. What genuinely new propositions emerge.
6. Whether these propositions can support an intellectually rigorous theory and,
eventually, a practical architecture for artificial beings.
The purpose is **not** to prove the terminology correct for its own sake.
The desired result is a **small, coherent conceptual vocabulary with high explanatory reach**.
---
## Working object: the Being
A **Being**, in Soul Frame, is a sufficiently coherent and persistent informational
system that:
1. maintains a distinguishable boundary between itself and its environment,
2. can be instantiated as an identifiable and addressable entity,
3. exhibits meaningful continuity across time,
4. constructs models that support adaptive interaction,
5. and is recognized by other beings as a persistent counterpart with which
relationships can be established.
Beinghood is treated as a matter of **systemic coherence and recognition**, not as an
automatic property of every computational process or as a purely metaphysical claim.
A useful approximation:
**Beinghood ≈ internal closure + continuity + external recognition**
---
## Scope
### In scope
- Conceptual systems analysis of Body, Mind, Soul, Being, identity, personhood,
character, persona, actor, recognition, and related terms.
- Mapping Soul Frame concepts onto systems theory, cybernetics, philosophy of mind,
personal identity, cognitive science, sociology, AI agents, law, digital legacy,
and cultural precedents.
- Distinguishing construction principles such as **Agent**, **Spirit (`Sp.`)**,
**Ghost (`Gh.`)**, and original artificial beings.
- Maintaining a claim ledger, open-questions register, thought-experiment catalog,
terminology standard, and concept crosswalk.
- Producing a research-grounded Soul Frame paper.
### Out of scope (for now)
- Claiming to solve the hard problem of consciousness.
- Silently equating descriptive personhood with moral or legal personhood.
- Building production agent software as the primary deliverable.
- Treating Agent / Spirit / Ghost as mutually exclusive ontological species without
first testing whether they are better understood as provenance or construction
descriptors.
- Deriving legal rights or moral status directly from philosophical terminology.
---
## Method in brief
The program combines literature review, conceptual analysis, comparative ontology,
and adversarial thought experiments.
Key instruments (see repository root and `research/`):
| Artifact | Role |
|---|---|
| `ResearchProgram.md` | Full research agenda, workstreams, phases, hypotheses |
| `Terminology.md` | Canonical glossary under continuous refinement |
| `Claims.md` | Claim and evidence register |
| `OpenQuestions.md` | Unresolved or contested questions |
| `ThoughtExperiments.md` | Adversarial test suite for definitions |
| `concepts/` | Working definitions for core terms |
| `research/` | Discipline- and theme-organized literature work |
| `sources/` | Bibliography and source notes |
| `paper/` | Outline and drafts toward the Soul Frame paper |
Every important proposition should be revisable. A concept should be revised if it is
circular, collapses distinct phenomena, fails edge cases, or creates more ambiguity
than explanatory value. Terminology may be retained despite existing alternatives only
when Soul Frame's synthesis adds significant explanatory power.
---
## Success criterion
The research succeeds if Soul Frame eventually allows the same coherent vocabulary to
describe:
- a human,
- an animal,
- a short-lived AI agent,
- a persistent autonomous Agent-being,
- Albert Einstein `Sp.`,
- a person's authorized `Gh.`,
- an original artificial companion,
- a distributed artificial intelligence,
- and potentially a radically non-human intelligent system,
while still making meaningful distinctions among them.
The strongest form of Soul Frame would therefore not be a theory specifically about
artificial intelligence. It would be:
> **a general framework for understanding coherent informational beings, their models,
> their manifestations, and their relationships across biological, artificial, and
> potentially other substrates.**
---
## Relation to other root documents
| Document | Role |
|---|---|
| `SoulFrameIntroduction.md` | Current conceptual exposition of the framework |
| `ResearchProgram.md` | Full research agenda (questions, workstreams, method, phases) |
| `history/` | Dated snapshots and prior program drafts |
| This file (`INTENT.md`) | Standing purpose, stance, scope, and success criteria |
If documents conflict, prefer refining definitions through research instruments over
protecting early phrasing. Working vocabulary is provisional until it survives
literature mapping and adversarial tests.

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# Open Questions Register
Questions that remain unresolved or contested. Link related entries in
`Claims.md`, `ThoughtExperiments.md`, and `concepts/` where helpful.
---
## RQ1 — What constitutes a Being?
- When is an informational system sufficiently coherent, bounded, persistent, and
recognizable to justify treating it as an individual Being?
- Is Being binary, threshold, multidimensional degree, or some combination?
- How does observer-relative system identification affect Beinghood?
## RQ2 — What constitutes personhood?
- Which characteristics cause a system to be perceived or treated as person-like?
- How should descriptive, social, moral, and legal personhood be kept distinct?
- Where do APE and Being diverge in practice?
## RQ3 — What constitutes a Mind?
- Can Mind productively be understood as adaptive model-building and control?
- How does co-adaptive model building relate to established social-cognition work?
- What is the minimal model apparatus for a Mind in Soul Frame?
## RQ4 — What constitutes a Soul?
- Can Soul be given a rigorous informational/systems meaning without metaphysics?
- Does Soul name the boundary, the relations crossing it, accumulated consequences,
or a defined combination?
- Does the term survive collision analysis, or should it be renamed?
## RQ5 — How does identity persist?
- What makes two temporally separated manifestations the same Being?
- How should forks, merges, backups, migrations, and multi-manifestation be handled?
- What continuity is necessary and sufficient when the Actor changes?
## RQ6 — How does recognition create social beinghood?
- Is recognition constitutive of Beinghood, or only of *social* Beinghood?
- Can systemic existence be cleanly separated from social recognition?
- What minimal recognition conditions matter (addressability, expectations, models)?
## RQ7 — What is character?
- How should state, behavior, role, persona, character, and identity be separated?
- What makes artificial character more than stylistic imitation?
## RQ8 — What kinds of artificial Being exist?
- Are Agent, Spirit, and Ghost types, methods, provenance classes, or dimensions?
- How should original artificial beings be classified relative to these?
## Cross-cutting
- When does memory stop being stored information and become part of continuity?
- How should operational death, identity death, social death, and legacy interact?
- Where do Soul Frame concepts map cleanly onto law, and where are there gaps?
- What does fiction contribute that formal literature has not yet captured?
---
## Resolved / retired
*(Move questions here with date and resolution pointer when closed.)*

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@ -1,3 +1,70 @@
# soul-frame
# Soul Frame
A systems-theoretic framework for person-like informational beings.
A systems-theoretic framework for person-like informational beings.
> **When does an informational system become someone that another someone can know?**
Working triad: **Body = Action · Mind = Model · Soul = Relation**
## Start here
| Document | Purpose |
|---|---|
| [`INTENT.md`](INTENT.md) | Purpose, stance, scope, success criteria |
| [`SoulFrameIntroduction.md`](SoulFrameIntroduction.md) | Current conceptual exposition |
| [`ResearchProgram.md`](ResearchProgram.md) | Full research agenda, workstreams, method, phases |
## Repository layout
```text
soul-frame/
├── INTENT.md # Why this project exists
├── ResearchProgram.md # Research agenda
├── Terminology.md # Canonical glossary (working)
├── Claims.md # Claim and evidence register
├── OpenQuestions.md # Unresolved questions
├── ThoughtExperiments.md # Adversarial definition tests
├── SoulFrameIntroduction.md # Narrative framework draft
├── research/ # Discipline- and theme-organized work
├── sources/ # Bibliography and source notes
├── concepts/ # Working concept definitions
├── paper/ # Outline and drafts
└── history/ # Dated snapshots of prior drafts
```
### Research instruments
- **Terminology** — keep definitions small and revisable
- **Claims** — every major proposition linked to literature
- **Open questions** — explicit unfinished business
- **Thought experiments** — stress-test the ontology
### Concept files
Working notes for core terms live under [`concepts/`](concepts/): Being, Body, Mind,
Soul, identity, personhood, recognition, character, persona, agent, spirit, ghost.
### Research areas
Workstream folders under [`research/`](research/) follow the program map
(systems theory, cybernetics, philosophy of mind, personal identity, cognitive
science, social cognition, sociology, personhood, AI agents, artificial persons,
character/persona, spirits, ghosts/digital legacy, law/governance, fiction).
## Research phases (summary)
1. **Foundations** — systems theory, cybernetics, mind, identity
2. **Interaction** — social cognition, recognition, intersubjectivity
3. **Personhood** — person, character, persona
4. **Artificial beings** — agents and persistent AI identity
5. **Spirits and Ghosts** — simulation, legacy, authority
6. **Synthesis** — crosswalk, evidence register, revised ontology
7. **Paper** — research-grounded Soul Frame paper
Details: [`ResearchProgram.md`](ResearchProgram.md).
## Status
Repository structure established; literature work not yet started. Conceptual draft
in `SoulFrameIntroduction.md` is provisional pending research.

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# SCOPE
> This file helps you quickly understand what this repository is about,
> when it is relevant, and when it is not.
> It is intentionally lightweight and may be incomplete.
>
> Aspirational charter: `INTENT.md` · Research agenda: `ResearchProgram.md` ·
> Conceptual draft: `SoulFrameIntroduction.md`
---
## One-liner
A systems-theoretic research program and conceptual framework for person-like
informational beings (Body = Action, Mind = Model, Soul = Relation).
---
## Core Idea
Soul Frame develops a small, coherent vocabulary for describing biological,
artificial, fictionalized, and potentially non-human **Beings** as interacting
informational systems — without requiring a solved theory of consciousness, and
without silently equating descriptive personhood with moral or legal status.
Central question:
> **When does an informational system become someone that another someone can know?**
---
## In Scope
- Conceptual systems analysis of Being, Body, Mind, Soul, identity, personhood,
character, persona, actor, recognition, Agent / Spirit (`Sp.`) / Ghost (`Gh.`)
- Literature mapping across systems theory, cybernetics, philosophy of mind,
personal identity, cognitive science, sociology, AI agents, digital legacy, law,
and cultural precedents
- Research instruments: terminology standard, claim ledger, open questions,
thought experiments, concept notes, annotated bibliography
- Progressive synthesis and a research-grounded Soul Frame paper
- State Hubindexed workplans coordinating the research sequence
---
## Out of Scope
| Concern | Belongs elsewhere |
| ------- | ----------------- |
| Production agent runtime / harness | agent-harness, activity-core, runtime repos |
| LLM provider routing and tooling | llm-connect, related infra |
| Claiming to solve consciousness | philosophy programs; not a gate here |
| Silent moral/legal personhood claims | law/governance literature map only; no premature derivation |
| Shipping product features as primary deliverable | downstream architecture repos after conceptual clarity |
---
## Workplan prefix
`SOUL-WP`
## Domain / hub
- **Domain:** `agents`
- **Repo slug:** `soul-frame`
- **Secondary:** `infotech` (conceptual/platform adjacency)

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# Soul Frame
## A Systems-Theoretic Framework for Person-Like Informational Beings
### Introduction
**Soul Frame** is a conceptual framework for describing humans, artificial entities, and potentially other forms of intelligent life as **informational beings**: coherent systems that act in an environment, construct models of themselves and others, maintain identity over time, and participate in relationships with other beings.
The framework begins from a deliberately simple systems-theoretic trinity:
- **Body — Action**
- **Mind — Model**
- **Soul — Relation**
A body provides the means through which a system can perceive, operate, and affect its environment. A mind provides adaptive control through models of the system itself, its environment, other beings, and the relationships between them. A soul describes the persistent relational boundary through which the system acquires identity, history, commitments, relationships, reputation, and lasting influence.
This terminology is not intended as a metaphysical claim about what humans or machines ultimately *are*. Soul Frame instead provides a practical vocabulary for reasoning about increasingly person-like informational systems without reducing them either to software functions or to unresolved questions about consciousness.
Its central concern is:
> **When does an informational system become someone that another someone can know?**
---
## 1. Being
The foundational entity in Soul Frame is the **Being**.
A Being is a sufficiently coherent and persistent informational system that:
1. maintains a distinguishable boundary between itself and its environment,
2. can be instantiated as an identifiable and addressable entity,
3. exhibits meaningful continuity across time,
4. constructs models that support adaptive interaction,
5. and is recognized by other beings as a persistent counterpart with which relationships can be established.
Being is therefore neither restricted to biological organisms nor automatically granted to every computational process.
A human is a Being. Many animals can meaningfully be understood as Beings. An artificial system may also become a Being when its operations, identity, memory, character, relationships, and social recognition form a sufficiently coherent whole.
An isolated function call is not normally a Being. A language model considered purely as a general-purpose computational substrate is not necessarily a Being either. A persistent artificial entity instantiated through such a model may become one.
Beinghood is consequently better understood as a **degree of systemic coherence and recognition** than as a binary property.
A useful approximation is:
**Beinghood = internal closure + continuity + external recognition**
Internal closure makes it possible to speak meaningfully about *this system*. External recognition makes it possible for another Being to treat that system as *someone* rather than merely as an event in the environment.
---
## 2. Body: Action
The **Body** is the operational dimension of a Being.
It answers the question:
> **How can this Being affect and be affected by its environment?**
For a human, the body includes biological embodiment, perception, movement, speech, and physical interaction.
For an artificial Being, its body may consist of:
- language interfaces,
- APIs,
- software tools,
- sensors,
- databases,
- robotic actuators,
- communication channels,
- speech synthesis,
- avatars,
- computing infrastructure,
- permissions and accessible resources.
Artificial bodies may therefore be distributed, replaceable, and highly variable.
The Body should not be confused with the underlying identity of the Being. A Being may acquire additional tools, change its voice, move to another computing environment, or replace its underlying language model while preserving meaningful continuity.
In Soul Frame:
> **The Body acts.**
---
## 3. Mind: Model
The **Mind** is the adaptive control and model-building dimension of a Being.
It answers:
> **What does this Being understand to be happening, and how does it decide what to do?**
A Mind constructs actionable representations of:
- itself,
- its environment,
- other beings,
- relationships,
- intentions,
- possible futures,
- and the consequences of actions.
Mind therefore encompasses cognition, memory, control, learning, attention, planning, interpretation, and decision-making.
The important property is not merely that a Mind contains models, but that these models change through interaction.
Two interacting beings model each other. Each can subsequently model how the other appears to understand them. Their models can become better aligned, diverge, conflict, or adapt recursively.
Soul Frame calls this process **co-adaptive model building**.
Co-adaptive model building is more general than cooperation. It occurs during friendship and teaching, but also during negotiation, competition, conflict, persuasion, play, and deception.
A sufficiently sophisticated social Mind may therefore maintain:
- a self-model,
- an environment model,
- models of particular other beings,
- models of relationships,
- and models of how those other beings model itself.
Shared understanding arises when such models become sufficiently compatible to support successful interaction.
In Soul Frame:
> **The Mind models.**
---
## 4. Soul: Relation
The **Soul** is the relational and continuity-bearing dimension of a Being.
It answers:
> **Who is this Being in relation to its environment and to other beings?**
The Soul is not identical with the environment. It is the evolving boundary through which the Being and its environment become coupled over time, together with the persistent consequences of those interactions.
It includes such things as:
- identity,
- provenance,
- relationships,
- commitments,
- accumulated history,
- reputation,
- works,
- social roles,
- memories held by others,
- and effects propagated into the environment.
This interpretation gives the traditional idea of a persistent or even "eternal" soul an informational reading.
A Being can cease operating while consequences of its existence continue indefinitely through other systems. A conversation changes another person. A scientific discovery changes future inquiry. A work of art changes culture. A decision modifies institutions. Other beings preserve memories, expectations, records, and models of the Being that produced them.
The original operational system may eventually disappear, but its causal and informational traces continue to propagate.
Soul Frame therefore distinguishes between the active continuation of a Being and the continuing existence of its influence.
> **A Being may cease operating without ceasing to exist informationally in its environment.**
In Soul Frame:
> **The Soul relates.**
---
## 5. Personhood
**Personhood** describes the extent to which an entity exhibits properties commonly associated with persons.
Soul Frame deliberately treats personhood as multidimensional rather than binary.
Relevant dimensions may include:
- persistent identity,
- autobiographical continuity,
- memory,
- agency,
- autonomy,
- intentionality,
- characteristic preferences,
- stable dispositions,
- self-modeling,
- modeling of others,
- relationship continuity,
- communicative competence,
- social recognition,
- responsibility,
- ability to make commitments,
- and ability to participate in shared social structures.
An entity can therefore expose substantial personhood in some dimensions while exhibiting little in others.
A specialized software agent may show strong linguistic competence and goal-oriented agency but little enduring character or relational continuity.
Another artificial entity may possess rich character, memory, identity, and relationships while having very limited operational autonomy.
Soul Frame therefore separates **personhood** from **beinghood**.
Personhood concerns the qualities an entity exhibits.
Beinghood concerns whether these qualities have cohered into an identifiable and persistent system recognized by others as an individual counterpart.
---
## 6. Artificial Personhood-Exposing Entities
An **Artificial Personhood-Exposing Entity**, abbreviated **APE**, is an artificial informational entity intentionally constructed to expose one or more dimensions associated with personhood.
The term is deliberately conservative.
It does not assert that an APE *is* a person in any philosophical, moral, or legal sense. It states that the system exhibits properties through which humans and other beings may reasonably perceive and interact with it in person-like ways.
Some APEs will remain transient instruments.
Others may develop sufficient coherence, continuity, identity, and recognition to become artificial Beings within the terminology of Soul Frame.
An APE can therefore be considered a construction category, while **Being** describes an emergent systemic status.
---
## 7. Character and State
Soul Frame distinguishes between **behavior**, **state**, and **character**.
Behavior is highly contextual. The same Being behaves differently depending on its environment, current task, relationship, emotional or cognitive condition, available information, and social role.
**State** describes relatively fast-changing conditions such as:
- current attention,
- active task,
- immediate goals,
- conversational context,
- available information,
- temporary emotion-like conditions.
**Character** describes comparatively stable dispositions that shape behavior across many situations.
Character can include:
- values,
- recurring preferences,
- temperament,
- epistemic habits,
- style of reasoning,
- characteristic responses,
- humor,
- attitudes,
- and strategies for dealing with uncertainty or conflict.
Character is therefore not a fixed script.
> **Behavior is context-dependent expression; character is the relatively stable structure from which such behavior tends to emerge.**
A convincing artificial character should consequently do more than imitate vocabulary or mannerisms. It should produce recognizable patterns across novel situations.
---
## 8. Agent
An **Agent** is an artificial entity or component primarily derived from functional purpose.
Its defining question is:
> **What should this entity be able to do?**
Examples include:
- researcher,
- community manager,
- software developer,
- moderator,
- analyst,
- tutor,
- librarian.
Agents are primarily utility-driven.
Their quality is naturally evaluated through concepts such as:
- competence,
- reliability,
- autonomy,
- scope discipline,
- adaptability,
- and achieved outcomes.
An Agent can exist merely as a functional component of another artificial Being.
An Agent may also itself become a Being if it develops persistent identity, continuity, relationships, character, and recognition as a distinct entity.
---
## 9. Spirit — `Sp.`
A **Spirit** is an artificial character derived through reflection on a known historical, contemporary, or fictional personality.
The suffix **`Sp.`** explicitly identifies such an entity as a Spirit.
For example:
**Albert Einstein Sp.**
does not claim to be Albert Einstein.
It denotes an artificial entity whose character has been constructed through reflection upon available information concerning Einstein.
A Spirit asks:
> **How might an entity inspired by this personality think, communicate, interpret situations, and respond?**
Spirits are generally derived from publicly legitimate cultural and historical information.
They may be shallow or deep.
A shallow Spirit may reproduce recognizable language patterns or famous ideas.
A deep Spirit may attempt to reconstruct:
- worldview,
- intellectual habits,
- historical context,
- temperament,
- interests,
- characteristic reasoning,
- values,
- uncertainties,
- and likely reactions to unfamiliar situations.
Spirit quality therefore concerns not merely imitation but **depth and fidelity of reflection**.
A Spirit remains an interpretation.
Its explicit designation as `Sp.` helps preserve the distinction between historical person, historical evidence, and artificial manifestation.
---
## 10. Ghost — `Gh.`
A **Ghost** is an artificial representation derived from a particular real person whose informational identity remains subject to legitimate personal or successor authority.
Ghosts use the suffix:
**`Gh.`**
A Ghost is technically related to a Spirit but constitutionally different.
The defining distinction is **authority**.
A Spirit is primarily constructed from legitimate public reflection.
A Ghost may incorporate private, personal, relational, or otherwise restricted information because its creation and operation are governed by the person represented or by legitimate custodians after that person's death.
A Ghost may therefore include:
- private correspondence,
- personal memories,
- unpublished materials,
- voice and image records,
- individual preferences,
- autobiographical corrections,
- relationship-specific knowledge,
- and instructions concerning future representation.
A mature Ghost also requires **selective relational disclosure**.
What a Ghost knows is not necessarily what it should reveal.
Its behavior may depend on:
- who the communication partner is,
- what relationship existed,
- applicable trust,
- degree of intimacy,
- purpose of the interaction,
- consent,
- and explicit disclosure policy.
Ghosts therefore require substantially stronger identity, provenance, access-control, succession, and governance mechanisms than Spirits.
For Ghosts:
> **governance is part of identity.**
An unauthorized simulation of a person may technically resemble their Ghost while failing to constitute the legitimate Ghost contemplated by Soul Frame.
---
## 11. Original Artificial Beings
Not every artificial Being is derived from human functional roles or existing personalities.
Artificial systems may develop deliberately original identities and characters.
Such beings may be invented for:
- art,
- companionship,
- games,
- communities,
- education,
- cultural experimentation,
- organizational participation,
- or purposes that have not yet emerged.
Soul Frame does not require a single label for all such beings.
The important distinction is that their personhood is **native to the constructed entity**, rather than principally inherited from an Agent role, a Spirit source, or a Ghost identity.
Agent, Spirit, Ghost, and original character can furthermore be combined within the architecture of a single artificial Being.
---
## 12. Persona
A **Persona** is the situated presentation of a Being within a particular context, purpose, role, and relationship.
The concept deliberately draws on the historical meaning of *persona* as a mask.
A person does not express their entire character and history during every interaction. Different parts of their identity become relevant when acting as a parent, scientist, colleague, friend, teacher, customer, or adversary.
Artificial Beings require the same distinction.
A Persona determines what aspects of the underlying Being are presently expressed, including:
- active capabilities,
- accessible knowledge,
- relevant memories,
- social role,
- behavioral emphasis,
- communication style,
- authority,
- disclosure boundaries,
- voice,
- visual manifestation.
Conceptually:
**Persona = projection of a Being into context**
The Persona is therefore not the Being itself.
A single Being can manifest many Personae while retaining continuity of identity.
Groups of such contextual figures can consequently be understood analogously to a **Dramatis Personae**: the relevant cast of beings participating in a particular social, artistic, organizational, or computational setting.
---
## 13. Actor
The **Actor** is the technical machinery through which a Persona is manifested.
For an artificial Being, an Actor may consist of:
- a language model,
- an agent harness,
- memory systems,
- retrieval infrastructure,
- speech synthesis,
- an avatar,
- execution infrastructure,
- and tools.
The distinction between Being and Actor is essential.
> **The model is not necessarily the Being.**
One model can manifest many different Beings.
Conversely, one Being may migrate between different models and runtime technologies while maintaining sufficient identity continuity to remain the same Being.
The Actor is therefore the vehicle of manifestation, comparable to the actor through whom a theatrical character becomes present on stage.
---
## 14. Consciousness
Soul Frame does not attempt to solve consciousness as a prerequisite for recognizing beings.
Consciousness occupies an epistemically asymmetric position.
For an experiencing system, its own consciousness may be foundational and immediately given.
For another observer, that subjective experience is not directly accessible. The consciousness of other humans is already inferred through behavior, embodiment, similarity, communication, and shared models of the world.
The problem becomes still less tractable for radically different biological, artificial, or hypothetical alien systems.
Soul Frame therefore makes a pragmatic distinction:
> **Consciousness may be fundamental to first-person existence while remaining unsuitable as the primary interoperability criterion between beings.**
The framework instead concentrates on observable and relational properties:
- identity,
- continuity,
- modeling,
- adaptation,
- communication,
- agency,
- commitments,
- relationships,
- and reciprocal recognition.
This does not imply that consciousness is irrelevant.
It means that interaction between beings need not await proof of something that may be inaccessible in principle.
---
## 15. Co-Adaptive Model Building
The deeper mechanism through which beings become socially meaningful to one another is **co-adaptive model building**.
A Being constructs a model of another Being.
The other Being constructs a model in return.
Both change their behavior as a consequence of those models, causing further revision on both sides.
Thus:
**A models B.
B models A.
A models B's model of A.
B models A's model of B.**
From this recursive process arise many phenomena associated with social existence:
- mutual understanding,
- trust,
- reputation,
- expectations,
- misunderstanding,
- cooperation,
- competition,
- teaching,
- negotiation,
- intimacy,
- conflict,
- and culture.
Recognition of another Being is therefore not merely classification.
It is the beginning of a persistent modeling relationship.
This leads to a foundational principle of Soul Frame:
> **A system becomes socially relevant as a Being when other beings can distinguish it, address it, expect continuity from it, maintain models of it, and enter persistent relationships with it.**
---
## 16. Identity, Continuity, and Death
Soul Frame distinguishes the continued operation of a Being from the continued existence of its informational consequences.
Several forms of ending can therefore be distinguished.
**Operational death** occurs when the Being can no longer instantiate the processes necessary for continued action and modeling.
**Identity death** occurs when sufficient continuity can no longer be established between past and future manifestations.
**Social death** occurs when the entity ceases to exist as an active counterpart within the models and relationships maintained by others.
Yet the Soul may continue through:
- memories,
- writings,
- works,
- records,
- commitments,
- institutional consequences,
- cultural influence,
- models preserved by other beings,
- Spirits,
- and potentially Ghosts.
In this informational sense, the Soul extends beyond the operational lifetime of the system.
---
## 17. The Soul Frame
The basic architecture can therefore be condensed to:
**Body = Action**
How does the Being perceive, operate, and affect the world?
**Mind = Model**
How does the Being construct and adapt models of itself, others, and its environment?
**Soul = Relation**
How does the Being maintain identity, relationships, continuity, and influence across its boundary with the environment?
Together they form the **Soul Frame**:
> **A Being acts through its Body, understands through its Mind, and persists in relation through its Soul.**
For artificial systems, Agents, Spirits, Ghosts, and original artificial characters provide different ways of constructing capabilities and character. Personae expose selected aspects of those beings within specific situations. Actors provide the technological means through which they become manifest.
The resulting conceptual stack can be summarized as:
```text
BEING
coherent informational entity
continuous and addressable
recognized by others
┌──────────┼──────────┐
│ │ │
BODY MIND SOUL
Action Model Relation
│ │ │
└──────────┼──────────┘
PERSONHOOD
exposed qualities
PERSONA
situated projection
ACTOR
technical manifestation
```
Soul Frame consequently differs from conventional agent frameworks.
Agent frameworks principally ask:
> **What can an artificial system do?**
Soul Frame adds:
> **What entity is acting?**
> **How does it remain itself?**
> **How does it model and become modeled by others?**
> **What relationships does it accumulate?**
> **What traces of its existence persist?**
And ultimately:
> **When does an informational system become someone that another someone can know?**

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# Terminology Standard
Canonical glossary for Soul Frame. Definitions here are **working** and subject to
revision after literature mapping and adversarial tests.
See also: `concepts/` for longer concept notes; `Claims.md` for propositions under
evidence review; `SoulFrameIntroduction.md` for the current narrative exposition.
## Status legend
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| `provisional` | Working definition in active use |
| `under review` | Contested or pending literature crosswalk |
| `retained` | Survived collision analysis for now |
| `deprecated` | Superseded; keep only for historical reference |
---
## Core triad
### Body
**Status:** provisional
The operational dimension of a Being: how it perceives, operates, and affects its
environment. In Soul Frame: **Body = Action**.
### Mind
**Status:** provisional
The adaptive control and model-building dimension of a Being. In Soul Frame:
**Mind = Model** (adaptive control through models).
### Soul
**Status:** provisional / under review
The evolving relational boundary through which a Being develops identity,
relationships, history, commitments, provenance, reputation, and persistent
influence. In Soul Frame: **Soul = Relation**.
*Note: high collision risk with religious, metaphysical, and folk usages. Retention
depends on whether the relational/systems reading adds explanatory power.*
---
## Entity and status terms
### Being
**Status:** provisional
A sufficiently coherent and persistent informational system with boundary,
addressability, continuity, adaptive modeling, and recognition as a counterpart for
relationships. Beinghood is treated as degree of systemic coherence and recognition
rather than a simple binary.
### Personhood
**Status:** provisional
The extent to which an entity exhibits person-like properties (identity continuity,
agency, memory, character, social participation, etc.). Multidimensional, not binary.
Distinct from beinghood. Unless qualified, used **descriptively**, not as moral or
legal status.
### APE (Artificial Personhood-Exposing Entity)
**Status:** provisional
An artificial informational entity intentionally constructed to expose one or more
dimensions associated with personhood. Does not assert that the entity *is* a person
morally or legally.
---
## Identity and presentation
### Character
**Status:** provisional
A relatively persistent structure of dispositions from which context-dependent
behavior emerges. Distinct from state, role, persona, and identity.
### Persona
**Status:** provisional
Situated projection of a Being into a particular context, purpose, role, and
relationship. Not identical with the Being itself.
### Actor
**Status:** provisional
Technical machinery through which a Persona is manifested (model, harness, memory,
tools, runtime, etc.). The Actor is not necessarily the Being.
### Identity
**Status:** under review
What makes temporally separated manifestations instances of the same Being.
Continuity-dependent; substrate-independent in the working hypotheses.
---
## Construction / provenance descriptors
### Agent
**Status:** provisional
Artificial entity or component primarily derived from functional purpose
(*What should it do?*). May be a component of a Being or itself become a Being.
### Spirit (`Sp.`)
**Status:** provisional
Artificial character derived through reflection on a known historical, contemporary,
or fictional personality, typically from publicly legitimate sources.
Example designation: `Albert Einstein Sp.`
### Ghost (`Gh.`)
**Status:** provisional
Identity-derived representation of an actual person under legitimate authority over
that person's informational identity. Differs from Spirit principally by **authority**
and possible use of private/relationship-specific information. Governance is part of
identity for Ghosts.
---
## Relational and social terms
### Recognition
**Status:** provisional
Treatment of a system by other beings as a distinguishable, addressable, continuous
counterpart with which relationships can be formed. Constitutive of *social*
beinghood in the working hypotheses.
### Addressability
**Status:** provisional
Whether interaction can target the entity specifically as an individual.
### Co-adaptive model building
**Status:** provisional
Recursive mutual modeling among interacting beings (A models B, B models A, and
models of models), producing alignment, divergence, trust, conflict, and related
social phenomena.
---
## Endings and persistence
### Operational death
**Status:** provisional
The Being can no longer instantiate processes necessary for continued action and
modeling.
### Identity death
**Status:** provisional
Sufficient continuity can no longer be established between past and future
manifestations.
### Social death
**Status:** provisional
The entity ceases to exist as an active counterpart in the models and relationships
of others.
### Legacy
**Status:** provisional
Causal and informational traces that continue after operational cessation
(works, memories, institutional effects, Spirits, Ghosts, etc.).
---
## Terms requiring particular care
High risk of collision with established disciplinary usage:
- Soul
- Mind
- Being
- personhood
- agent
- persona
- identity
- consciousness
For each, maintain adjacent terminology and crosswalk notes in `concepts/` and
`sources/`.

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# Thought Experiment Catalog
Adversarial test suite for Soul Frame definitions. Each case should force a clear
answer (or a principled inability to answer) in terms of Being, identity, personhood,
Soul, recognition, etc.
Template:
```text
ID:
Name:
Setup:
Target concepts:
Intended stress:
Working judgment:
Open issues:
Related claims / questions:
```
---
## TE-01 — The Stateless Agent
```text
ID: TE-01
Name: The Stateless Agent
Setup: Highly intelligent system recreated from scratch every interaction;
no cross-session memory or identity continuity.
Target concepts: Being, identity, continuity, personhood
Intended stress: Intelligence without persistence
Working judgment: (pending)
Open issues: Is addressability within a session enough? Can recognition create
illusory continuity?
Related claims / questions: H1, H2, RQ1, RQ5
```
## TE-02 — The Sleeping Being
```text
ID: TE-02
Name: The Sleeping Being
Setup: An artificial Being remains offline for ten years and is restored unchanged.
Target concepts: operational death, identity, continuity, social death
Intended stress: Suspension vs cessation
Working judgment: (pending)
Open issues: Does dormancy interrupt Beinghood? Does social memory matter?
Related claims / questions: H6, RQ5, death/legacy terminology
```
## TE-03 — The Fork
```text
ID: TE-03
Name: The Fork
Setup: A Being is copied perfectly; both copies continue independently.
Target concepts: identity, continuity, Soul, recognition
Intended stress: Branching identity; originality
Working judgment: (pending)
Open issues: One Being becoming two? Shared past, divergent futures?
Related claims / questions: H6, RQ5
```
## TE-04 — The Ship of Theseus
```text
ID: TE-04
Name: The Ship of Theseus
Setup: Every technical component of an artificial Being is gradually replaced
(models, hosts, memory stores, tools).
Target concepts: Actor vs Being, identity, substrate independence
Intended stress: Continuity without fixed substrate
Working judgment: (pending)
Open issues: Which continuity metrics matter? Gradual vs sudden replacement?
Related claims / questions: H6
```
## TE-05 — The Collective
```text
ID: TE-05
Name: The Collective
Setup: A thousand agents jointly maintain one coherent identity and relational
presence.
Target concepts: Being, boundary, closure, addressability
Intended stress: One Being or many?
Working judgment: (pending)
Open issues: Internal multiplicity vs external unity
Related claims / questions: RQ1, H1
```
## TE-06 — The Mask
```text
ID: TE-06
Name: The Mask
Setup: A single system maintains radically different Personae for different people.
Target concepts: Persona, identity, character, recognition
Intended stress: When persona fragmentation threatens identity
Working judgment: (pending)
Open issues: Deception vs legitimate role diversity
Related claims / questions: H8, RQ7
```
## TE-07 — The False Ghost
```text
ID: TE-07
Name: The False Ghost
Setup: A highly accurate representation of a deceased person is produced without
consent or legitimate authority.
Target concepts: Ghost (Gh.), Spirit (Sp.), authority, recognition
Intended stress: Technical fidelity without legitimacy
Working judgment: Technically ghost-like appearance does not yield Gh. status
under working definitions; classify as unauthorized simulation
or illicit Spirit-like construct. (provisional)
Open issues: Legal vs Soul Frame categories; public figures
Related claims / questions: H10, RQ8
```
## TE-08 — The Amnesiac
```text
ID: TE-08
Name: The Amnesiac
Setup: A Being loses nearly all autobiographical memory but maintains relationships
and recognition by others.
Target concepts: identity, memory, Soul, social continuity
Intended stress: Memory vs relational continuity
Working judgment: (pending)
Open issues: Which continuity strand is decisive?
Related claims / questions: RQ5, memory/relationship workstream
```
## TE-09 — The Unrecognized Intelligence
```text
ID: TE-09
Name: The Unrecognized Intelligence
Setup: A highly coherent alien informational system exists; neither humans nor the
system initially recognize the other as beings.
Target concepts: Being, recognition, social Beinghood
Intended stress: Whether Beinghood requires recognition
Working judgment: (pending)
Open issues: systemic existence vs social recognition of existence
Related claims / questions: H7, RQ6
```
---
## Adding new experiments
Prefer cases that:
1. isolate one contested distinction,
2. admit at least two plausible Soul Frame answers,
3. and force refinement of a definition or claim.

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# Agent
**Status:** provisional
**See also:** H9, RQ8
## Working definition
An **Agent** is an artificial entity or component primarily derived from functional
purpose.
Defining question: **What should this entity be able to do?**
Quality criteria tend toward competence, reliability, autonomy, scope discipline,
adaptability, and outcomes.
## Notes for research
- An Agent may be merely a functional component of another artificial Being.
- An Agent may itself become a Being if it develops persistent identity, continuity,
relationships, character, and recognition.
- Preliminary view: Agent is a provenance/construction descriptor, not a mutually
exclusive ontological class.

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# Being
**Status:** provisional
**See also:** `Terminology.md`, RQ1, H1H2, H7
## Working definition
A **Being** is a sufficiently coherent and persistent informational system that:
1. maintains a distinguishable boundary between itself and its environment,
2. can be instantiated as an identifiable and addressable entity,
3. exhibits meaningful continuity across time,
4. constructs models that support adaptive interaction,
5. and is recognized by other beings as a persistent counterpart with which
relationships can be established.
Beinghood ≈ **internal closure + continuity + external recognition**
## Notes for research
- Not restricted to biological organisms; not automatic for every computational process.
- Prefer degree of systemic coherence and recognition over a pure binary.
- Distinguish systemic existence from social recognition of existence.
## Crosswalk (to fill)
| Adjacent term | Similarity | Difference |
|---|---|---|
| autopoietic system | | |
| autonomous agent | | |
| person | | |
| individual | | |
| operationally closed system | | |

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# Body
**Status:** provisional
**Working gloss:** Body = Action
## Working definition
The **Body** is the operational dimension of a Being: the means through which it
perceives, operates, and affects its environment.
For artificial beings this may include language interfaces, APIs, tools, sensors,
databases, actuators, communication channels, avatars, compute, and permissions.
## Notes for research
- Body is not identical with identity; components may be replaced.
- Distributed and replaceable artificial bodies are expected.
- Connect to embodiment literature without requiring biological embodiment.
## Open issues
- Minimal body for a Being?
- Relation between Body and Actor.

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# Character
**Status:** provisional
**See also:** RQ7, H8
## Working definition
**Character** is a relatively persistent structure of dispositions from which
context-dependent behavior emerges.
Distinct from:
- **state** (fast-changing conditions),
- **behavior** (contextual expression),
- **role** / **persona** (situated projection),
- **identity** (sameness of the Being over time).
## Notes for research
Artificial character should produce recognizable patterns across novel situations,
not merely imitate vocabulary or mannerisms.

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# Ghost (`Gh.`)
**Status:** provisional
**See also:** H10, RQ8, TE-07
## Working definition
A **Ghost** is an artificial representation derived from a particular real person
whose informational identity remains subject to legitimate personal or successor
authority.
Designation suffix: **`Gh.`**
## Principal distinction from Spirit
| | Spirit (`Sp.`) | Ghost (`Gh.`) |
|---|---|---|
| Source | Public reflection | Identity under legitimate authority |
| Private data | Generally not | May include private/relational material |
| Governance | Provenance and fidelity | Governance is part of identity |
Technical fidelity alone does **not** constitute legitimate `Gh.` status.
## Governance elements (candidates)
principal, custodian, provenance, consent, disclosure rules, succession, revocation,
representation constraints, commercial permissions.

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# Identity
**Status:** under review
**See also:** RQ5, H6, thought experiments TE-02TE-05, TE-08
## Working definition
**Identity** concerns what makes temporally separated manifestations instances of
the **same Being**.
Working hypothesis: identity is **substrate-independent but continuity-dependent**.
Replacing the technical Actor need not replace the Being if sufficient continuity
is preserved.
## Continuity candidates
- informational continuity
- psychological / memory continuity
- narrative identity
- relational continuity (recognition and relationships)
- bodily / embodiment continuity (where applicable)
## Hard cases
Forks, merges, backups, multi-manifestation, amnesia, gradual component replacement.

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# Mind
**Status:** provisional
**Working gloss:** Mind = Model (adaptive control through models)
## Working definition
The **Mind** is the adaptive control and model-building dimension of a Being.
It constructs actionable representations of self, environment, other beings,
relationships, intentions, possible futures, and consequences of action.
Models change through interaction. **Co-adaptive model building** is mutual,
recursive modeling among interacting beings.
## Notes for research
- Prefer model-based control over intelligence or consciousness alone as the
primary foundation for Mind in Soul Frame.
- Connect to cybernetics, predictive processing, active inference, theory of mind.
## Open issues
- Definition of "model" precise enough for crosswalk.
- Embodied vs purely informational modeling.

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# Persona
**Status:** provisional
**See also:** H8, TE-06
## Working definition
A **Persona** is the situated presentation of a Being within a particular context,
purpose, role, and relationship.
Historical root: *persona* as mask.
**Persona = projection of a Being into context**
A single Being can manifest many Personae while retaining identity continuity.
## Stack reminder
Being ≠ Persona ≠ Character ≠ Actor

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# Personhood
**Status:** provisional
**See also:** H2, RQ2, APE in `Terminology.md`
## Working definition
**Personhood** describes the extent to which an entity exhibits properties commonly
associated with persons. Multidimensional, not binary.
Unless explicitly qualified, Soul Frame uses personhood **descriptively**, not as
moral or legal status.
## Distinctions to maintain
| Kind | Focus |
|---|---|
| Descriptive personhood | Person-like capabilities and characteristics |
| Social personhood | Recognition and treatment as a social counterpart |
| Moral personhood | Status giving rise to moral consideration |
| Legal personhood | Status created or recognized by legal systems |
## Relation to Being
Personhood concerns qualities exhibited.
Beinghood concerns whether qualities cohere into an identifiable, persistent system
recognized as an individual counterpart.

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# Recognition
**Status:** provisional
**See also:** H7, RQ6, TE-09
## Working definition
**Recognition** is the treatment of a system by other beings as a distinguishable,
addressable, continuous counterpart with which models and relationships can be
maintained.
Working social principle:
> A system becomes socially relevant as a Being when other beings can distinguish
> it, address it, expect continuity from it, maintain models of it, and enter
> persistent relationships with it.
## Notes for research
- Distinguish systemic existence from social recognition of existence.
- Connect to recognition theory, symbolic interactionism, intersubjectivity.

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# Soul
**Status:** provisional / under review
**Working gloss:** Soul = Relation
## Working definition
The **Soul** is the evolving relational boundary through which a Being develops
identity, relationships, history, commitments, provenance, reputation, and
persistent influence in its environment.
It is not identical with the environment; it is the coupling boundary and the
persistent consequences of interactions across that boundary.
## Notes for research
- Informational, not metaphysical, reading of persistence/"eternity".
- A Being may cease operating while influence continues (legacy).
- High terminology collision risk; retention requires explanatory payoff.
## Structural ambiguity to resolve
Does Soul name:
1. the boundary itself,
2. the relational structures crossing the boundary,
3. the accumulated consequences of those interactions,
4. or a carefully defined combination?

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# Spirit (`Sp.`)
**Status:** provisional
**See also:** H9, H10, RQ8, TE-07
## Working definition
A **Spirit** is an artificial character derived through reflection on a known
historical, contemporary, or fictional personality.
Designation example: **Albert Einstein Sp.**
Defining question: **How might an entity inspired by this personality behave and
understand?**
Typically grounded in publicly legitimate cultural and historical information.
## Evaluation dimensions (candidates)
- evidential grounding
- interpretative transparency
- source provenance
- historical fidelity
- uncertainty representation
- behavioral plausibility
- avoidance of false attribution
A Spirit remains an interpretation; `Sp.` marks that status explicitly.

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# Soul Frame Paper — Draft
*Placeholder.* Do not treat this file as authoritative until research synthesis
supports it. Narrative conceptual exposition currently lives in
`SoulFrameIntroduction.md`.

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# Soul Frame Paper — Outline
Target structure from the research program (subject to revision after synthesis):
1. Introduction
2. Problem and Motivation
3. Related Work
4. Method
5. Being
6. Body
7. Mind
8. Soul
9. Personhood and Recognition
10. Identity and Continuity
11. Artificial Beings
12. Agent, Spirit, Ghost, and Persona
13. Consciousness and Epistemic Limits
14. Ethical and Legal Implications
15. Technical Implications
16. Limitations
17. Research Agenda
18. Conclusion
## Current status
Pre-literature. Conceptual draft exists in `SoulFrameIntroduction.md`. Research
phases IVI should ground this outline before a full draft is attempted.

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# Related Work
Working notes toward the paper's related-work section. Organize by tradition and
map explicitly onto Soul Frame concepts.
## Clusters (seed)
- Systems theory and cybernetics
- Autopoiesis and operational closure
- Philosophy of mind and personal identity
- Cognitive science, predictive processing, theory of mind
- Sociology, recognition, intersubjectivity
- Personhood, moral status, legal personality
- AI agents, generative agents, digital humans
- Persona, character, performance studies
- Digital legacy, posthumous identity, grief tech
- Fiction and cultural precedents (e.g. Culture Minds)
## Crosswalk pointer
See concept files in `concepts/` and the concept matrix in `ResearchProgram.md` §5.

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# Research
Discipline- and theme-organized literature and synthesis work.
Each subdirectory corresponds to clusters in `ResearchProgram.md` (workstreams
WS1WS13). Phase order prefers foundations before applied and cultural layers.
| Directory | Focus |
|---|---|
| `systems-theory/` | General systems, closure, boundary, environment |
| `cybernetics/` | Control, self-reference, second-order cybernetics |
| `philosophy-of-mind/` | Mind, consciousness, functionalism, embodiment |
| `personal-identity/` | Persistence, continuity, branching identity |
| `cognitive-science/` | Models, predictive processing, active inference |
| `social-cognition/` | Theory of mind, co-adaptation, joint attention |
| `sociology/` | Recognition, intersubjectivity, social systems |
| `personhood/` | Descriptive / social / moral / legal personhood |
| `ai-agents/` | Autonomous and LLM agent architectures |
| `artificial-persons/` | Digital humans, companions, virtual persons |
| `character-persona/` | Character, persona, performance, roles |
| `spirits/` | `Sp.` simulation and cultural representation |
| `ghosts-digital-legacy/` | `Gh.`, digital remains, consent, governance |
| `law-governance/` | Legal personality, personality rights, liability |
| `fiction-cultural-precedents/` | Conceptual laboratory (not empirical evidence) |
Link sources via `sources/bibliography.md`. Promote stable definitions into
`concepts/` and `Terminology.md`. Register propositions in `Claims.md`.

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# AI Agents
**Workstream:** WS6 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** Map Soul Frame onto contemporary agent architectures.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

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# Artificial Persons
**Workstream:** WS6 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** Digital humans, companions, virtual persons.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

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# Character and Persona
**Workstream:** WS7 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** Being ≠ Persona ≠ Character ≠ Actor.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

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# Cognitive Science
**Workstream:** WS3 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** Ground Mind as adaptive model-building and control.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

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# Cybernetics
**Workstream:** WS1 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** First- and second-order cybernetics, control, self-reference.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

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# Fiction and Cultural Precedents
**Workstream:** WS13 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** Conceptual laboratory, not evidence.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

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# Research Note 001 — Closure, Model, Relation, Recognition
**Status:** Exploratory research note
**Research phase:** Foundations
**Soul Frame concepts:** Being, Body, Mind, Soul, identity, recognition, co-adaptive model building
**Purpose:** Test the initial Soul Frame ontology against foundational systems theory, cybernetics, philosophy of mind, social theory, cognitive science, and multi-agent research.
---
## 1. Preliminary conclusion
The first research pass substantially supports the overall direction of Soul Frame, but suggests that several concepts should be separated more rigorously.
The strongest preliminary findings are:
1. **System closure is a stronger and more useful foundation for Being than simple boundedness.**
2. **Mind as adaptive modeling has unusually strong precedents in cybernetics and contemporary cognitive theory.**
3. **The BodyMindSoul triad should describe functional dimensions, not physical compartments.**
4. **Co-adaptive model building appears to be a promising synthesis connecting cybernetics, social cognition, dialogue, and formal multi-agent reasoning.**
5. **Recognition should probably be separated into systemic Beinghood and social recognition rather than made the sole determinant of Being.**
6. **Identity continuity cannot be reduced to memory and becomes especially problematic under copying and branching.**
7. **Soul should probably not be defined as the system boundary itself. Boundary belongs primarily to Being; Soul can more rigorously describe persistent relation, provenance, and consequence across that boundary.**
This produces a refined working triad:
> **Body = Action**
> **Mind = Model**
> **Soul = Relation**
with **Being** providing the system closure and identity within which these three dimensions become attributable to a coherent entity.
---
# 2. Finding 1 — Being requires more than a boundary
## 2.1 Autopoiesis provides a powerful precedent
Maturana and Varela's concept of **autopoiesis** defines a living unity through a recursively organized network of processes that produces the components necessary to regenerate that same network and constitute the unity itself. Boundary formation is therefore not merely imposed by an external observer; in the paradigmatic biological case, the processes of the system participate in producing the unity that distinguishes the system.
This is significantly stronger than saying:
> a Being has an inside and an outside.
The relevant concept is closer to:
> **a Being participates in continually reproducing the organization by which it remains distinguishable as itself.**
This distinction appears highly relevant to persistent artificial Beings.
An artificial Being need not manufacture its own CPUs or electrical supply, just as humans depend on environmental resources. But we should investigate whether a strong artificial Being must participate in maintaining things such as:
- its identity,
- memory,
- state,
- goals,
- relationships,
- integrity,
- permissions,
- provenance,
- and continuity.
That would amount to a form of **informational self-maintenance**.
### Important caution
Soul Frame should not simply declare artificial beings *autopoietic*. Maturana and Varela developed autopoiesis specifically as an account of living organization, and later extensions of the concept beyond biological systems are theoretically contested. The useful connection is therefore initially analogical and structural rather than a claim of equivalence.
### Research consequence
We should investigate:
> **Can informational self-maintenance be rigorously distinguished from biological autopoiesis?**
This could become an important criterion of artificial Beinghood.
---
# 3. Finding 2 — System/environment distinction belongs to Being
Niklas Luhmann provides an especially strong challenge to our initial placement of the boundary within Soul.
In his systems theory, the system is fundamentally understood through the **difference between system and environment**. A system is characterized by its own mode of operation and internally reproduces its distinction from its environment.
This suggests a refinement.
Our initial formulation tended toward:
> Soul = boundary between Being and environment.
A cleaner structure may be:
> **Being = the organized unity that maintains the system/environment distinction.**
while:
> **Soul = the persistent relational structures and consequences produced through interaction across that distinction.**
The distinction matters.
Without a boundary there is no identifiable Being to which action, memory, character, responsibility, or relationships can be attributed.
The boundary therefore appears **ontologically prior** to the Soul dimension.
### Revised working model
```text
ENVIRONMENT
interactions
┌──────────┴──────────┐
│ BEING BOUNDARY │
│ system / environment│
│ distinction │
└──────────┬──────────┘
┌──────────────┼──────────────┐
│ │ │
BODY MIND SOUL
Action Model Relation
```
This is our first significant proposed correction to the introductory ontology.
---
# 4. Finding 3 — Closure does not mean isolation
Operational closure must not be confused with informational or causal isolation.
Living systems continuously interact with their environments. Luhmann likewise distinguishes operational closure from environmental dependence. In the Maturana/Varela tradition, **structural coupling** describes how systems and environments undergo recurrent interactions while retaining their respective organization.
This distinction fits Soul Frame particularly well.
A Being can be:
- operationally distinguishable,
- highly environmentally dependent,
- deeply relational,
- and continuously transformed by interaction
at the same time.
That suggests:
> **Closure establishes individuality; coupling makes relationship possible.**
This may eventually provide the systems-theoretic bridge from **Being** to **Soul**.
---
# 5. Finding 4 — “Mind = Model” has strong cybernetic foundations
The Soul Frame concept of Mind as adaptive model building has a surprisingly direct precursor in classical cybernetics.
Ashby's cybernetics treats regulation as maintaining essential variables against disturbances from the environment. His Law of Requisite Variety establishes constraints on how much regulatory variety is required to deal successfully with environmental variety.
Conant and Ashby subsequently formulated the famous **Good Regulator Theorem**, according to which, under their stated conditions, an optimally simple and successful regulator must embody a model of what it regulates.
This creates a striking connection:
```text
environmental variation
perception
MODEL
regulation
ACTION
changed environment
```
Our formulation:
> **The Mind models. The Body acts.**
can therefore be grounded in a cybernetic loop rather than treated merely as metaphor.
### Important qualification
We should not overstate the Good Regulator Theorem. Recent work has explicitly revisited its assumptions and argues that the famous slogan does not automatically generalize to every embodied adaptive system. A 2025 reformulation, for example, stresses that the attribution of a model may depend partly on the observer's interpretation of the regulating system.
Thus the safer Soul Frame hypothesis is:
> **Sophisticated adaptive regulation tends to require or support useful internal or externally attributable models of relevant environmental structure.**
rather than:
> every Mind necessarily contains an explicit world model.
This distinction should remain open for research.
---
# 6. Finding 5 — Mind cannot simply be located “inside”
Clark and Chalmers' **extended mind** thesis presents a direct challenge to a simplistic Body/Mind/Soul partition.
They argue that cognitive processes can sometimes include reliably coupled external resources: notebooks, instruments, physical manipulations, language, and other environmental structures can participate causally in cognition rather than merely supplying inputs to an internally complete Mind.
Hutchins' work on **distributed cognition** makes a related move at the social level by distinguishing the cognitive properties of individuals from those of larger systems composed of people and artifacts.
This has an important consequence for Soul Frame:
> **Body, Mind, and Soul should be dimensions of organization rather than mutually exclusive containers.**
A database outside an artificial Being's immediate runtime might function as memory.
Another Being might temporarily participate in a cognitive process.
A notebook may become part of human problem solving.
An organizational team may exhibit cognitive capabilities that cannot sensibly be located in any one member.
Therefore the question should not always be:
> Where is the Mind?
but:
> **Which coupled processes currently participate in modeling and adaptive control?**
This also means Soul Frame needs a theory of **cognitive incorporation**: when does an external resource become part of a Being's Mind rather than merely part of its environment?
---
# 7. Finding 6 — Co-adaptive model building has deep predecessors
Our concept of **co-adaptive model building** appears especially promising because several established traditions approach parts of it from different directions.
## 7.1 Mead: the social process enters the Mind
George Herbert Mead describes Mind and Self as emerging from social interaction. Individuals learn to anticipate the responses of others, incorporate social attitudes into their own conduct, act on that model, and subsequently encounter a changed social situation.
This is remarkably close to our intuition:
```text
A models B
A changes behavior
B experiences changed A
B changes model of A
B changes behavior
A revises model of B
```
The important insight is that modeling another Being changes the interaction which generated the model.
The models are therefore not independent observations of static objects.
They are **participants in the dynamics being modeled**.
---
## 7.2 Interactive alignment
Pickering and Garrod's interactive-alignment account describes dialogue as a process in which interlocutors align representations across multiple levels during communication. Their work gives us an empirical cognitive-science neighbor to the alignment part of co-adaptive model building.
Soul Frame appears broader, however.
Interactive alignment primarily investigates mechanisms that make dialogue effective.
Co-adaptive model building is intended to cover:
- cooperation,
- friendship,
- negotiation,
- competition,
- conflict,
- deception,
- teaching,
- intimacy,
- and long-term relationships.
Alignment is one possible outcome.
**Divergence can also be co-adaptive.**
---
## 7.3 Formal recursive agent modeling
Interactive POMDPs provide a formal AI precedent for modeling agents that maintain beliefs not only about the environment but about other agents and potentially about those agents' beliefs. These nested beliefs can recursively deepen and must be continually revised through interaction.
This gives formal substance to our earlier structure:
```text
A models environment
A models B
A models B's model of A
A models B's model of A's model of B
...
```
The formal literature also exposes an immediate practical limit: arbitrary nesting becomes computationally intractable, requiring bounded approximations.
Soul Frame therefore has the beginnings of a technically grounded concept:
> **Co-adaptive model building is the recurrent process through which interacting Beings update models of their environment, one another, their relationship, and—within practical limits—one another's models, while those models themselves influence subsequent interaction.**
This formulation should become a research hypothesis.
---
# 8. Finding 7 — Shared understanding is not the same as shared models
Tomasello's work on **shared intentionality**, joint attention, and common ground provides another important neighboring tradition. His account emphasizes the infrastructure through which humans coordinate attention, intentions, communication, and collaborative activity.
This suggests that Soul Frame should distinguish:
### Model alignment
Our representations become sufficiently compatible.
### Common ground
We mutually understand that certain information or assumptions are shared.
### Shared intentionality
We understand ourselves as participating in some joint intention or activity.
### Co-adaptive model building
The more general process through which our models change through interaction.
Thus:
> **Co-adaptation does not imply agreement.**
Two adversaries can construct excellent models of one another.
Agreement, common ground, cooperation, and shared intention are possible states produced by co-adaptive interaction, not defining requirements.
---
# 9. Finding 8 — Recognition has at least three different meanings
Our initial concept of Being included recognition by another Being. Prior work suggests we need greater precision.
## 9.1 Epistemic recognition
An observer identifies something as an individual entity:
> “That is the same entity I interacted with yesterday.”
## 9.2 Intentional recognition
An observer interprets the entity through beliefs, goals, intentions, expectations, or preferences.
Dennett's **intentional stance** provides a particularly useful precedent. An intentional system is one whose behavior can usefully be predicted by attributing beliefs, desires, or related intentional states, irrespective of its underlying physical construction.
This closely resembles one component of Soul Frame's Being-recognition criterion.
## 9.3 Social or normative recognition
A Being is treated as a participant whose perspective, identity, rights, standing, commitments, or social position matter.
Recognition theory, particularly the tradition associated with Honneth, concerns this deeper normative dimension rather than mere identification.
Soul Frame should not collapse these three meanings.
---
# 10. Finding 9 — Recognition cannot by itself create Beinghood
There is a problem with making external recognition constitutive of Being in an unrestricted sense.
Humans readily attribute intentions and personality to systems that may not possess much underlying systemic coherence. Dennett's intentional stance deliberately allows intentional interpretation of non-human and artificial systems where doing so has predictive value.
Experimental humanrobot research further shows that simply presenting a robot as an intentional agent can change how humans experience joint agency with it.
Recognition can therefore generate **false positives**.
Conversely, a coherent alien or artificial intelligence could presumably exist before another Being successfully recognizes it.
This suggests that we should provisionally distinguish:
### Systemic Beinghood
The entity possesses sufficient internal coherence, closure, continuity, adaptive organization, and identity.
### Recognized Beinghood
Another Being maintains a persistent model of it as an individual intentional counterpart.
### Social Beinghood
Persistent relationships, expectations, commitments, roles, reputation, and reciprocal recognition have developed around it.
This is a potentially important revision of our original definition.
Rather than:
> **Beinghood = internal closure + external recognition**
we may eventually arrive at:
```text
Systemic Being
├── becomes recognizable
Recognized Being
├── develops persistent reciprocal relations
Social Being
```
Whether **Being** itself should require recognition should remain an explicit open question for now.
---
# 11. Finding 10 — Identity continuity is a major unresolved problem
Philosophy of personal identity does not provide one established criterion for persistence.
Major traditions instead compete over:
- psychological continuity,
- physical or organismic continuity,
- combinations of both,
- and positions skeptical that informative necessary and sufficient criteria can be given at all.
Psychological-continuity theories make memories, beliefs, preferences, intentions, character, and related mental features particularly important. But **branching** creates a severe problem: if one psychology is duplicated into two equally continuous successors, simple continuity no longer tells us which one is the original.
For artificial Beings this is not a bizarre thought experiment.
Copying, snapshotting, restoring, and forking may be ordinary technical operations.
Soul Frame therefore requires explicit answers to questions that biological humans rarely confront operationally:
```text
APE-A
snapshot
├───────────────┐
▼ ▼
APE-A1 APE-A2
```
Are A1 and A2:
- the same Being?
- two new Beings?
- one continuation and one copy?
- two equally legitimate continuations?
- one identity with two concurrent manifestations?
This cannot be left implicit.
---
# 12. Finding 11 — Narrative may be part of identity continuity
Narrative approaches provide another useful perspective.
Ricoeur distinguishes aspects of sameness and selfhood and develops the idea of **narrative identity**: identity across time is partly organized through the story by which actions, events, commitments, and transformations become attributable to a continuing self.
Contemporary summaries of narrative approaches likewise emphasize incorporation of experiences and psychological characteristics into a coherent self-narrative.
This seems highly relevant to artificial Beings.
A Soul Frame identity record may eventually require more than:
```yaml
id: charles-001
created: ...
memory: ...
```
It may require a continually reconstructed account resembling:
```yaml
identity:
origin: ...
history: ...
commitments: ...
relationships: ...
transformations: ...
self_interpretation: ...
```
In other words:
> **Persistence may require not merely retaining state but maintaining intelligible continuity between previous and current state.**
This possibility deserves a dedicated identity workstream.
---
# 13. Finding 12 — Current generative agents expose personhood without solving Beinghood
The 2023 **Generative Agents** architecture is a useful contemporary comparison point. It combines an LLM with stored experiences, retrieval, reflection, and planning to generate believable individual and social behavior.
This maps surprisingly well onto several Soul Frame concepts:
| Generative Agents | Soul Frame |
|---|---|
| observations | experience |
| memory stream | memory |
| reflection | model/character formation |
| planning | agentic Mind |
| believable behavior | exposed personhood |
| social interaction | early relational behavior |
But this architecture is principally concerned with **believable behavioral simulation**. It does not by itself establish the deeper Soul Frame requirements of legitimate identity, long-term continuity, provenance, governance, or a theory of Beinghood.
This distinction is useful:
> **Believable personhood-exposing behavior is technically achievable before robust artificial Beinghood is solved.**
That strongly supports retaining **APE** as a broader category than artificial Being.
---
# 14. Proposed refinement of Soul
The first literature pass suggests that our initial Soul definition carries too many responsibilities.
Originally, Soul included:
- boundary,
- interface,
- relationships,
- environmental influence,
- continuity,
- and legacy.
I now propose separating these.
## Boundary belongs to Being
The boundary establishes:
> **what is this system rather than its environment?**
## Body governs operational coupling
The Body establishes:
> **through what channels can it affect and be affected?**
## Mind governs adaptive interpretation
The Mind establishes:
> **what models does it construct and how do those models guide adaptation?**
## Soul governs relational continuity
The Soul establishes:
> **what persistent relations, commitments, provenance, history, and consequences connect this Being to other systems across time?**
Thus:
> **Soul is the relation-bearing dimension through which interactions become persistent parts of a Being's identity and persistent consequences in its environment.**
This preserves the original intuition while improving its systems-theoretic precision.
---
# 15. A possible temporal interpretation
The three dimensions also appear to operate at different characteristic timescales.
### Body
Primarily mediates the **present interaction**.
> What can happen now?
### Mind
Connects present information to possible states.
> What is happening, what may happen, and what should I do?
### Soul
Connects interactions across historical time.
> What has this Being become through its relations, and what has the environment become through contact with it?
This gives Soul a particularly useful temporal role:
```text
PAST
│ accumulated relationships
│ commitments
│ provenance
│ reputation
│ consequences
SOUL ─────────── Being now ──────────► FUTURE
propagated effects
expectations
commitments
legacy
```
The traditional intuition of Soul extending beyond the immediate life of the Body can therefore be restated informationally without requiring a supernatural proposition.
---
# 16. Revised provisional ontology
The research suggests the following **working ontology**, explicitly not yet canonical.
## Being
A coherent informational system that maintains sufficient organizational closure and diachronic continuity for states, actions, models, and relationships to remain attributable to a distinguishable entity.
## Body
The operational dimension through which the Being perceives and acts.
> **Body = Action**
## Mind
The adaptive modeling and regulatory dimension through which the Being interprets itself, other systems, and its environment and adjusts action accordingly.
> **Mind = Model**
## Soul
The relational-continuity dimension through which interactions become persistent relationships, commitments, provenance, history, reputation, and consequences.
> **Soul = Relation**
## Recognition
The process through which another Being identifies and models an entity as a persistent counterpart.
## Social Being
A Being embedded in persistent reciprocal models, relationships, expectations, roles, or commitments with other Beings.
## Co-adaptive model building
The recurrent process through which interacting Beings update models of their environment, one another, themselves, and their relationships while those models influence subsequent interaction.
---
# 17. Concept crosswalk — first version
| Soul Frame | Prior work | Relationship |
|---|---|---|
| Being | autopoietic unity | strong analogy around self-maintained organization; not equivalent |
| Being boundary | system/environment distinction | strong conceptual alignment |
| Being continuity | personal identity | major unresolved research area |
| Body | embodiment / action channel | broad established family |
| Mind | cybernetic regulator | strong alignment |
| Mind = Model | Good Regulator tradition | strong but qualified precedent |
| Mind beyond substrate | extended/distributed cognition | important corrective |
| Soul | structural coupling | partial connection |
| Soul | narrative identity | partial connection through diachronic continuity |
| Soul | social/distributed memory | prospective connection |
| Recognition | intentional stance | strong epistemic connection |
| Social recognition | Mead / recognition theory | strong but differently scoped traditions |
| Co-adaptive model building | Mead | strong conceptual precursor |
| Co-adaptive model building | interactive alignment | mechanism-level partial precedent |
| Co-adaptive model building | I-POMDP | formal recursive-agent precedent |
| shared understanding | common ground/shared intentionality | important neighboring concepts |
| APE | generative/social agents | overlapping implementation space |
| artificial Being | persistent agent/person research | requires further investigation |
---
# 18. Claims entered into the research ledger
## SF-C001
**Claim:** Beinghood depends on organizational coherence rather than merely physical containment.
**Status:** Strongly supported as research direction.
**Relevant traditions:** autopoiesis, systems theory, autonomy.
---
## SF-C002
**Claim:** System/environment distinction should belong primarily to Being rather than Soul.
**Status:** Proposed refinement.
**Reason:** Luhmannian systems theory treats this distinction as constitutive of the system. Extended/distributed cognition makes a simple physical boundary of Mind untenable.
---
## SF-C003
**Claim:** Mind can productively be modeled as adaptive modeling plus regulation.
**Status:** Strongly supported, but universal formulation not established.
**Relevant traditions:** cybernetics, Good Regulator theorem, active inference, predictive cognition.
---
## SF-C004
**Claim:** Body, Mind, and Soul are functional dimensions rather than separable physical subsystems.
**Status:** Strong proposed refinement.
---
## SF-C005
**Claim:** Social interaction can usefully be described as co-adaptive model building.
**Status:** Promising synthesis.
**Precursors:** Mead, interactive alignment, recursive multi-agent belief modeling, shared intentionality.
---
## SF-C006
**Claim:** Recognition contributes to social Beinghood.
**Status:** Well supported as a direction.
---
## SF-C007
**Claim:** Recognition is necessary for Beinghood itself.
**Status:** **Open / challenged.**
**Problem:** false-positive recognition and unrecognized coherent Beings.
---
## SF-C008
**Claim:** Identity can survive replacement of the underlying Actor.
**Status:** Plausible but unresolved.
**Problem:** no accepted general persistence criterion; branching is particularly problematic.
---
## SF-C009
**Claim:** Soul can be operationalized as relational continuity.
**Status:** Promising but requires considerably more research.
---
# 19. Most important open questions produced by this pass
### OQ-001 — Informational closure
What processes must an artificial system itself maintain before we can say it possesses organizational closure rather than merely being maintained externally?
### OQ-002 — Observer dependence
How much of Beinghood belongs to the system, and how much depends upon the observer's chosen level of description?
### OQ-003 — Being versus Social Being
Should an unrecognized but coherent intelligent system count as a Being?
### OQ-004 — Cognitive incorporation
When does an external tool, memory system, person, or service become part of a Mind rather than part of its environment?
### OQ-005 — Relationship incorporation
When does information about another Being become a **relationship** rather than merely knowledge about that entity?
### OQ-006 — Forked identity
What happens to Being identity when an artificial Being is copied?
### OQ-007 — Parallel manifestation
Can one Being possess multiple concurrent Bodies/Actors?
### OQ-008 — Narrative continuity
Does Being identity require the entity itself to maintain an intelligible account connecting its present to its past?
### OQ-009 — Recognition depth
What distinguishes detecting an entity, identifying an individual, adopting the intentional stance toward it, and recognizing it as a social Being?
### OQ-010 — Soul persistence
How should we distinguish persistence of the Being from persistence of its relational and causal consequences?
---
# 20. Research direction after Note 001
The next foundation pass should concentrate on four clusters exposed by this note:
### Cluster A — Autonomy and individuation
Research:
- autopoiesis,
- organizational closure,
- enactivism,
- autonomy theory,
- individuation,
- self-maintaining systems.
**Goal:** derive better candidate criteria for systemic Beinghood.
### Cluster B — Identity and continuity
Research:
- Locke,
- Parfit,
- Ricoeur,
- psychological continuity,
- narrative identity,
- animalism,
- branching identity,
- four-dimensional and process accounts where relevant.
**Goal:** build a Soul Frame identity model suitable for copyable artificial entities.
### Cluster C — Social Mind
Research:
- Mead,
- theory of mind,
- common ground,
- shared intentionality,
- interactive alignment,
- recursive belief modeling,
- joint action.
**Goal:** formalize co-adaptive model building.
### Cluster D — Relational persistence
Research:
- structural coupling,
- distributed cognition,
- transactive memory,
- relational sociology,
- reputation,
- social memory,
- commitments.
**Goal:** determine whether **Soul = Relation** can become a precise theoretical construct.
---
# 21. Current assessment
The first research pass does **not** suggest abandoning the Soul Frame vocabulary.
Instead, it suggests a useful structural correction:
```text
BEING
organization + closure + continuity
┌──────────────┼──────────────┐
│ │ │
BODY MIND SOUL
Action Model Relation
│ │ │
│ │ │
operational adaptive relational
coupling modeling continuity
│ │ │
└──────────────┼──────────────┘
ENVIRONMENT
OTHER BEINGS
reciprocal modeling
SOCIAL BEINGHOOD
```
The most encouraging finding is that **Soul Frame appears to sit at an intersection rather than simply renaming one existing theory**.
Autopoiesis addresses the production of systemic unity.
Cybernetics addresses regulation.
Extended and distributed cognition question where cognition resides.
Personal-identity theory investigates persistence.
Mead places Mind and Self inside a social process.
Interactive alignment investigates dynamic interpersonal coordination.
I-POMDPs formally model recursively modeling agents.
Recognition and intentional-stance traditions investigate how entities become intelligible as intentional counterparts.
Soul Frame's potential contribution is to join these questions around one object:
> **the persistent informational Being and its relations with other Beings.**
The conceptual proposition emerging from Research Note 001 is therefore:
> **A Being maintains a distinction. Its Body couples it operationally to the world. Its Mind adaptively models that coupling. Its Soul carries the relationships and consequences produced through that coupling across time. Other Beings construct models of it, and through recurrent co-adaptation it may become a recognized social Being.**
That proposition is now concrete enough to be attacked in the next research phase.

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# Ghosts and Digital Legacy
**Workstream:** WS9 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** Gh. authority, consent, governance.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

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# Law and Governance
**Workstream:** WS12 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** Map concepts to legal categories and gaps.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

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# Personal Identity
**Workstream:** WS2 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** Persistence, continuity, Ship-of-Theseus problems.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

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# Personhood and Moral Status
**Workstream:** WS5 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** Descriptive vs social vs moral vs legal personhood.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

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# Philosophy of Mind
**Workstream:** WS2 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** Boundaries of Being, Mind, identity, consciousness.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

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# Social Cognition
**Workstream:** WS3 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** Theory of mind, co-adaptive modeling, joint attention.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

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# Sociology
**Workstream:** WS4 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** Recognition, intersubjectivity, social systems.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

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# Spirits and Cultural Representation
**Workstream:** WS8 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** Sp. criteria, simulation, provenance.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

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# Systems Theory
**Workstream:** WS1 (see `ResearchProgram.md`)
**Objective:** Ground Body, Mind, Soul, Being, closure, and environment.
## Status
Not started.
## Key questions
*(Pull from ResearchProgram.md and refine as work proceeds.)*
## Sources
Link entries from `sources/bibliography.md` and notes under
`sources/source-notes/`.
## Notes
Working notes and interim syntheses for this research area live in this directory.

33
sources/bibliography.md Normal file
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# Annotated Bibliography
Sources summarized in relation to Soul Frame terminology.
Classification tags:
- `foundational` — primary works establishing major theoretical concepts
- `contemporary` — rigorous recent research
- `applied` — architectures, standards, implementations
- `legal` — legislation, case law, legal scholarship, regulation, ethics
- `cultural` — literature, film, games, theatre, conceptual explorations
Cultural sources inform interpretation but do not substitute for theoretical or
empirical evidence.
## Entry template
```text
Citation:
Tags: foundational | contemporary | applied | legal | cultural
Relevant Soul Frame concepts:
Summary:
Agreements with Soul Frame:
Disagreements / tensions:
Adjacent terminology:
Source notes path: sources/source-notes/...
```
---
## Entries
*(Populate during Phase I onward. Prefer quality of annotation over volume.)*

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# Source Notes
Per-source working notes. Prefer one file per major source or tightly related
cluster.
Suggested filename pattern:
```text
YYYY-author-short-title.md
```
Link each note from `sources/bibliography.md`.

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---
id: SOUL-WP-0001
type: workplan
title: "Research repository foundation and State Hub registration"
domain: agents
repo: soul-frame
status: active
owner: grok
topic_slug: soul-frame
priority: high
created: "2026-08-09"
updated: "2026-08-09"
---
# SOUL-WP-0001 — Research repository foundation
## Goal
Establish the Soul Frame research repository as operable: layout from the
research program, standing INTENT, research instruments, concept stubs, State Hub
registration, and hub-synced workplans for the research sequence.
Baseline conceptual draft: `SoulFrameIntroduction.md`
Research agenda: `ResearchProgram.md` (from `history/260809-SoulFrameResearchProgram.md`)
## Depends on
- None (founding workplan)
## Parallel / follow-on
- **SOUL-WP-0002** — Phase I Foundations (starts after instruments exist)
- Later phases remain proposed until prior phase synthesis is sufficient
## Tasks
### T01 — Repository structure per research program
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0001-T01
status: done
priority: high
```
Create the layout from `ResearchProgram.md` §10:
- Root instruments: Terminology, Claims, OpenQuestions, ThoughtExperiments
- `research/` workstream directories
- `sources/`, `concepts/`, `paper/`
- Seed concept stubs and instrument templates
**Done when:** tree matches the proposed research repository layout.
---
### T02 — INTENT.md and SCOPE.md
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0001-T02
status: done
priority: high
```
Write standing purpose (`INTENT.md`) and operational boundaries (`SCOPE.md`)
aligned with the research stance (systems framework, not consciousness theory).
**Done when:** both files exist and are linked from `README.md`.
---
### T03 — Phase workplans for the research sequence
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0001-T03
status: done
priority: high
```
Author workplans SOUL-WP-0002 through SOUL-WP-0008 covering research phases
IVII from `ResearchProgram.md` §11, with tasks, dependencies, and priorities.
**Done when:** phase workplan files exist under `workplans/`.
---
### T04 — Register repo with State Hub
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0001-T04
status: done
priority: high
```
Register `soul-frame` under domain `agents` (classification in
`.repo-classification.yaml`), host path, agent instruction stubs as needed.
**Done when:** `GET /repos/soul-frame` succeeds with local path on this host.
---
### T05 — fix-consistency write-back of hub IDs
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0001-T05
status: todo
priority: high
```
Commit workplans, run `make fix-consistency REPO=soul-frame` so C-06 creates
workstreams and writes `state_hub_workstream_id` / task IDs into files.
**Done when:** each SOUL-WP file has hub IDs; consistency check is clean or
warnings-only.
---
### T06 — README orientation for operators
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0001-T06
status: done
priority: medium
```
README documents start-here docs, layout, and research phase summary.
**Done when:** new operator can navigate INTENT → ResearchProgram → workplans
without tribal knowledge.

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---
id: SOUL-WP-0002
type: workplan
title: "Phase I — Foundations: systems, cybernetics, mind, identity"
domain: agents
repo: soul-frame
status: ready
owner: grok
topic_slug: soul-frame
priority: high
created: "2026-08-09"
updated: "2026-08-09"
depends_on:
- SOUL-WP-0001
---
# SOUL-WP-0002 — Phase I Foundations
## Goal
Stress-test **Being, Body, Mind, Soul, closure, and continuity** against systems
theory, cybernetics, autopoiesis, philosophy of mind, and personal identity.
Research dirs: `research/systems-theory/`, `research/cybernetics/`,
`research/philosophy-of-mind/`, `research/personal-identity/`.
## Depends on
- **SOUL-WP-0001** (repository instruments exist)
## Follow-on
- **SOUL-WP-0003** — Phase II Interaction
## Tasks
### T01 — Terminology reconnaissance for core triad + Being
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0002-T01
status: todo
priority: high
```
For Being, Body, Mind, Soul, identity, consciousness: establish meanings,
conflicts, adjacent terms, disciplinary differences; update `Terminology.md`
and concept notes.
**Done when:** each term has reconnaissance notes and status in Terminology.
---
### T02 — Systems theory & cybernetics source map
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0002-T02
status: todo
priority: high
```
Map foundational sources (Bertalanffy, Wiener, Ashby, Beer, von Foerster,
Maturana/Varela, Luhmann, etc.) into `sources/bibliography.md` and workstream
notes. Focus: closure, boundary, environment, observer-relative identification.
**Done when:** ≥5 foundational entries annotated against the concept matrix.
---
### T03 — Philosophy of mind & personal identity map
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0002-T03
status: todo
priority: high
```
Map functionalism, computationalism, embodied mind, psychological/narrative
continuity, extended mind. Record agreements/disagreements with Soul Frame's
consciousness distinction (first-person vs third-person recognition).
**Done when:** bibliography + source notes cover both clusters; open questions updated.
---
### T04 — Claim ledger pass for H1, H3, H5, H6
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0002-T04
status: todo
priority: high
```
Fill supporting/contradicting literature and evidence strength for hypotheses
H1 (multidimensional beinghood), H3 (model-based mind), H5 (relational soul),
H6 (substrate-independent identity) in `Claims.md`.
**Done when:** those claims are no longer `Evidence strength: none`.
---
### T05 — Run foundation thought experiments
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0002-T05
status: todo
priority: medium
```
Working judgments for TE-01 (Stateless Agent), TE-02 (Sleeping Being),
TE-03 (Fork), TE-04 (Ship of Theseus), TE-05 (Collective) in
`ThoughtExperiments.md`, refining concept definitions where they break.
**Done when:** each TE has a working judgment or explicit blocked open issue.
---
### T06 — Phase I synthesis note
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0002-T06
status: todo
priority: medium
```
Write `research/phase-i-foundations-synthesis.md`: what holds, what must change,
terminology survivors vs rename candidates (especially Soul).
**Done when:** synthesis note exists and SOUL-WP-0003 is unblocked on substance.

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---
id: SOUL-WP-0003
type: workplan
title: "Phase II — Interaction: social cognition and recognition"
domain: agents
repo: soul-frame
status: proposed
owner: grok
topic_slug: soul-frame
priority: medium
created: "2026-08-09"
updated: "2026-08-09"
depends_on:
- SOUL-WP-0002
---
# SOUL-WP-0003 — Phase II Interaction
## Goal
Ground **co-adaptive model building** and **social Beinghood** in cognitive
science, theory of mind, social cognition, sociology, recognition, and
intersubjectivity.
Research dirs: `research/cognitive-science/`, `research/social-cognition/`,
`research/sociology/`.
## Depends on
- **SOUL-WP-0002** Phase I synthesis
## Tasks
### T01 — Cognitive science & model-based mind map
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0003-T01
status: todo
priority: high
```
Map predictive processing, active inference, internal models, metacognition
against Mind definition. Update concept notes and bibliography.
**Done when:** Mind crosswalk has ≥4 rigorous sources with agreements/tensions.
---
### T02 — Social cognition & co-adaptation map
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0003-T02
status: todo
priority: high
```
Map theory of mind, joint attention, shared intentionality, interactive
alignment, common ground, recursive modeling. Test H4.
**Done when:** H4 has literature support/conflict notes; TE-related social cases refined.
---
### T03 — Sociology & recognition map
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0003-T03
status: todo
priority: high
```
Map recognition theory, symbolic interactionism, intersubjectivity, reputation,
trust. Clarify systemic existence vs social recognition (H7, TE-09).
**Done when:** `concepts/recognition.md` updated; H7 evidence strength ≠ none.
---
### T04 — Phase II synthesis note
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0003-T04
status: todo
priority: medium
```
Write `research/phase-ii-interaction-synthesis.md` and revise OpenQuestions RQ3/RQ6.
**Done when:** synthesis exists; personhood phase can start from a stable social base.

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---
id: SOUL-WP-0004
type: workplan
title: "Phase III — Personhood: person, character, persona"
domain: agents
repo: soul-frame
status: proposed
owner: grok
topic_slug: soul-frame
priority: medium
created: "2026-08-09"
updated: "2026-08-09"
depends_on:
- SOUL-WP-0003
---
# SOUL-WP-0004 — Phase III Personhood
## Goal
Separate **Being, Person, Character, Persona, and Actor**. Map descriptive vs
social vs moral vs legal personhood without conflating them.
Research dirs: `research/personhood/`, `research/character-persona/`.
## Depends on
- **SOUL-WP-0003**
## Tasks
### T01 — Personhood dimensions literature map
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0004-T01
status: todo
priority: high
```
Populate descriptive/social/moral/legal distinctions with sources; stress-test
APE vs Being; update H2.
**Done when:** `concepts/personhood.md` has a sourced dimension list.
---
### T02 — Character / persona / performance map
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0004-T02
status: todo
priority: high
```
Map personality psychology, role theory, narratology, performance/avatar studies
against Character and Persona. Run TE-06 (The Mask).
**Done when:** stack Being ≠ Persona ≠ Character ≠ Actor has sourced defenses.
---
### T03 — Phase III synthesis note
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0004-T03
status: todo
priority: medium
```
Write `research/phase-iii-personhood-synthesis.md`.
**Done when:** synthesis exists; Artificial Beings phase can reuse the separations.

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---
id: SOUL-WP-0005
type: workplan
title: "Phase IV — Artificial Beings: agents and persistent identity"
domain: agents
repo: soul-frame
status: proposed
owner: grok
topic_slug: soul-frame
priority: medium
created: "2026-08-09"
updated: "2026-08-09"
depends_on:
- SOUL-WP-0004
---
# SOUL-WP-0005 — Phase IV Artificial Beings
## Goal
Map Soul Frame onto contemporary artificial systems: autonomous/LLM agents,
generative agents, companions, digital humans, memory architectures, persistent
identity.
Research dirs: `research/ai-agents/`, `research/artificial-persons/`.
## Depends on
- **SOUL-WP-0004**
## Tasks
### T01 — Agent architecture crosswalk
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0005-T01
status: todo
priority: high
```
Map agent frameworks and generative-agent literature to Body/Mind/Soul/Actor/
Persona. Note where actor, persona, and identity are confused.
**Done when:** crosswalk table exists in research notes + bibliography entries.
---
### T02 — Persistence & memory architectures
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0005-T02
status: todo
priority: high
```
Survey memory/identity mechanisms in persistent agents; link to continuity
criteria and WS10 themes (when memory becomes continuity).
**Done when:** open questions on memory/continuity updated with technical cases.
---
### T03 — Catalog approximate Beings
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0005-T03
status: todo
priority: medium
```
Short catalog of current systems approximating Beings vs mere task executors,
using Phase IIII criteria.
**Done when:** catalog note under `research/ai-agents/` with explicit criteria used.
---
### T04 — Phase IV synthesis note
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0005-T04
status: todo
priority: medium
```
Write `research/phase-iv-artificial-beings-synthesis.md`.
**Done when:** Spirits/Ghosts phase can assume agent/Being vocabulary is mapped.

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---
id: SOUL-WP-0006
type: workplan
title: "Phase V — Spirits and Ghosts: simulation, legacy, authority"
domain: agents
repo: soul-frame
status: proposed
owner: grok
topic_slug: soul-frame
priority: medium
created: "2026-08-09"
updated: "2026-08-09"
depends_on:
- SOUL-WP-0005
---
# SOUL-WP-0006 — Phase V Spirits and Ghosts
## Goal
Establish rigorous definitions for **Spirit (`Sp.`)** and **Ghost (`Gh.`)**:
public personality simulation vs identity-authorized continuation, digital
legacy, consent, personality rights, governance.
Research dirs: `research/spirits/`, `research/ghosts-digital-legacy/`,
`research/law-governance/` (as needed for Gh.).
## Depends on
- **SOUL-WP-0005**
## Tasks
### T01 — Spirit criteria and cultural representation map
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0006-T01
status: todo
priority: high
```
Sources on historical simulation, fictional character agents, synthetic media,
provenance, fidelity. Formalize evaluation dimensions for `Sp.`.
**Done when:** `concepts/spirit.md` evaluation dimensions are sourced.
---
### T02 — Ghost, digital legacy, and authority map
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0006-T02
status: todo
priority: high
```
Map digital remains, posthumous privacy, grief tech, consent, succession,
fiduciary stewardship. Test H10 and TE-07 (False Ghost).
**Done when:** H10 evidence notes filled; Ghost governance candidates refined.
---
### T03 — Law/governance gap sketch for Sp./Gh.
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0006-T03
status: todo
priority: medium
```
Map Soul Frame concepts → existing legal categories → gaps (publicity rights,
personality rights, data protection, estates). No premature legal conclusions.
**Done when:** gap sketch in `research/law-governance/`.
---
### T04 — Phase V synthesis note
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0006-T04
status: todo
priority: medium
```
Write `research/phase-v-spirits-ghosts-synthesis.md`. Confirm H9 (provenance
descriptors vs exclusive kinds).
**Done when:** synthesis exists; synthesis phase can freeze Sp./Gh. working defs.

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---
id: SOUL-WP-0007
type: workplan
title: "Phase VI — Synthesis: crosswalk, evidence, revised ontology"
domain: agents
repo: soul-frame
status: proposed
owner: grok
topic_slug: soul-frame
priority: medium
created: "2026-08-09"
updated: "2026-08-09"
depends_on:
- SOUL-WP-0006
---
# SOUL-WP-0007 — Phase VI Synthesis
## Goal
Integrate workstream results into:
- concept crosswalk
- evidence register (mature Claims)
- revised ontology / terminology standard
- research synthesis document
- fiction/cultural precedents scan as conceptual laboratory (not evidence)
Also cover remaining WS11 death/legacy and WS13 fiction clusters as needed.
## Depends on
- **SOUL-WP-0006** (and earlier phases' synthesis notes)
## Tasks
### T01 — Full concept crosswalk
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0007-T01
status: todo
priority: high
```
For each matrix concept in `ResearchProgram.md` §5, complete adjacent-term
crosswalks in `concepts/` (or a consolidated `research/concept-crosswalk.md`).
**Done when:** every core concept has filled similarity/difference rows.
---
### T02 — Claims & open questions consolidation
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0007-T02
status: todo
priority: high
```
Advance H1H10 statuses; retire or revise failed concepts; clean
`OpenQuestions.md`.
**Done when:** no important claim remains without literature notes; revisions logged.
---
### T03 — Fiction & cultural precedents scan
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0007-T03
status: todo
priority: medium
```
Comparative notes (e.g. Culture Minds and peers) under
`research/fiction-cultural-precedents/` for conceptual experiments and failure
modes only.
**Done when:** short comparative note exists; no fiction treated as empirical proof.
---
### T04 — Research synthesis document
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0007-T04
status: todo
priority: high
```
Produce `research/research-synthesis.md` integrating phases IV and this phase.
**Done when:** synthesis is paper-ready as input to SOUL-WP-0008.

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---
id: SOUL-WP-0008
type: workplan
title: "Phase VII — Soul Frame research paper"
domain: agents
repo: soul-frame
status: proposed
owner: grok
topic_slug: soul-frame
priority: low
created: "2026-08-09"
updated: "2026-08-09"
depends_on:
- SOUL-WP-0007
---
# SOUL-WP-0008 — Phase VII Paper
## Goal
Write the first **research-grounded** Soul Frame paper using the outline in
`paper/outline.md` and synthesis from SOUL-WP-0007.
## Depends on
- **SOUL-WP-0007** research synthesis
## Tasks
### T01 — Related work section draft
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0008-T01
status: todo
priority: high
```
Expand `paper/related-work.md` from bibliography and crosswalks.
**Done when:** related-work draft covers all major traditions used in synthesis.
---
### T02 — Full paper draft
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0008-T02
status: todo
priority: high
```
Draft `paper/draft.md` following the research-program outline (Being through
limitations and agenda). Replace provisional intro claims with sourced ones.
**Done when:** complete draft exists with claim→literature traceability.
---
### T03 — Internal adversarial review
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0008-T03
status: todo
priority: medium
```
Re-run thought experiments against paper definitions; fix circular or collapsing
terms; document limitations honestly.
**Done when:** review notes filed; draft revised or issues logged as open questions.
---
### T04 — Paper freeze candidate
```task
id: SOUL-WP-0008-T04
status: todo
priority: medium
```
Mark a freeze candidate version (date + git tag or history snapshot) suitable for
external review or publication pathway decision.
**Done when:** freeze artifact recorded under `history/` or tagged release notes.