soul-frame/Terminology.md

Terminology Standard

Canonical glossary for Soul Frame. Definitions here are working and subject to revision after literature mapping and adversarial tests.

Phase I reconnaissance status: 2026-08-12 — integrated from research/foundations/ notes 001–005 (and note 006 where it bears on Mind).

See also: concepts/, Claims.md, ThoughtExperiments.md, research/phase-i-foundations-synthesis.md.

Status legend

Status	Meaning
provisional	Working definition in active use
under review	Contested or pending further crosswalk
retained	Survived Phase I collision analysis for now
revised	Definition changed after literature stress test
deprecated	Superseded; keep only for historical reference

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Core triad

Body

Status: retained (Phase I)
Working gloss: Body = Action

The operational dimension of a Being: the channels through which it perceives and acts. Not a fixed physical compartment; artificial Bodies may be distributed and replaceable without identity replacement.

Reconnaissance notes:

Aspect	Finding
Established meanings	embodiment, sensorimotor coupling, actuators, interface surface
Adjacent terms	embodiment (enactivism), coupling (cybernetics), interface
Conflicts	folk “body” as organism vs functional action channels
Soul Frame stance	functional dimension, not biological requirement
Survive collision?	yes — low collision once functional reading is explicit

Mind

Status: retained (Phase I)
Working gloss: Mind = Model (adaptive control through models)

The adaptive modeling and regulatory dimension through which a Being interprets itself, other systems, and its environment and adjusts action.

Reconnaissance notes:

Aspect	Finding
Established meanings	cognition, consciousness, intellect, psyche
Adjacent terms	regulator (Ashby), good regulator / model (Conant–Ashby), predictive processing, active inference, extended/distributed cognition
Conflicts	Mind-as-consciousness vs Mind-as-control; location “inside the head”
Soul Frame stance	model-based adaptive control; not solved consciousness
Survive collision?	yes with qualification — strong cybernetic precedent; must disclaim consciousness identity

Strong precedents: Ashby; Conant & Ashby (1970); extended mind (Clark & Chalmers); distributed cognition (Hutchins). Mind is not simply located inside the substrate (RN-001 Finding 5–6).

Soul

Status: revised (Phase I)
Working gloss: Soul = Relation

Revised definition (after RN-001 Finding 14):

The relation-bearing dimension through which interactions become persistent relationships, commitments, provenance, history, reputation, and consequences connecting a Being to other systems across time.

Not the system/environment boundary itself. Boundary belongs primarily to Being.

Reconnaissance notes:

Aspect	Finding
Established meanings	immortal essence, spirit, psyche, religious soul
Adjacent terms	structural coupling, narrative identity, reputation, legacy, distributed memory
Conflicts	high — metaphysical/religious usage
Soul Frame stance	informational-relational, non-metaphysical
Survive collision?	provisionally yes if boundary is stripped out and relational reading stays sharp; rename remains an open option (RQ4)

Why retain “Soul” for now: compact name for diachronic relational continuity and post-operational influence; triad mnemonic. Risk: readers hear metaphysics.

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Entity and status terms

Being

Status: revised (Phase I)

Working definition v0.2 (RN-003):

An autonomous informational individual exhibiting sufficiently coherent dimensions of personhood to become an addressable entity that is recognized by other Beings as a persistent counterpart.

Layer stack (not arithmetic):

Being ≈ AutonomousIndividuality + Personhood + Addressability + Recognition

Autonomous individuality is a multidimensional profile (not binary checklist): individuability, temporal integrity, constitutive integration, self-maintenance participation, endogenous viability, adaptive regulation, interactional asymmetry, identity-preserving transformation (RN-002 B1–B8; renamed from “Being criteria” in RN-003 to avoid false positives such as self-maintaining daemons).

Reconnaissance notes:

Aspect	Finding
Adjacent terms	autopoietic unity, autonomous agent, individual, organism, person
Conflicts	everyday “being” = any entity; philosophy of being/ontology
Key refinement	autonomy alone ≠ Beinghood; personhood layer required for “someone” vs “something”
Survive collision?	yes with explicit multi-layer definition

Beinghood is a profile, not a single property (H1 supported).

Personhood

Status: revised (Phase III)

Multidimensional someone-like profile (P1–P12). Four kinds: descriptive (default), social, moral, legal — never collapse. Essential layer of Beinghood v0.2 so autonomous daemons are not classified as Beings. See concepts/personhood.md.

APE (Artificial Personhood-Exposing Entity)

Status: retained

Artificial entity constructed to expose person-like dimensions. Broader than artificial Being. RN-001 Finding 13: believable personhood-exposing behavior is achievable before robust artificial Beinghood is solved.

Autonomous individuality

Status: provisional (new Phase I term)

Multidimensional substrate of Beinghood: self-individuating organization with self-maintenance participation. Distinct from full Beinghood (which adds personhood, addressability, recognition).

Systemic Beinghood vs Social Beinghood

Status: retained / refined

Term	Meaning
Systemic / autonomous individuality	self-individuating organization (may lack personhood)
Recognized Beinghood	counterpart identified and modeled by others
Social Beinghood	embedded in persistent reciprocal models, relationships, expectations

Recognition does not by itself create Beinghood (RN-001 Finding 10); it is constitutive of social Beinghood (H7 refined).

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Identity and presentation

Identity

Status: revised (Phase I)

What makes temporally separated manifestations the same Being (numerical identity / reidentification), as distinct from:

• Continuity — what continues (may branch without unique identity)
• Lineage — historical relatedness after branching
• Characterization — what the entity is like (narrative/character questions)

Core formulation (RN-004/005):

A Being continues not because its state remains the same, but because its changes remain part of one appropriately connected history of self-individuation. When that history branches, identity becomes lineage.

Continuity profile

Status: provisional

Multidimensional continuity (not a checksum): causal, organizational, psychological, autobiographical/narrative, normative, relational — with provenance, address, and substrate as anchors/evidence (RN-004/005).

Character

Status: revised (Phase III)

Relatively persistent dispositional structure. ≠ state, persona, identity. Character similarity/change neither necessary nor sufficient for identity.

Persona

Status: revised (Phase III)

Situated projection/mask into context, role, relationship. Multiple Personae need not fragment identity (H8); isolation of persona stores is a failure mode.

Actor

Status: retained

Technical machinery of manifestation (model, harness, memory, runtime). Actor ≠ Being. Actor replacement can preserve identity if continuity is sufficient (H6 supported).

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Construction / provenance descriptors

Agent

Status: revised (Phase IV)

Function-derived construction (What should it do?). Distinguish:

• Functional Agent — task executor / tool loop
• Autonomous Agent — closer to autonomous individuality literature

Not automatically a Being. See research/ai-agents/agent-architecture-crosswalk.md.

APE / proto-Being / candidate Being (Phase IV usage)

Term	Meaning
APE	Exposes personhood dimensions by construction
Proto-Being	Persistent individuating apparatus without full Beinghood
Candidate Being	Axes + continuity strong enough for serious Being claims
Heteronomous individual	Persistence largely externally maintained

Spirit (Sp.)

Status: revised (Phase V)

Public-reflection Character provenance; Sp. label; evaluation S1–S10; lineage begins at instantiation; never identity with source. See concepts/spirit.md.

Ghost (Gh.)

Status: revised (Phase V)

Authority-bound representation of a real person; governance is part of identity; genealogy ≠ numerical identity; fidelity without authority = False Ghost (H10). See concepts/ghost.md.

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Relational and social terms

Recognition

Status: revised (disambiguated)

At least three senses (RN-001 Finding 8):

1. Epistemic — detect/classify an entity
2. Intentional — treat as agent with beliefs/goals (cf. Dennett intentional stance)
3. Social/normative — treat as counterpart in relationships, obligations, reputation

Soul Frame default for Beinghood v0.2 is intentional + social recognition by other Beings.

Addressability

Status: elevated (Phase I)

Ability for others to target interaction specifically at this entity (name, ID, channel, credentials). More important than initially assumed (RN-003).

Co-adaptive model building

Status: provisional (deepened in RN-006; Phase II)

Joint evolution of models through interaction — not mere model exchange. Precursors: Mead, interactive alignment, I-POMDP recursive agent modeling, participatory sense-making.

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Endings and persistence

Operational death / Identity death / Social death / Legacy

Status: provisional

Retained. Soul continuity can cross Being-identity discontinuities (RN-005 SF-C055): relationships and effects may continue when the original Being does not.

Lineage topology labels

Status: provisional (RN-004/005)

CONTINUOUS | DEGRADED | UNCERTAIN | SUCCESSOR | FORKED | RECONSTRUCTED | USURPED | TERMINATED

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Terms requiring particular care

Term	Risk	Phase I disposition
Soul	metaphysical collision	revised (boundary removed); rename still open
Mind	consciousness conflation	retain with explicit non-consciousness stance
Being	vagueness / overbreadth	multi-layer definition; autonomy ≠ Being
Agent	overload (tool vs autonomy)	disambiguate functional vs autonomous
Identity	multiple questions collapsed	separate identity / continuity / lineage / characterization
Recognition	epistemic vs social	three-sense disambiguation
Bewusstsein (DE)	often = control coupling, not phenomenology	false friend — see Deppert dialogue

Consciousness / Bewusstsein (naming discipline)

Status: retained as asymmetric topic, not Beinghood criterion

Soul Frame does not define consciousness as the coupling of survival functions. When German sources use Bewusstsein for organizational control integration (e.g. Deppert 2009), map to Mind + constitutive integration, not to SF “consciousness,” unless the author clearly means first-person experience.

Dialogue: research/paper-dialogues/001-deppert-evolution-des-bewusstseins/.

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Cross-reference

Full source maps: sources/bibliography.md, research/foundations/*-references.md.
Phase I synthesis: research/phase-i-foundations-synthesis.md.
Paper dialogues: research/paper-dialogues/.