tegwick
3fbcca209d
Integrate research/foundations notes 001–005 into Terminology, Claims, bibliography, concept notes, thought experiments, and open questions. Write phase-i-foundations-synthesis.md, finish SOUL-WP-0002, and mark SOUL-WP-0003 ready for interaction research.
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Identity
Status: revised (Phase I, 2026-08-12)
See also: RQ5, H6, TE-02–TE-05, TE-08, RN-004, RN-005
Disambiguation
| Question | Soul Frame term |
|---|---|
| Same entity over time? | Identity (numerical / reidentification) |
| What continues? | Continuity (may branch) |
| Historical relatedness after branch? | Lineage |
| What is it like? | Characterization (narrative/character) |
Identity ≠ Continuity ≠ Lineage ≠ Character.
Core formulation
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 (constitutive dimensions)
Causal, organizational, psychological, autobiographical/narrative, normative, relational.
Anchors / evidence (not constitutive alone): provenance, address, substrate.
Topology labels
CONTINUOUS | DEGRADED | UNCERTAIN | SUCCESSOR | FORKED | RECONSTRUCTED | USURPED | TERMINATED
Implications for artificial systems
- Actor/Body replacement can preserve identity (substrate independence + continuity dependence).
- Sameness of data is not sameness of Being.
- Forks require governance; perfect copy while original continues yields FORKED lineage.
- Ghosts default to authorized succession/representation, not automatic numerical identity.
- Explicit identity governance is required because state is inspectable, copyable, editable.
Sources
research/foundations/004-identity-and-continuity.md
research/foundations/ResearchNote005-IdentityContinuityStressTest.md
Locke; Parfit; Olson SEP; process identity literature