soul-frame/workplans/SOUL-WP-0009-paper-agenda-and-external-review.md

id	type	title	domain	repo	status	flavor	owner	topic_slug	priority	created	updated	depends_on	state_hub_workstream_id
SOUL-WP-0009	workplan	Phase VIII — Paper research agenda and external review pathway	agents	soul-frame	finished	research	grok	soul-frame	medium	2026-09-28	2026-09-28	SOUL-WP-0008	bc67f839-43f9-5586-8213-469cda37d8b3

SOUL-WP-0009 — Phase VIII: Research Agenda and External Review

Goal

Carry forward the open research agenda from the frozen paper draft (history/260928-SOUL-WP-0008-paper-freeze-v1.md §17; paper/draft.md §16–17) and decide the publication/external-review pathway. This workplan is the residual of SOUL-WP-0008 — the freeze candidate is a stable snapshot, not a finished paper, and the items below are multi-step research/decision work that should not be parked in SCOPE.md prose.

Depends on

• SOUL-WP-0008 Phase VII paper (freeze candidate: T01–T04 done, 2026-09-28)

Tasks

T01 — Soul naming decision (RQ4)

id: SOUL-WP-0009-T01
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "3daca5cd-322f-5256-932d-1271f0c040a8"

Resolve retain-vs-rename for "Soul" (Terminology.md; draft §8, §16 item 1). Produce a decision record, not just more discussion — this has been open since Phase I.

Done when: decision recorded (record_decision/resolve_decision) with rationale, and Terminology.md + paper/draft.md updated to match.

Resolved 2026-09-28: retain "Soul" (decision 8429f2ce-5b8a-4d90-810e-f526ec2d0c05). Updated: Terminology.md, concepts/soul.md, OpenQuestions.md RQ4, Claims.md H5, paper/draft.md §8/§16/§17.

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T02 — Continuity dimension weighting

id: SOUL-WP-0009-T02
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "7acfed9e-cc8b-5283-a298-90b749a28ee7"

Develop a principled way to weigh conflicts between continuity dimensions (causal, organizational, psychological, autobiographical/narrative, normative, relational) for hard cases (draft §16 item 2). Test against TE-02, TE-03, TE-04, TE-08.

Done when: a weighting scheme (or explicit non-arithmetic decision procedure) is documented in concepts/identity.md and validated against the four thought experiments above.

Completed 2026-09-28: lexicographic priority procedure (structural gate → branch check → gradualness check → softer dimensions decide strength within the gate) added to concepts/identity.md; walked through TE-02, TE-03, TE-04, TE-08.

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T03 — Recognition's seat: Being vs. Social Being

id: SOUL-WP-0009-T03
status: done
priority: low
state_hub_task_id: "223e14d8-7bdf-5c49-9650-6fba70840c3c"

Sharpen the boundary flagged in draft §16 item 3 and the TE-09 asymmetric- recognition addition — when exactly does a recognized-but-autonomous individual cross into Social Beinghood?

Done when: concepts/being.md / concepts/recognition.md state a testable boundary condition, checked against TE-05 and TE-09.

Completed 2026-09-28: three-part test (intentional recognition + addressability + model persistence across episodes, on at least one side) added to concepts/recognition.md, cross-referenced from concepts/being.md; walked through TE-09 (asymmetric start) and TE-05 (per-level nested test).

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T04 — Empirical/operational metrics scoping

id: SOUL-WP-0009-T04
status: done
priority: low
state_hub_task_id: "81a4c87d-cff5-5448-acf2-8c170301a014"

Scope (not necessarily build) measurable proxies for the A-axis (B1–B8), B-axis (P1–P12), and continuity profiles (draft §16 item 4). This is a scoping task — full metric development may become its own workplan.

Done when: a scoping note exists identifying which axes are plausibly measurable now vs. which require new instruments.

Completed 2026-09-28: research/metrics-scoping-note.md — per-code table for B1–B8 and the continuity profile; found the B-axis (P1–P12) is blocked on enumeration, not metrics, as a prerequisite gap.

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T05 — Moral/legal personhood companion line (explicitly separate)

id: SOUL-WP-0009-T05
status: done
priority: low
state_hub_task_id: "42f2de8a-c9cd-5af5-b42d-3f6cac5eb301"

Per SCOPE.md's out-of-scope boundary ("Silent moral/legal personhood claims"), scope this as a separate, explicitly-bounded companion research line rather than loosening the descriptive core. Draft a one-page charter for that companion line (could become its own future workplan) — do not attempt the mapping itself here.

Done when: a short charter note exists (e.g. research/law-governance/moral-legal-personhood-charter.md) stating scope, non-goals, and the explicit boundary against the descriptive core.

Completed 2026-09-28: research/law-governance/moral-legal-personhood-charter.md — scope, four non-goals, and relationship to existing gap-sketch material; explicitly not opened as a workplan yet.

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T06 — External review / publication pathway decision

id: SOUL-WP-0009-T06
status: done
priority: medium
state_hub_task_id: "38aa9a5a-552c-555d-a27d-c8f84a76128b"

Using the freeze candidate as the review artifact, decide the pathway: internal circulation, external pre-print, conference/journal target, or further revision cycles before either. This is a founder-gate decision.

Done when: decision recorded via record_decision/resolve_decision naming the chosen pathway and next concrete step.

Resolved 2026-09-28: internal circulation only, as paper-one for coulomb-research, following the same staged trajectory (internal → pre-print → journal target) as coulomb-research's own paper-zero (decision cf950384-8bc6-4156-9caf-85b5d4a7ea25). Recorded in paper/draft.md status header. Next concrete step: internal review inside coulomb-research once that facility is set up; no external action required yet.

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Closing note (2026-09-28)

All six tasks complete. T01 and T06 were founder-gate decisions (Soul naming affects the project's own name/mnemonic; publication pathway is a business decision) and were resolved with Bernd before implementation; T02–T05 were research/documentation tasks executed directly.

Residual: T04 and T05 each recommended follow-on work that is multi-step. Bundled as SOUL-WP-0010, left proposed for review rather than started.