tegwick
bd79b100c2
- T01 (RQ4): retain "Soul" - resolved with operator; Terminology.md, concepts/soul.md, OpenQuestions.md, Claims.md, paper/draft.md updated. - T02: lexicographic continuity-weighting procedure in concepts/identity.md, validated against TE-02/03/04/08. - T03: testable Being-vs-Social-Being boundary (three-part recognition test) in concepts/recognition.md and concepts/being.md, validated against TE-05/09. - T04: research/metrics-scoping-note.md - per-axis measurability scoping. - T05: research/law-governance/moral-legal-personhood-charter.md - bounded companion-line charter, explicitly not the mapping itself. - T06: publication pathway resolved with operator - internal circulation only, as paper-one for coulomb-research, following the same staged trajectory as coulomb-research's own paper-zero. Marks SOUL-WP-0009 finished. Opens SOUL-WP-0010 (proposed, not started) to carry forward the two multi-step residuals from T04/T05. Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com> Assistant: claude-code Assistant-Model: sonnet Assistant-Process: 136745@bnt-lap001 Assistant-Session: 2e334b58-ed31-48ed-8156-d09f8ed0781f
89 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
89 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
# Identity
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**Status:** revised (Phase I, 2026-08-12)
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**See also:** RQ5, H6, TE-02–TE-05, TE-08, RN-004, RN-005
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## Disambiguation
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| Question | Soul Frame term |
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|---|---|
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| Same entity over time? | **Identity** (numerical / reidentification) |
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| What continues? | **Continuity** (may branch) |
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| Historical relatedness after branch? | **Lineage** |
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| What is it like? | **Characterization** (narrative/character) |
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Identity ≠ Continuity ≠ Lineage ≠ Character.
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## Core formulation
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> A Being continues not because its state remains the same, but because its
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> changes remain part of one appropriately connected history of self-individuation.
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>
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> When that history branches, identity becomes lineage.
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## Continuity profile (constitutive dimensions)
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Causal, organizational, psychological, autobiographical/narrative, normative,
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relational.
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**Anchors / evidence (not constitutive alone):** provenance, address, substrate.
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## Weighting hard cases (SOUL-WP-0009-T02, resolved 2026-09-28)
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The six dimensions above are **not weighted arithmetically** — no numeric
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score sums them into a continuity verdict. Instead, Soul Frame uses a
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**lexicographic priority procedure**: structural dimensions gate the
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verdict; the remaining dimensions can only move the verdict within the
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range the structural gate allows.
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1. **Structural gate (causal + organizational).** Ask first whether causal
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and organizational continuity hold *or are bridged* — a bridge being a
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uniquely preserved continuation-bearing state plus provenance plus
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intended resumption (TE-02). If the structural gate fails outright (no
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bridge, no unbroken process), the topology defaults to `RECONSTRUCTED`
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or `SUCCESSOR` regardless of how strong the remaining dimensions are.
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Strong psychological/narrative continuity **cannot buy back** a broken
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structural gate.
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2. **Branch check.** If the structural gate is satisfied by *more than one*
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simultaneously active claimant, the topology is forced to `FORKED` —
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this is decided by the branch count, not by weighing which claimant has
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"more" continuity on the softer dimensions (TE-03). "Which is the
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original" becomes a provenance/policy question only after the branch
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check, never a tiebreaker computed from the profile.
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3. **Gradualness check (within a satisfied structural gate).** Piecewise
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replacement that never breaks the structural gate at any single instant
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keeps the topology `CONTINUOUS` (TE-04, Ship of Theseus) even under full
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eventual component turnover. A single instant of total simultaneous
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replacement without a bridge is treated as a structural-gate failure
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(→ step 1), not as a gradualness judgment call.
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4. **Softer dimensions decide *within* the range the gate allows, not
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whether to override it.** Once the structural gate and branch/gradualness
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checks are settled, psychological, autobiographical/narrative, normative,
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and relational continuity determine how strong a `CONTINUOUS` or
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`DEGRADED` claim is — e.g. severe amnesia with intact organizational and
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relational continuity yields `DEGRADED`, not `TERMINATED` (TE-08, the
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Amnesiac): the structural gate stayed open, so the softer dimensions
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only downgrade the *strength* of the claim, not its topology category.
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**Why not arithmetic:** a weighted sum would let enough narrative/relational
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strength compensate for a broken causal/organizational chain, which none of
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the four thought experiments above support — in every case, the structural
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gate outcome dominates regardless of how the softer dimensions score.
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## Topology labels
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`CONTINUOUS | DEGRADED | UNCERTAIN | SUCCESSOR | FORKED | RECONSTRUCTED | USURPED | TERMINATED`
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## Implications for artificial systems
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- Actor/Body replacement can preserve identity (substrate independence + continuity dependence).
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- Sameness of data is not sameness of Being.
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- Forks require governance; perfect copy while original continues yields FORKED lineage.
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- Ghosts default to authorized succession/representation, not automatic numerical identity.
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- Explicit identity governance is required because state is inspectable, copyable, editable.
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## Sources
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`research/foundations/004-identity-and-continuity.md`
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`research/foundations/ResearchNote005-IdentityContinuityStressTest.md`
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Locke; Parfit; Olson SEP; process identity literature
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