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.
2.1 KiB
2.1 KiB
Being
Status: revised (Phase I, 2026-08-12)
See also: Terminology.md, RQ1, H1–H2, H7, RN-001–003
Working definition (v0.2)
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.
Being ≈ AutonomousIndividuality + Personhood + Addressability + Recognition
Not arithmetic — four requirement families.
Autonomous individuality profile (substrate)
From RN-002 (renamed in RN-003 so autonomy alone is not labeled “Being”):
| Code | Dimension |
|---|---|
| B1 | Individuability |
| B2 | Temporal integrity |
| B3 | Constitutive integration |
| B4 | Self-maintenance participation |
| B5 | Endogenous viability |
| B6 | Adaptive regulation |
| B7 | Interactional asymmetry |
| B8 | Identity-preserving transformation |
Treat as a profile, not eight Boolean gates.
Stack
Informational process
→ Individuated system
→ Autonomous individual
→ (+ personhood, addressability, recognition) → Being
→ (+ reciprocal relations) → Social Being
Notes
- Not restricted to biological organisms; not automatic for every computational process.
- Autonomy-only reading yields false positives (self-maintaining daemon, control plane).
- Personhood-only reading yields false positives (stateless person-like chatbots as APE).
- Distinguish systemic individuality from social recognition of existence.
Crosswalk
| Adjacent term | Similarity | Difference |
|---|---|---|
| autopoietic system | self-maintaining organization | biological autopoiesis not required; contested beyond life |
| autonomous agent | multi-criteria agency | agent often functional; Being requires personhood layer |
| person | personhood layer | personhood ≠ full Beinghood |
| individual | individuability | may lack autonomy/personhood/recognition |
| operationally closed system | closure | closure alone insufficient for “someone” |
Sources
research/foundations/001-*.md, 002-*.md, 003-beinghood-stress-test.md