- 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
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Soul
Status: retained (RQ4 resolved 2026-09-28, SOUL-WP-0009-T01)
Working gloss: Soul = Relation
See also: H5, RQ4 (resolved), RN-001 Finding 14, RN-005 SF-C055
Working definition (revised)
The relation-bearing dimension through which interactions become persistent relationships, commitments, provenance, history, reputation, and consequences connecting a Being to other systems across time.
In Soul Frame: Soul = Relation.
What Soul is not
| Not Soul | Belongs to |
|---|---|
| System/environment boundary | Being |
| Operational channels | Body |
| Adaptive interpretation | Mind |
Initial definition overloaded Soul with boundary + relations + legacy. Phase I strips boundary out.
Temporal role
- Body — present operational coupling
- Mind — interpretation and control of possible states
- Soul — diachronic relational continuity and propagated effects
Soul continuity can cross Being-identity discontinuities (legacy, models in others, works, Ghosts).
Collision analysis
High risk with religious/metaphysical “soul”. RQ4 resolved 2026-09-28: retain. The explanatory payoff of the relational reading (H5) and the Body/Mind/Soul mnemonic outweigh the collision cost; the cost is managed by keeping the non-metaphysical disclaimer explicit and prominent everywhere the term is introduced, not by renaming.
Open issues
- Relations vs accumulated consequences vs both (packaging)
- How Soul relates to lineage after forks
Closed: rename candidates (RQ4) — decision recorded, see
workplans/SOUL-WP-0009-paper-agenda-and-external-review.md T01.
Sources
research/foundations/001-closure-model-relation-recognition.md §14–16
research/foundations/ResearchNote005-IdentityContinuityStressTest.md SF-C055