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--- title: "Telic Fields G.2: Terminology and Primary-Source Adjudication" subtitle: "A Deeper Review of Telic Fields, Polytelometry, Constitutional Selves, Context Capacity, and Temporal Standing" artifact_date: "2026-07-14" artifact_type: "primary-source-and-terminology-review" domain: "TELIC-FIELDS" scope: "WORKING" lineage: "THE-TELIC-FIELD-PAPERS" status: "draft" processing_tier: 4 source_role: "research-and-claim-boundary-artifact" content_canon_status: "unset" publication_status: "unpublished" derived_from:

• "20260713__TELIC-FIELDS__REVIEW__WORKING__G-1__adjacent-fields-and-prior-art.md"
• "20260713__TELIC-FIELDS__PAPER__CANDIDATE__F-1__telic-fields-first-principles-foundation.md"

provenance_note: > This report deepens the G.1 review through exact-term searches, primary-source reading, and terminology adjudication. Search failure is not evidence of nonexistence. No term is declared novel solely because an indexed exact match was not found. ---

Telic Fields G.2: Terminology and Primary-Source Adjudication

Executive finding

The Telic Field Papers remain conceptually viable, but G.2 materially changes how the work should describe its originality.

The framework does not enter an empty vocabulary space. Several neighboring traditions already occupy important parts of the map:

• Paul W. Taylor describes living organisms as teleological centers of life.
• Talcott Parsons uses telic system for the sphere of ultimate values in his general action-system theory.
• Reversal theory uses telic and paratelic for serious, goal-oriented and playful metamotivational states.
• Linguistics uses telicity for bounded or endpoint-presented events.
• Complex-problem-solving research uses polytely for situations with multiple simultaneous and potentially conflicting goals.
• Recent computational research introduces telic states, goal-directed state representations, and telic controllability.
• Enactive and participatory-sense-making research already treats significance as relative to autonomous systems and meaning as partly constituted through interaction.
• Dialogical-self and parts-based traditions already model the self as plural.
• Cybernetics, bounded rationality, and multiobjective decision theory already address regulation, limited capacity, and multiple goals.

The candidate contribution of the Telic Field Papers is therefore not the discovery of purpose, plurality, internal multiplicity, relational emergence, or constrained regulation.

Its strongest possible contribution is the composition:

Centers of standing localize end-relative significance. Relations create additional possibilities without erasing local fields. Coordination proceeds through scoped and corrigible projections. Consent governs recruitment into ends. Witness preserves provenance and correction across time. Context capacity limits which standing remains active. Polytelometric navigation keeps multiple ends legible before optimization. Semantic models may compare projections without acquiring sovereignty over them.

That composition appears distinctive in this review.

It should still be described as a candidate synthesis, not a proven novelty claim.

1. Review method

G.2 used four kinds of inquiry.

1.1 Exact-term searching

The review searched for exact and near-exact uses of:

• telic field;
• telic fields;
• teleological field;
• telic state;
• telic system;
• telic projection;
• polytelometry;
• semantic polytelometry;
• polytely;
• context carrying capacity;
• constitutional self;
• constitutional element;
• temporal standing;
• teleological integrity;
• telic integrity;
• teleological graft rejection.

No indexed exact match was found in the initial search environment for polytelometry or semantic polytelometry.

No strong established exact-term lineage was found for context carrying capacity in the telic-relational sense.

No strong established exact-term lineage was found for telic projection in the proposed sense.

These findings are negative search results, not proof of coinage.

1.2 Lexical-neighbor review

Terms sharing the same roots were reviewed because lexical collision can create conceptual confusion even when exact phrases differ.

This was especially important for:

• telic state;
• telic controllability;
• telic system;
• telic/paratelic motivation;
• telicity;
• teleological center of life;
• polytely.

1.3 Primary-source conceptual review

The review compared the framework with foundational or primary sources in:

• cybernetics;
• autopoiesis and enactivism;
• participatory sense-making;
• semantic information;
• active inference;
• goal-directed representation learning;
• complex problem solving;
• multiobjective optimization;
• dialogical self theory;
• future-self continuity;
• intergenerational responsibility;
• environmental ethics.

1.4 Adjudication

Each candidate term was assigned one of five dispositions:

• retain;
• retain with mandatory distinction;
• retain in lineage, replace in technical use;
• hold for deeper review;
• retire.

No term is promoted to canon by this report.

2. The newly important lexical collision: telic states

G.1 identified active inference and goal-directed state representation as neighboring fields. G.2 found a much closer terminological development.

Nadav Amir, Stas Tiomkin, Angela Langdon, and collaborators introduced a computational program in which goals shape the state representations acquired by bounded agents. Their work uses:

• goal-directed concepts;
• telic states;
• telic-controllable state representations;
• telic controllability.

A telic state in that work is not merely a desired endpoint. It is a class of experiences treated as equivalent relative to a goal. The framework therefore joins descriptive state representation and normative desirability: what the agent is trying to do helps determine what distinctions become part of its experienced or computational world.

This is an unusually close neighbor to the proposed claim that a telic field is a structured landscape of states whose significance is indexed to a center.

The overlap is real:

• goals shape which differences matter;
• state representation is not assumed to be neutral;
• bounded agents must ignore some features;
• granularity trades off against policy complexity;
• changing goals alter the useful representation of the world.

The distinction is also real.

The Telic Field Papers presently concern:

• multiple centers of standing;
• plural and conflicting ends;
• authority and consent;
• projection between centers;
• relational and institutional fields;
• witnessed correction;
• provenance;
• model non-sovereignty.

Amir and collaborators are developing a computational theory of goal-directed state representation. They do not appear, in the reviewed papers, to be offering the same standing-and-consent architecture.

Adjudication

Telic field: retain with mandatory distinction.

Every technical introduction should acknowledge goal-directed state-representation work and explain:

A telic state is a goal-relative class or representation of experience. A telic field, as proposed here, is the broader structured landscape of differently significant possible states, protections, costs, boundaries, and routes indexed to a center of standing.

This difference must be tested rather than merely asserted.

Revision consequence

F.1 must cite:

• Amir, Niv, and Langdon, States as Goal-Directed Concepts;
• Amir, Tiomkin, and Langdon, Learning Telic-Controllable State Representations;
• Amir, Tiomkin, and Langdon, Goals and the Structure of Experience.

The phrase “the concept begins from a simple observation” should remain, but the paper must no longer sound as if goal-relative state representation is absent from the computational literature.

3. Teleological centers of life and centers of standing

Paul W. Taylor's environmental ethics describes living organisms as teleological centers of life. Each organism is understood as pursuing its own good in its own way. Taylor uses that orientation to support moral consideration and a biocentric ethic.

This is a direct conceptual precursor to the statement:

A local telic field begins where possible states matter differently to a center of standing.

The similarity is too strong to leave implicit.

Overlap

• local orientation toward a good;
• organism-relative significance;
• possible benefit and harm;
• moral considerability grounded partly in organized life;
• refusal to treat nonhuman life as mere human instrument.

Difference

The proposed center of standing is broader and more procedural.

It may refer to:

• a person;
• an organism;
• a local constitutional element;
• a relation;
• a group or institution;
• a future state;
• possibly an artificial system.

Standing also concerns representation in decisions, not only intrinsic worth.

This breadth is a risk. Taylor has a clearer biological basis: the organism is an individual pursuing its own good. The Telic Field Papers currently lack one universal criterion that justifies extending standing across all proposed center types.

Adjudication

Center of standing: retain with explicit Taylor lineage.

Do not imply that “center + teleology + moral standing” is newly assembled without precedent.

Use this distinction:

Taylor's teleological center of life grounds moral regard in the organism's pursuit of its own good. A center of standing is a proposed governance category for any center whose protected differences must remain represented in decisions that affect it.

Open requirement

The framework must eventually specify separate grounds for standing:

• biological standing;
• experiential standing;
• relational standing;
• institutional standing;
• temporal standing;
• delegated standing;
• artificial or computational standing.

One definition may not safely cover them all.

4. Talcott Parsons and the telic system

Talcott Parsons used telic system for the sphere of ultimate values within his general action-system theory. His work linked social systems, symbols, values, and cybernetic hierarchy.

The term is not identical to telic field, but it establishes an important systems-theory lineage.

Overlap

• values as higher-order orienting structures;
• social action governed through symbolic systems;
• cybernetic organization across levels;
• ends operating above immediate physical action;
• relation among biological, social, and symbolic systems.

Difference

Parsons's telic system concerns ultimate values in a broad metaphysical and social-theoretical architecture.

The proposed telic field is:

• locally indexed;
• plural;
• potentially embodied;
• not restricted to ultimate values;
• explicitly tied to standing, projection, consent, and correction.

Adjudication

Telic field: retain, but cite Parsons as a lexical and systems-theory neighbor.

The first-principles paper should include a short terminology note distinguishing:

• Parsons's telic system;
• reversal theory's telic state;
• computational telic states;
• linguistic telicity;
• the proposed telic field.

This will prevent readers from assuming a falsely clean term origin.

5. Reversal theory and telic/paratelic states

Reversal theory uses telic for a serious, goal-oriented metamotivational state and paratelic for a playful, present-oriented state. Individuals may reverse between these modes.

This use matters for two reasons.

First, it shows that telic in psychology can name a motivational posture rather than end-relative structure in general.

Second, it exposes a conceptual risk in the Telic Field Papers: if all significance is described telically, play, release, spontaneity, and non-goal-directed experience may be forced into purpose language.

The user's wider ecosystem already protects release [🜲], acceptance [🜁], play, and the refusal to be organized around a purpose accidentally accepted as one's own. Reversal theory sharpens that boundary.

Adjudication

Telic field: retain, but explicitly preserve paratelic and atelic experience.

A telic field should not imply that every valuable state is pursued as an endpoint.

The field may include:

• permission not to optimize;
• protected play;
• present-centered absorption;
• release from purpose;
• curiosity without predefined completion;
• states valued precisely because they are not instrumental.

Required formulation

Add to the glossary:

A telic field is not a claim that all experience should be organized telically. It is a map of end-relative differences within a larger life that may also include play, presence, release, and atelic value.

6. Linguistic telicity

In linguistics, telicity concerns whether an event expression presents an inherent endpoint or bounded completion.

This is not the same theory, but the overlap can confuse readers.

A telic verb phrase describes an event as moving toward a natural endpoint. The Telic Field Papers use telic more broadly for end-relative significance.

Adjudication

No terminology change required.

Add a glossary disambiguation:

Linguistic telicity concerns the boundedness or endpoint structure of events as expressed. Telic fields concern the significance of possible states relative to centers of standing.

The two may interact in semantic analysis, but one should not be cited as the foundation of the other.

7. Polytely and polytelometry

Polytely is an established term in complex-problem-solving research for situations containing multiple simultaneous goals that may conflict.

This is the closest direct lexical neighbor to polytelometry.

Overlap

• multiple goals;
• conflict;
• prioritization;
• dynamic and complex systems;
• difficulty of identifying one optimum;
• dependence on how the problem is framed.

Funke's account is especially important because it notes that polytely is not simply an inherent property waiting to be observed. It also reflects which goals the investigator or decision-maker decides to represent.

That observation aligns strongly with the Telic Field Papers: goal selection is already an act of projection and authority.

Difference

Polytely names the condition.

Polytelometry is proposed as the practice of making multiple ends legible in relation to:

• source;
• standing;
• authority;
• provenance;
• scope;
• consent;
• sacrifice;
• time;
• uncertainty;
• exit.

Adjudication

Polytelometry: retain with mandatory distinction.

Use this stable formulation:

Polytely names the presence of multiple goals. Polytelometry names the disciplined effort to make their relationships, authority, provenance, and consequences legible.

Novelty boundary

Do not claim that the framework discovered the problem of many goals.

A possible novelty claim may later concern the integration of:

• polytely;
• standing;
• consent;
• semantic projection;
• provenance;
• non-sovereign model interpretation.

That claim still requires broader literature review.

8. Multiobjective optimization and decision analysis

Multiobjective optimization already offers mature methods for navigating multiple objectives. Pareto methods preserve nondominated alternatives rather than forcing one scalar optimum. Interactive methods allow decision-makers to refine preferences while exploring tradeoffs.

This is not peripheral prior art. It is a likely downstream implementation layer.

Overlap

• conflicting ends;
• route comparison;
• preservation and sacrifice;
• explicit tradeoffs;
• decision-maker participation;
• refusal of a single globally best solution.

Difference

The Telic Field Papers begin before the objective set is accepted.

They ask:

• Who selected the objectives?
• Which centers are missing?
• Which objective is actually a boundary?
• Which end is emergent but unconsented?
• Which costs have been externalized?
• What semantic distinctions were erased when objectives were formalized?
• Who has authority to assign weights?

Adjudication

Polytelometric navigation: retain as a pre-optimization and governance layer.

Use:

Polytelometric navigation may supply, constrain, sequence, or refuse multiobjective optimization. It is not a replacement for optimization once the objective model is legitimate and adequate.

Research requirement

A future technical paper should map telic projection records into:

• vector optimization;
• Pareto sets;
• constraint systems;
• multi-criteria decision analysis;
• interactive preference elicitation.

The important question is which information must remain outside the objective vector because scalarization would erase its constitutional role.

9. Participatory sense-making and relational telic fields

Participatory sense-making argues that interaction dynamics can contribute constitutively to social cognition and meaning. The interaction process may become partially autonomous and shape the participants.

This is the strongest primary-source neighbor for the relational telic field.

Overlap

• meaning arises through interaction;
• relation is not merely a channel;
• coordination can acquire dynamics of its own;
• participants are changed by the encounter;
• relational breakdown and repair matter.

Difference

The proposed relational telic field adds:

• standing;
• consent;
• protected conditions;
• authority;
• telic recruitment;
• relation-level operative purpose;
• the right of participants to revise, fork, or exit.

Adjudication

Relational telic field: retain with mandatory citation.

Do not present relational emergence as original.

The candidate contribution is constitutional:

When interaction acquires autonomy, what authority does the relational process possess over the participants who sustain it?

Open risk

The phrase field may obscure the well-developed concept of interaction dynamics.

Future formalization should test whether “relational telic field” adds explanatory power or simply renames participatory sense-making plus goals.

10. Semantic information and compressed orientation

Kolchinsky and Wolpert formalize semantic information as environmental information causally necessary for a system to maintain its existence. Their work provides a rigorous example of significance being defined relative to a system and evaluated through counterfactual intervention.

Recent extensions seek broader accounts of semantic causal power that are not limited to subsystem viability.

Overlap

• information matters relative to a system;
• not all correlations are meaningful;
• significance is tied to future trajectories;
• intervention can test whether information is causally relevant;
• agency and persistence are connected.

Difference

The Telic Field Papers include ends that may exceed self-maintenance:

• dignity;
• truth;
• promise;
• solidarity;
• chosen sacrifice;
• beauty;
• future possibility;
• consent;
• relational repair.

The framework also distinguishes meaning from authority. Information may be useful to a model without authorizing the model to define the source's good.

Adjudication

“Semantics carries compressed orientation”: retain as a candidate synthesis.

Do not claim that the framework first grounds meaning in consequence.

Do not claim that all semantics is telic until the model addresses:

• mathematics;
• fiction;
• humor;
• nonsense;
• aesthetics;
• play;
• hypothetical discourse;
• reference without practical relevance.

Formalization opportunity

Semantic-information intervention methods may help test whether a projected distinction actually changes the viable or preferred future trajectories of a center.

11. Active inference and intentional behavior

Active inference models agents as maintaining generative models, acting under uncertainty, and selecting policies relative to prior preferences or preferred endpoints. Recent work explicitly formalizes intentional behavior in terms of preferred endpoints in latent state spaces.

Overlap

• future-oriented behavior;
• preferred states;
• uncertainty;
• internal models;
• planning;
• hierarchical action;
• representation and action co-determining one another.

Difference

The Telic Field Papers are not primarily an agent-internal action theory.

They focus on:

• multiple centers;
• projection between centers;
• competing authority;
• consent;
• provenance;
• relational and institutional composition;
• non-sovereign interpretation.

Adjudication

Local telic field: retain as a wider relational-governance construct.

Do not present it as a new formal account of goal-directed action.

A formal bridge paper should explore whether:

• preferred states can represent part of a local field;
• prior preferences correspond only to operative projections;
• standing and provenance require dimensions outside active inference;
• multiple agents' generative models can be compared without creating a central sovereign model.

12. Dialogical self theory, IFS, and the constitutional self

Dialogical self theory describes a dynamic multiplicity of relatively autonomous I-positions capable of internal dialogue. Internal Family Systems and related parts traditions likewise treat internal plurality as ordinary and potentially organized.

The phrase constitutional self does not appear to have one dominant established psychological meaning in the reviewed sources, but the underlying multiplicity is clearly not new.

Overlap

• multiple internal positions;
• internal voices;
• shifting executive perspective;
• conflict and dialogue;
• self as dynamic organization rather than unitary object;
• internal-external continuity.

Candidate distinction

The constitutional-self model contributes a governance vocabulary:

• local internal standing;
• person-level sovereignty;
• executive authority;
• constitutional legitimacy;
• internal consent;
• protected dissent;
• context routing;
• witness and revision.

This is a meaningful distinction, but not yet an empirically validated theory.

Adjudication

Constitutional self: retain as a named framework, not as a novelty claim about plurality.

Use:

The constitutional self is a governance-oriented synthesis built upon established plural-self traditions.

Do not use:

The constitutional self reveals that the self contains multiple parts.

Clinical boundary

The concept must remain non-clinical until tested.

An AI system may help a person record and compare self-described internal positions. It must not:

• diagnose parts;
• invent trauma;
• declare one part authentic;
• substitute for clinical care;
• override person-level sovereignty;
• transform metaphor into imposed ontology.

13. Context carrying capacity

The exact phrase context carrying capacity did not reveal a dominant established concept matching the proposed definition.

The component ideas are well established:

• ecological carrying capacity;
• bounded rationality;
• working-memory limitations;
• cognitive load;
• attention bottlenecks;
• requisite variety;
• information bottlenecks;
• LLM context-window limitations;
• organizational span and coordination limits.

Candidate distinction

The proposed term adds a constitutional criterion:

How much relevant telic difference can a loop keep active before some affected center's standing becomes functionally absent?

This is not reducible to number of facts or tokens.

A system may store extensive data while allowing only one purpose into executive context.

Adjudication

Context carrying capacity: retain.

Mandatory distinction:

Context carrying capacity is not storage capacity. It is the active capacity to preserve relevant plurality, contradiction, and standing at the resolution required for legitimate action.

Strong formal neighbors

Ashby's requisite variety is the most important structural neighbor. A regulator needs sufficient variety to respond to the variety it must control.

The proposed extension is:

A consentful regulator requires enough representational and procedural variety to preserve the standing relevant to the action it governs.

Measurement proposal

Treat capacity as a profile rather than a scalar.

Possible dimensions:

• number of represented centers;
• number of distinct protected conditions;
• contradiction tolerance;
• semantic-resolution depth;
• temporal span;
• provenance retention;
• uncertainty retention;
• ability to preserve dissent;
• ability to stop or escalate;
• correction latency.

14. Projection, model, and good regulation

The distinction among field, projection, and receiver mirror is strongly compatible with the good-regulator tradition.

Conant and Ashby argue that an effective regulator must embody or access a model of the regulated system. Later work has emphasized that such models can be lossy and that observers play a role in attributing models to agents.

Overlap

• action depends on internal models;
• representations need not be complete;
• regulatory adequacy depends on model structure;
• information loss is expected;
• a model can remain effective within a scope.

Candidate distinction

A telic projection carries not only descriptive state but significance, authority, and protected boundaries.

The receiver mirror includes interpretation through the receiver's own history and field.

Adjudication

Telic projection: retain.

Telic projection estimation: adopt for technical use.

Simplified telic field calculation: preserve as historical lineage wording.

The word estimation better communicates:

• uncertainty;
• partial access;
• correction;
• dependence on scope;
• lack of authority over the source.

Good-regulator bridge

A future technical claim may be:

A good relational regulator requires an adequate model not only of the system's behavior but of the standing and protected telic differences that constrain legitimate regulation.

This is a new hypothesis, not a theorem.

15. Temporal standing and future selves

The exact phrase temporal standing did not reveal a dominant established philosophical or legal doctrine in this review.

Its neighboring fields are substantial:

• personal identity across time;
• psychological connectedness to future selves;
• intertemporal choice;
• time inconsistency;
• intergenerational justice;
• legal standing for future generations;
• advance directives;
• fiduciary responsibility;
• continuity and succession.

Future-self research shows that people often treat distant future selves more like other people and that felt continuity affects saving, health, and ethical behavior. Intergenerational legal arguments have also granted present representatives standing on behalf of future generations in environmental contexts.

Candidate distinction

Temporal standing is proposed as:

The requirement that temporally displaced states or successors remain represented in present decisions that materially constrain the conditions they will inherit.

This can apply at several levels:

• later states of one person;
• successors in an institution;
• future generations;
• earlier selves whose commitments still govern;
• internal elements still navigating older terrain.

Adjudication

Temporal standing: retain as a candidate normative umbrella.

Mandatory distinctions:

• future-self continuity is psychological;
• intergenerational standing is legal and political;
• personal identity is metaphysical;
• temporal standing is a proposed governance requirement.

Alternative term considered

Diachronic standing is philosophically precise but less accessible.

Recommendation:

• public and governance writing: temporal standing;
• formal philosophy: note diachronic standing as a possible synonym;
• legal writing: use established domain-specific terms rather than replacing them.

16. Teleological integrity and telic integrity

The phrase teleological integrity is broad enough that unindexed or domain-specific uses are likely. The initial exact-term search did not establish a dominant recognized theory, but absence from the search environment does not support a coinage claim.

The term also carries metaphysical weight. It may sound as if the paper assumes one objective purpose that must remain pure.

The actual intended meaning is narrower:

Did the legitimate end-relative orientation survive delegation, compression, translation, optimization, and time?

Adjudication

Prefer telic integrity in project-specific technical writing.

Retain teleological integrity in lineage and broad essays where the fuller phrase aids comprehension.

Use:

Semantic integrity asks whether the meaning survived. Telic integrity asks whether the legitimate reason for acting survived.

This avoids implying universal final causes while preserving the connection to ends.

17. Teleological graft rejection

The phrase remains evocative and useful, but it is not yet formal.

Its closest neighbors include:

• institutional transplantation;
• organizational culture mismatch;
• schema mismatch;
• ecological transplant failure;
• immune rejection;
• context loss;
• value drift;
• goal misgeneralization.

Adjudication

Retain as metaphorical working language.

For technical documents, prefer:

• telic transplant failure;
• telic incompatibility;
• constitutional substrate mismatch.

Use teleological graft rejection in essays and lineage where its imagery performs useful compression.

Do not imply biological equivalence.

18. Semantic polytelometry

No indexed exact match was found for semantic polytelometry in the initial search environment.

Its components are heavily occupied:

• semantic parsing;
• argument mining;
• preference elicitation;
• value learning;
• multi-party negotiation;
• deliberation support;
• computational social choice;
• multiobjective decision making;
• AI mediation;
• dialogue systems;
• requirements engineering.

Candidate distinction

Semantic polytelometry is not merely extracting goals from text.

It is a proposed process that preserves:

• multiple source-attributed projections;
• standing;
• authority;
• provenance;
• uncertainty;
• unresolved disagreement;
• protected conditions;
• cost bearers;
• correction rights;
• model constraints.

Adjudication

Semantic polytelometry: retain as a candidate capability class.

Its legitimacy depends on architecture, not language alone.

A system should not qualify merely because it summarizes stakeholder goals.

Minimum properties should include:

1. source attribution;
2. explicit inference markers;
3. participant correction;
4. uncertainty;
5. unresolved remainder;
6. model-role limits;
7. provenance;
8. consent boundaries;
9. no automatic scalar collapse;
10. exit or refusal.

Research requirement

The term should be tested against:

• computer-supported cooperative work;
• computational argumentation;
• multi-party negotiation systems;
• deliberative democracy technology;
• value-sensitive design;
• requirements engineering;
• preference learning;
• constitutional AI.

19. Revised terminology register

Retain

• center of standing;
• local telic field;
• relational telic field;
• internal telic field;
• telic projection;
• telic projection integrity;
• polytelometry;
• polytelometric navigation;
• semantic polytelometry;
• constitutional self;
• context carrying capacity;
• temporal standing.

Retain with mandatory distinctions

• telic field;
• relational telic field;
• polytelometry;
• constitutional self;
• context carrying capacity;
• temporal standing;
• semantic polytelometry.

Replace in technical use

• simplified telic field calculation

→ telic projection estimation

• teleological integrity

→ telic integrity

Preserve as evocative or lineage language

• simplified telic field calculation;
• teleological integrity;
• teleological graft rejection.

Do not currently adopt

• universal telic field;
• objective measurement of a person's true field;
• model-discovered authentic telos;
• artificial standing as a default;
• dyad as proven universal ontology.

20. Revised stable definitions

Center of standing

A center whose protected differences, consequences, or future states must remain represented in decisions that affect it.

Local telic field

The structured landscape of differently significant possible states, protections, costs, boundaries, and routes indexed to a center of standing.

Telic projection estimation

The scoped, uncertain process of constructing a usable representation of what matters to a center for a particular relation or action.

Telic projection

The resulting source-attributed, lossy, corrigible representation.

Relational telic field

The end-relative possibilities and constraints generated through interaction among centers, including relation-level dynamics that are not reducible to isolated individual goals.

Polytely

The condition of a problem or system containing multiple simultaneous and potentially conflicting goals.

Polytelometry

The disciplined effort to make multiple ends legible in relation to source, standing, authority, provenance, scope, consent, time, sacrifice, uncertainty, and exit.

Polytelometric navigation

Movement under a polytelometric map without silently making one end sovereign.

Context carrying capacity

The active capacity of a loop to preserve relevant telic plurality, contradiction, and standing at the resolution required for legitimate action.

Constitutional self

A governance-oriented model of the person as a dynamic organization of internally differentiated positions or elements whose standing, executive influence, and conflicts must be integrated at person level.

Temporal standing

The requirement that temporally displaced states or successors remain represented in present decisions that materially constrain the conditions they will inherit.

Telic integrity

The preservation of legitimate end-relative orientation through projection, delegation, translation, optimization, and time.

Semantic polytelometry

The source-correctable semantic comparison of multiple telic projections under explicit limits on model authority.

21. Claim adjudication

May be stated strongly

• Systems and people act through incomplete models of what matters.
• Multiple goals can coexist and conflict.
• Goal selection and representation are not neutral.
• Declared, encoded, and operative purposes can diverge.
• Relationships can develop dynamics that shape participating agents.
• Internal multiplicity has substantial theoretical and clinical precedent.
• Regulatory capacity is limited.
• Optimization requires prior decisions about objectives and constraints.
• Model inferences about human ends should remain corrigible.
• Provenance and consent affect interpretive legitimacy.

May be stated as a proposed synthesis

• A telic field is a useful cross-domain representation of end-relative significance.
• Standing should accompany goal representation in consequential systems.
• Telic projections provide a useful distinction from living source fields.
• Context carrying capacity is a distinct constitutional property.
• Polytelometry can function as a pre-optimization governance layer.
• Semantic polytelometry can be implemented as a non-sovereign capability class.
• The constitutional self provides a useful governance language for internal plurality.
• Temporal standing can unify several future-state representation problems.

Must remain hypotheses

• Dyads are the minimum relational atoms of shared telic reality.
• All meaning is grounded in telic difference.
• The same field grammar composes unchanged across biological, psychological, organizational, and artificial systems.
• Relational fields possess independent standing.
• Artificial systems can become centers of standing.
• Context carrying capacity can be measured across domains using one formalism.
• Semantic polytelometry improves coordination more than established methods.

Should not be claimed

• Telic fields are newly discovered physical fields.
• The framework discovered internal plurality.
• The framework discovered multi-goal conflict.
• The framework discovered goal-shaped state representation.
• Exact-term search establishes original coinage.
• An LLM can infer a person's true telos.
• More context is always more consentful.
• Every persistent system has moral standing.

22. Required F.1 revisions

The first-principles paper should receive the following changes before publication.

22.1 Add a terminology-boundary section

Include:

• Paul Taylor's teleological center of life;
• Parsons's telic system;
• reversal theory's telic and paratelic states;
• linguistic telicity;
• computational telic states and telic controllability;
• polytely.

22.2 Replace technical uses of calculation

Change:

simplified telic field calculation

to:

telic projection estimation

Preserve the older phrase in a lineage note.

22.3 Narrow the semantic claim

Change formulations that may imply all semantics is telically grounded.

Prefer:

In consequential coordination, semantics often carries compressed orientation among centers and downstream processes.

This is narrower than:

Semantics is compressed orientation.

The stronger phrase may remain as an aphoristic candidate, but not as an established universal claim.

22.4 Deepen context capacity

Explicitly connect context carrying capacity to:

• requisite variety;
• bounded rationality;
• cognitive load;
• information bottlenecks;
• privacy;
• protective omission.

22.5 Deepen temporal standing

Add:

• future-self continuity;
• time inconsistency;
• intergenerational responsibility;
• future-generation standing.

22.6 Deepen the constitutional self boundary

State directly:

The constitutional-self model does not claim to discover internal multiplicity. It adds a governance vocabulary to established plural-self traditions.

22.7 Replace teleological integrity in technical sections

Use telic integrity.

Keep the paired formulation:

Semantic integrity asks whether meaning survived. Telic integrity asks whether the legitimate reason for acting survived.

22.8 Add paratelic protection

State that a telic field can represent the protected right not to be continually organized toward a goal.

22.9 Strengthen non-sovereignty

Add architectural requirements for semantic polytelometry rather than relying on an ethical sentence alone.

22.10 Revise novelty posture

Use:

This paper proposes a new composition and vocabulary for a known family of problems.

Do not use:

This paper introduces a new theory of purpose

without substantial qualification.

23. Empirical differentiation agenda

The framework now needs tests that distinguish it from neighboring methods.

23.1 Telic projection estimation versus requirements elicitation

Compare whether telic projection methods better preserve:

• affected centers;
• protected conditions;
• unacceptable sacrifices;
• authority;
• uncertainty;
• revision triggers.

23.2 Polytelometry versus ordinary stakeholder mapping

Test whether explicit relation classes improve:

• recognition of hidden objectives;
• representation of cost bearers;
• consent quality;
• identification of emergent teloi;
• route reversibility.

23.3 Polytelometric navigation versus multiobjective decision analysis

Test whether the pre-optimization layer changes:

• which objectives are admitted;
• which items are treated as constraints;
• whose preferences are represented;
• whether participants accept the resulting decision model.

23.4 Context carrying capacity

Operationalize a multidimensional profile and test:

• overload prediction;
• loss of dissent;
• premature consensus;
• escalation quality;
• correction latency.

23.5 Constitutional self

Compare the governance vocabulary with established dialogical and parts-based methods without making clinical efficacy claims.

23.6 Semantic polytelometry

Evaluate against:

• preference extraction;
• argument summarization;
• negotiation support;
• requirements analysis;
• multi-party deliberation tools.

Primary outcome:

Does the system preserve source correction and unresolved plurality better than the baseline?

24. Recommended publication posture

The Telic Field Papers may proceed.

They should proceed as:

• an interdisciplinary synthesis;
• a candidate research program;
• a governance and semantic architecture;
• a lineage-aware vocabulary;
• a set of falsifiable implementation hypotheses.

They should not proceed as:

• a new physics;
• a universal theory of mind;
• a clinical model;
• a claim to have discovered purpose or plurality;
• a model-authority system;
• a novelty claim based on search silence.

The strongest honest sentence is:

The Telic Field Papers assemble established insights about goal-directedness, relational meaning, internal plurality, regulation, and multiple objectives into a consent-and-standing architecture for preserving plural ends through semantic projection and machine-assisted coordination.

25. Primary-source ledger

Goal-directed representation and telic states

Amir, Nadav, Yael Niv, and Angela Langdon. “States as Goal-Directed Concepts: An Epistemic Approach to State-Representation Learning.” arXiv:2312.02367, 2023.

Amir, Nadav, Stas Tiomkin, and Angela Langdon. “Learning Telic-Controllable State Representations.” arXiv:2406.14476, 2024.

Amir, Nadav, Stas Tiomkin, and Angela Langdon. “Goals and the Structure of Experience.” arXiv:2508.15013, 2025.

Active inference

Friston, Karl J., et al. “Active Inference and Intentional Behaviour.” arXiv:2312.07547, 2023.

Semantic information

Kolchinsky, Artemy, and David H. Wolpert. “Semantic Information, Autonomous Agency, and Nonequilibrium Statistical Physics.” Interface Focus 8, no. 6, 2018. arXiv:1806.08053.

Bartlett, Stuart J. “Causal Leverage Density: A General Approach to Semantic Information.” arXiv:2407.07335, 2024.

Participatory sense-making

De Jaegher, Hanne, and Ezequiel Di Paolo. “Participatory Sense-Making: An Enactive Approach to Social Cognition.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 6, 2007, 485–507.

Cybernetics

Ashby, W. Ross. An Introduction to Cybernetics. Chapman & Hall, 1956.

Conant, Roger C., and W. Ross Ashby. “Every Good Regulator of a System Must Be a Model of That System.” International Journal of Systems Science 1, no. 2, 1970, 89–97.

Complex problem solving and polytely

Funke, Joachim. “Dynamic Systems as Tools for Analysing Human Judgement.” Thinking & Reasoning 7, no. 1, 2001, 69–89.

Multiobjective optimization

Emmerich, Michael T. M., and André H. Deutz. “A Tutorial on Multiobjective Optimization: Fundamentals and Evolutionary Methods.” Natural Computing 17, 2018, 585–609. DOI: 10.1007/s11047-018-9685-y.

Dialogical self

Hermans, Hubert J. M., Harry J. G. Kempen, and Rens J. P. van Loon. “The Dialogical Self: Beyond Individualism and Rationalism.” American Psychologist 47, no. 1, 1992, 23–33.

Autopoiesis and natural purpose

Maturana, Humberto R., and Francisco J. Varela. Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living. D. Reidel, 1980.

Weber, Andreas, and Francisco J. Varela. “Life after Kant: Natural Purposes and the Autopoietic Foundations of Biological Individuality.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1, 2002, 97–125.

Environmental standing

Taylor, Paul W. Respect for Nature: A Theory of Environmental Ethics. Princeton University Press, 1986.

Future-self continuity

Pronin, Emily, Christopher Y. Olivola, and Kathleen A. Kennedy. “Doing Unto Future Selves As You Would Do Unto Others: Psychological Distance and Decision Making.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34, 2008.

Ersner-Hershfield, Hal, et al. “Saving for the Future Self: Neural Measures of Future Self-Continuity Predict Temporal Discounting.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 4, 2009.

Pataranutaporn, Pat, et al. “Future You: A Conversation with an AI-Generated Future Self Reduces Anxiety, Negative Emotions, and Increases Future Self-Continuity.” arXiv:2405.12514, 2024.

Intergenerational responsibility

Oposa v. Factoran, G.R. No. 101083, Supreme Court of the Philippines, July 30, 1993.

Reversal theory

Murgatroyd, Stephen, Charles Rushton, Michael Apter, and Colin Ray. “The Development of the Telic Dominance Scale.” Journal of Personality Assessment 42, no. 5, 1978, 519–528.

Apter, Michael J. Reversal Theory: The Dynamics of Motivation, Emotion and Personality. Oneworld, 2007.

Parsons

Parsons, Talcott. “A Paradigm of the Human Condition.” In Action Theory and the Human Condition. Free Press, 1978.