Method & governance

Open to explore, disciplined to conclude.

Computation produces factual knowledge about traces. The last mile — what follows for democracy — is explicit interpretation by the author, never a frequency dressed up as a norm.

Two layers, one firewall

How a claim earns its place

Layer 1 — ontology commitments, stated

Before any coding: what kind of object is claimed (natural, ideal, social), which domain, which mode of the register. Written once, versioned, cited by every unit.

Layer 2 — trace to meaning, validated

From the span to the code to the interpretation, each step logged. Backward traceability: any claim in the book walks back to a set of unit ids.

Hard stop at the last mile

No technique generates a normative claim. Normative statements live only in the author’s marked field and in chapter 13.

Soft stops upstream

Below α 0.67 nothing propagates; between 0.67 and 0.80 only exploratory language; from 0.80 the unit may feed the constitutional layer.

Rules in force

Three rules every chapter obeys

Re-inscription rule

A constitutional change counts as a change of meaning only if it alters who may inscribe, what is inscribed, who controls the register, or the temporal scope of the inscription. Anything else is logged as formal change.

α policy

Two or three coders, same units, separate rounds; thresholds fixed before results; disagreements resolved by a new codebook version, never by majority vote; codebook freezes F1 (exploratory) and F2 (promotion).

Seven checks

Problem-anchored purpose · joint construction demonstrated · one account, not two · balance in the core analysis · explicit evaluation assumptions · power, context and ethics as criteria · quality control applied.

Decision log

How the matrix was decided

A curated, dated log of the decisions and changes of criterion behind the book. Keeping it public is part of the method: a reader should be able to see where the author changed his mind, and why.

Ontology as grammar
The ontology does not share space with the other disciplines: it organises them. Weights are load-bearing per claim, never percentages.
Being / knowledge + register
Ferraris’s division is the spine; the register is the operator of identity and belonging; Arendt’s condition is the circumstance.
Four domains, not six
The “ontological” is the grammar, the “technological” is the layer of re-inscription; neither is a domain.
Terminology by zone
The thesis’s coinages live in the proemio only; the body uses the architecture alone, and any category must be definable by its function in the chain.
Three outputs, one argument
Text, website and repository cite each other; representation decisions are part of the argument, not an appendix.
Seven checks per chapter
Adopted from the roundtable of 2 September 2026; the sixth — power, context and ethics as assessable criteria — is the one most often skipped.
Fused record per unit
Mapping, revisions as events and audit trail in one object: the material proof of joint construction.

Full log with dates and superseded entries: in the repository, DECISIONS.md.