---
slug: second_order_preference
name: Second-Order Preference
one_liner: "An ordering whose objects are one's own first-order preferences — ranking not options but one's rankings of them (preferring to prefer X, wanting not to want Z), so that the agent can endorse, repudiate, or target its own desires for revision."
type: prime
schema_version: 2
status: density_v2_draft
categories: [structural, epistemic, decision]
origin_domain: philosophy_of_mind
alternate_origin_domains: [economics, ai_alignment, psychology]
aliases: [second_order_desire, second_order_volition, metapreference, meta_ranking, preference_over_preferences, higher_order_preference]
related: []
solution_archetypes: []
review_flags:
- "OPERATOR-DERIVED (op-02 self-application, route R / reflexive) — obtained by applying `preference` to itself: the level-2 prime whose ordering ranks one's own first-order preferences. Discovered in the op-02 self-application pilot 2026-07-03. STRONG hold (verified absent; canonical named construct — Frankfurt's second-order desires/volitions). RESCUE PROVENANCE: the Stage-2 sonnet model articulated this candidate correctly but stamped it COLLAPSE ('no new anatomy'); it survived ONLY via the articulated-candidate rescue rule, the frontier judging the level-2 structure (self-endorsement + internal conflict + willed self-change) genuinely new at the meta level. STATUS: HOLD pending owner keep/cut."
- "Created 2026-07-03; STUB ONLY (frontmatter + Core Idea + Notes). SI/SF/similarity are PROPOSER ESTIMATES pending triangulation. Body sections (Structural Signature onward) NOT written."
- "Phase-C action: re-similarity-check vs `preference` (input/parent), `metacognition` (epistemic vs conative boundary), `self_control`, `revealed_preference`, `time_inconsistency`, and any akrasia prime; confirm the reflexive lift is a distinct prime (self-endorsement/conflict/self-revision NEW at meta, not present in any first-order ordering) and not `preference`-with-itself-in-the-domain; draw a subsumption edge preference→second_order_preference plus boundary-marking edges to self_control / metacognition at incorporation; write a v1 draft and sync the one_liner across v1/v2 per CLAUDE.md before merge."
substrate_independence:
  composite_substrate_independence: 4
  domain_breadth: 4
  structural_abstraction: 4
  transfer_evidence: 4
  reasoning: 'The bare structure — an ordering whose objects are themselves orderings held by the same system — is a genuinely substrate-neutral reflexive form: it names the lift from ranking options to ranking one''s own rankings, and the three level-2 features that appear only at the meta level (self-endorsement/identification, internal conflict between want and want-to-want, and willed targeting of the lower level for revision). This recurs cleanly across substrates that share no content: philosophy of mind (second-order desires/volitions and the basis of personhood), economics (metapreferences / meta-rankings over one''s own utility functions, commitment devices, self-command), AI alignment (preferences over one''s own reward/goal structure — corrigibility, reflective stability, endorsing or revising one''s objective), and self-regulation psychology (wanting to want to exercise). Domain breadth and transfer therefore score 4 with structurally-unlike siblings. Structural abstraction is 4 because, once "preference" (an evaluative ordering) is granted, the core is a pure statement about reflexive application — an ordering ranging over its own kind held by the same agent — with no human-specific content required. It stays just short of 5 only because the input "preference" imports an evaluative/valuing endpoint and the personhood/agency vocabulary leaves some framing residue.'
similarity_to_nearest_existing_prime:
  slug: preference
  similarity: 0.6
structural_framed:
  label: structural
  aggregate: 0.4
  criteria: {vocab_travels: 0.6, evaluative_weight: 0.5, institutional_origin: 0.3, human_practice_bound: 0.35, import_vs_recognize: 0.45}
  rationale: 'Reads structural-to-mixed. The bare relation — an ordering over one''s own orderings — is substrate-neutral and recognized rather than imported: it travels into economics (meta-rankings over utility functions), AI alignment (preferences over one''s own reward structure), and self-regulation without carrying the philosophy-of-mind vocabulary. The frame residue comes from the personhood / agency / free-will vocabulary the canonical construct is stated in (Frankfurt''s "person", "volition", "identification"), which keeps evaluative_weight, human_practice_bound, and import_vs_recognize off the structural floor. On balance it reads structural, inheriting only the evaluative endpoint of its parent `preference`.'
phase_b_passes_completed: []
---
# Second-Order Preference

## Core Idea

Second-order preference is `preference` applied reflexively to itself: an ordering whose objects are not external options but the agent's *own first-order preferences*. A flat first-order preference ranks options on an evaluative dimension — X over Y, this over that. A second-order preference ranks those very rankings: "I prefer to prefer X to Y," "I want not to want Z." The domain of the ordering has been lifted one level so that the same evaluating capacity now ranges over its own outputs, and the agent takes a stance not toward the world but toward its own valuings. It is reached from `preference` by the pure reflexive move — put the operator into its own domain — and what that move exposes is a structure that has no representation at the base level.

The load-bearing anatomy is three features that are present at the meta level but absent in any single-level ordering. First, *self-endorsement / identification*: the agent can endorse or repudiate its own first-order desires — it can want a desire it has, or want to be rid of one — and this reflexive stance is, on the canonical account, the very basis of autonomy and personhood, the thing that distinguishes a wanton (who simply has the desires it has) from an agent who owns or disowns them. Second, *internal conflict / akrasia*: because the two levels can disagree, there is a well-formed mismatch between what one wants and what one wants to want — the addict who wants the drug and simultaneously wants not to want it. A single-level ordering cannot even state this conflict; it takes two levels for the want and the want-about-the-want to come apart. Third, *willed self-change*: the higher-order ordering can *target its own lower level for revision*, making one's current preferences an object to be reshaped rather than a fixed input — the ground of self-command, commitment, and deliberate character change. None of the three is expressible in a flat preference ordering; each requires the ordering to range over itself.

Read structurally, the reflexive lift recurs across substrates that share no content. In *philosophy of mind* it is Frankfurt's second-order desires and volitions, foundational to personhood and free will, and the frame in which addiction and weakness of will are analyzed. In *economics* it appears as metapreferences and meta-rankings — orderings over one's own utility functions — underwriting commitment devices and self-command, where an agent binds its future self precisely because it prefers to have preferences it does not currently act on. In *AI alignment* it is preferences over one's own reward or goal structure: the value of a system being able to endorse or revise its own objective, at the heart of corrigibility and reflective stability. In *self-regulation psychology* it is the ordinary "wanting to want" — wanting to want to exercise — the gap between avowed and effective desire. `preference` is the parent and the input; second-order preference is the distinct level-2 prime the reflexive application produces, and its siblings across mind, economics, and alignment show the anatomy is the bare reflexive structure, not any one domain's vocabulary.

## Notes

**Provenance.** Produced by operator 02 (self-application), route R (reflexive), as the second-order prime obtained by applying `preference` to itself — an ordering whose objects are one's own first-order preferences. Surfaced in the op-02 self-application pilot on 2026-07-03. Verified absent; the construct is canonical and named: Harry Frankfurt, "Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person" (Journal of Philosophy, 1971) — second-order desires and second-order volitions; Amartya Sen, "Rational Fools" (1977) — meta-rankings / metapreferences; Richard Jeffrey — higher-order preferences. STRONG hold. RESCUE ILLUSTRATION: in the pilot the Stage-2 sonnet model articulated this candidate correctly but then stamped it COLLAPSE with "no new anatomy" — it survived only because the articulated-candidate rescue rule caught it and the frontier judged the level-2 structure (self-endorsement + internal conflict + willed self-change) genuinely new relative to the base ordering. A clean example of the rescue rule preventing a genuine reflexive prime from being silently killed by a Stage-2 collapse verdict.

**For owner evaluation (keep/cut).** The case FOR: this is a canonical, named construct (Frankfurt), verified absent from the corpus, and foundational to the analyses of autonomy, personhood, free will, addiction, and AI corrigibility. It has a clean reflexive level-2 anatomy — self-endorsement, internal conflict, and willed self-change — that flat `preference` provably cannot express, and it is genuinely unlike its siblings across philosophy of mind, economics, and AI alignment. The RISKS Kurt should weigh: (1) **distinct prime vs "`preference` with itself in the domain"** — the discriminating claim is that the self-endorsement / conflict / self-revision structure is *new at the meta level* and is present in *no* first-order ordering; if that holds, the reflexive lift earns its own node, if not it collapses back into `preference`. (2) **Overlap with `self_control` and any akrasia / time-inconsistency prime** — these are *downstream phenomena that second-order preference explains* (akrasia is the two-level mismatch; self-command is the higher level targeting the lower), not the prime itself; the boundary is that this prime is the *structure*, they are its *manifestations*. (3) **Overlap with `metacognition`** — sharp and easily conflated, but real: metacognition is *epistemic* (knowing about / monitoring one's own cognition), whereas second-order preference is *conative* (valuing over one's own valuings). Same reflexive shape, orthogonal contents — one ranges over knowing, the other over wanting. Sharp keep/cut question: *is "an ordering over one's own orderings" a distinct prime, or is it `preference` with its own outputs supplied as the domain?* — answerable by whether the three level-2 features are agreed to be new anatomy.

**At incorporation.** Re-run similarity against `preference` (input/parent), `metacognition`, `self_control`, `revealed_preference`, `time_inconsistency`, and any akrasia prime if present, to confirm no collapse. If kept: draw a subsumption edge `preference` → `second_order_preference`, plus boundary-marking edges to `self_control` (downstream manifestation) and `metacognition` (parallel reflexive structure, epistemic vs conative — mark the boundary explicitly), and sibling/instance edges to the economics meta-ranking and AI reflective-stability cases (or the primes carrying them). Add a missing-edge note flagging the metacognition and self-control boundaries so they are not later mistaken for collapse. Write a v1 draft and sync the one_liner across v1 and v2 per CLAUDE.md before merge.
