Teleology presupposes causality because explaining a phenomenon by the end it serves still requires a productive connection -- selection, design, function, intention -- linking the end to the outcome with modal robustness. Without causality's apparatus of cause, effect, mechanism, and counterfactual sensitivity, the teleological claim collapses to mere description of correspondence. Whether ends are read as final causes, selection histories, or designer intentions, the explanation works only insofar as the end is causally efficacious in producing or sustaining what serves it.

Teleology presupposes causality because end-directed explanation requires a productive connection by which ends shape outcomes.


Teleology presupposes function because its explanatory work consists in mapping phenomena to the purposes they realize — "the heart pumps blood in order to circulate oxygen" is a function assignment. It inherits function-mapping's commitment to single-valued dependency from input (the phenomenon) to output (its end), particularized to the purpose-attribution case. Without a well-defined notion of what a part is for — its function — teleological explanation has no relata to connect.

Teleology presupposes function because end-directed explanation operates by assigning each phenomenon to the function it serves.


Teleology is a specialization of interpretation: it is the activity of recovering meaning from a phenomenon by reading it through the framework of ends-and-functions rather than efficient causes. It inherits interpretation's structural commitment — work from a presented medium toward a constrained reading answerable to evidence and convention — particularized to the end-oriented framework that makes "that for the sake of which" the load-bearing explanatory category. The functional answer is precisely an interpretive recovery.

Teleology is a kind of interpretation that recovers meaning by reading phenomena in terms of the ends or functions they serve.


Instantiation requires the reusable structural frame to remain separable from the variable content bound into it. The parent can occur independently, but without it the child’s mechanism is undefined; this is prerequisite dependence rather than subsumption.


Preservation of the frame and slot semantics across payload substitutions is an internal constituent of template reuse. If the frame changes with every payload, there is no shared template, design-once economy, or cross-instance comparability. parent_in_child


Temporal Dynamics supplies the genus: System outcomes depend fundamentally on timing, sequencing, duration. Tempo Mismatch preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A system's pace of action is out of phase with the timescale of the environment it must respond to, so correct decisions degrade outcomes by arriving against a world that has already moved on (or one not yet ready to absorb them). The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Tempo Mismatch is a specialization of Temporal Dynamics, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Temporal decay and degradation presupposes entropy because the systematic diminishment of structural quality, capability, and information content over time is the macroscopic signature of entropy growth: ordered configurations are vastly outnumbered by disordered ones, so spontaneous evolution moves toward higher entropy. Entropy supplies the statistical mechanism by which macroscopic irreversibility arises; degradation names what that arrow of time looks like for any structured system that maintenance does not actively counter. Without entropy's directional asymmetry, sustained spontaneous degradation would have no grounding.

Temporal decay and degradation presupposes entropy because the systematic loss of structure over time tracks the entropy increase of the second law.


Temporal decay and degradation is the pattern in which system properties systematically diminish through use, exposure, or aging, following predictable functional forms like exponential or power-law decline. The very notion of diminishment-over-duration requires a dimension along which earlier-to-later ordering and irreversible succession hold. Time supplies that substrate: a measurable ordering parameter with an arrow distinguishing past from future. Without time as the structural foundation for change and entropy increase, there is no duration over which decay can accumulate and no irreversibility to give degradation its characteristic direction.

Temporal decay and degradation presupposes time because systematic diminishment of properties requires a dimension along which the diminishment unfolds.


Temporal dynamics presupposes time because its structural claim — that the when and order of events matter as much as their occurrence — operates on time's apparatus: ordered succession, measurable duration, irreversible direction. It inherits time's commitment that the temporal dimension is constitutive of how systems evolve and how causation propagates, and uses that apparatus to formulate sensitivity to lead times, sequencing, and rhythm. Without time's ordering and duration structure, temporal dynamics has no variables to track.

Temporal dynamics presupposes time because its content is precisely that timing, sequencing, and duration of events drive system behavior.


Temporal inconsistency is the pattern in which preference orderings reverse as the decision horizon approaches — the agent prefers X to Y when both are distant but Y to X when Y is imminent. The structural source of the reversal is non-constant time preference: discount rates that fall steeply at short horizons (hyperbolic discounting) generate exactly this inversion. Time preference supplies the underlying discounting machinery; temporal inconsistency is the behavioral consequence that emerges when that machinery deviates from the constant-rate exponential form, so it presupposes time preference as its generator.

Temporal inconsistency presupposes time preference because preference reversal as the horizon shortens is generated by non-exponential discounting of the future.


Temporal synchronization and phase alignment describes how independent oscillating processes interact through their relative phases to produce coherence or interference. This is a particular case of coordinating independently controlled processes into coherent collective behavior — exactly the coordination pattern. Coordination supplies the structural commitment: aligning independent actors so their actions combine without centralized control. Phase alignment specializes coordination to oscillatory systems where the alignment variable is phase, with constructive and destructive interference as the outcome regimes. Without coordination's underlying alignment problem, phase relationships would carry no functional significance.

Temporal synchronization and phase alignment presupposes coordination because aligning independent oscillator phases is a specific form of aligning independent processes.


Temporal synchronization and phase alignment describes how multiple processes interact through their relative phase relationships to produce coherence or interference, which requires that the processes have periodic structure against which phase can be defined. Without rhythm's machinery — recurring structured patterning of events with grouping, accent, and interval that establishes an expectation frame — there would be no periodic cycle to align or misalign across processes. Rhythm supplies the structured temporal substrate that phase-alignment dynamics presuppose for the very notion of phase to apply.

Temporal synchronization and phase alignment presupposes rhythm because phase-relationships between processes only have meaning against an established periodic structure.


A halting predicate on an iterative/recursive process; it presupposes the iteration it halts (the two live at the same level but are designed separately). Iteration supplies the prerequisite condition: Repeats steps to refine outcomes. Termination Condition operates against that background: An explicit, checkable predicate that decides whether an iterative or recursive process stops or continues. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


Every live sharpshooter instance has an unpinned analytic boundary choice, an implicit tree of alternative clusters or windows, a silent multiplicity budget, one selected leaf reported publicly, and a warrant gap from treating exploration as confirmation. It adds the noisy substrate, post-hoc cluster boundary, naive evidence calculation, and multiplicity discount.

The Texas sharpshooter fallacy is researcher degrees of freedom specialized to choosing a cluster boundary after seeing the data and reporting that selected fit as if pre-specified.


Texture presupposes figure-ground because fine-grained surface variation only registers as texture once the perceptual field has been organized into a bounded figure that owns the surface and a recessive ground that supplies its context. Figure-ground supplies the primitive structural separation that makes "something stands out against something" legible; texture then names the micro-scale variation residing on the figure's surface. Without the prior assignment of figure and ground, surface variation is just undifferentiated optical stimulus with no element whose surface it could characterize.

Texture presupposes figure-ground because surface variation is only legible as texture once an element has been organized as figure against a ground.


Unity_variety is the OUTCOME (the felt balance of sameness and difference); theme_and_variation is 'one specific generative structure FOR producing that balance' (held kernel and transformation grammar and retention condition). Unity & Variety supplies the prerequisite condition: Balance between consistency and diversity. Theme And Variation operates against that background: A recognizable invariant is repeatedly re-instantiated under systematic transformation along named dimensions, with a retention condition that keeps each result referable back to the original—diversity generated from a held kernel rather than sampled independently. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


It inherits Selection's candidate population, operative criterion, unequal inclusion, and retained subset. Its differentia is an adaptive criterion: the next case is selected for the uncertainty it can resolve or the category it can refine in the emerging model, analysis changes the next selection, and saturation supplies the stopping condition. Representative coverage is neither required nor normally intended.

Theoretical sampling is selection specialized to choosing the next case by expected contribution to an evolving explanatory model rather than by population representativeness.


Theory of mind is the specific case of mental_model where the modelled thing is another agent's hidden mental states, kept SEPARATELY INDEXED from one's own world-model (false-belief capacity). mental_model is 'any internal representation', ToM is the agent-target, dual-indexed specialization. Mental Model supplies the genus: Internal system representation. Theory Of Mind preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: An agent maintains a separate, updateable model of another agent's hidden states and routes behaviour through that model rather than through ground truth. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Therapeutic window presupposes dose-response relationship because its lower bound (minimum effective dose) and upper bound (maximum tolerated dose) are points on the two dose-response curves: efficacy rising with dose to a clinically meaningful level, and toxicity rising with dose to an unacceptable level. Without the prior commitment that response is a quantitative function of dose with characteristic shape parameters like potency, efficacy, and slope, there is no curve to read these bounds from and no usable operating range to delineate.

Therapeutic window presupposes dose-response relationship because its bounding doses are read from the rising effect-and-toxicity curves of dose-response analysis.


Selectivity Window supplies the genus: A process discriminates among targets only inside a bounded operating range of a control parameter, and loses or reverses that discrimination outside it. Therapeutic Window preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Optimal input range. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Therapeutic Window is a specialization of Selectivity Window, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Thermodynamic equilibrium is the macroscopic state of maximum entropy consistent with the system's imposed constraints — fixed energy, volume, particle number. Without entropy's machinery as a state function quantifying microstate multiplicity, with the Second Law driving isolated systems toward higher-multiplicity macrostates, there would be no principle picking out which state the system relaxes to under those constraints. Entropy supplies both the variable being maximized and the law driving relaxation toward the equilibrium state, making it structurally prior to the equilibrium concept it defines.

Thermodynamic equilibrium presupposes entropy because the equilibrium state is structurally defined as the entropy maximum consistent with imposed constraints.


Thermodynamic equilibrium is a specialization of equilibrium. The general equilibrium pattern is a balance condition on a named set of quantities such that no net change occurs along the balanced dimensions. Thermodynamic equilibrium specializes by naming the balanced quantities — temperature, pressure, chemical potentials — and the transformations they balance against, with the equilibrium state characterized as maximum entropy consistent with imposed constraints. The same balance-as-no-net-flow logic of equilibrium applies, with macroscopic thermodynamic variables as the specific balanced quantities.

Thermodynamic equilibrium is a specialization of equilibrium in which the balanced quantities are thermodynamic variables and the state maximizes entropy under constraints.


Thermodynamic equilibrium presupposes the second law because its defining feature is that an isolated macroscopic system relaxes to the state of maximum entropy consistent with imposed constraints, and that this state is unique and macroscopically time-independent. The very claim that systems left alone evolve to such a state, and not away from it, is the second law's statistical content. Without the prior commitment to entropy's non-decrease in isolated systems, there is no mechanism selecting equilibrium as the spontaneous endpoint of macroscopic evolution.

Thermodynamic equilibrium presupposes the second law because its characterization as the maximum-entropy state under constraints is the second law's content.


Thick_description 'exists FOR the sake of interpretation but is not interpretation' — interpretation is the act of assigning meaning, thick_description the prior recording discipline that preserves enough context for that act to be performable later. Presupposes interpretation as the downstream act it serves. Interpretation supplies the prerequisite condition: Recover meaning from a representational substrate under a framework that makes some readings available and others not. Thick Description operates against that background: Record a phenomenon together with the surrounding context that makes its meaning recoverable, not just the bare surface event. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


Three Horizons Analysis is a specialization of foresight whose distinctive move is partitioning the forward-view into three overlapping horizons — the declining current system, the contested transitional space, and the emergent transformative system — and tracking their dynamics over time. It inherits foresight's commitment to structured anticipation of plural futures informing present action, and adds the specific tri-layer temporal architecture that makes the contest between incumbent and emergent systems visible, supplying a particular mapping component of the broader foresight methods stack.

Three Horizons Analysis is a specific foresight method that maps the present-to-future transition across three overlapping temporal layers.


Modal reasoning evaluates claims across a structured space of alternative possibilities rather than the single actual situation, quantifying over accessible alternatives via modal operators. Three horizons analysis is the specific shape this reasoning takes in foresight: it partitions the space of possible futures into H1 (current system with near-term improvement), H2 (transitional disruption), and H3 (long-term transformation), and reasons about dynamics across this tri-layer partition. It is a structurally-particularized instance of possible-worlds reasoning whose alternatives are organized by temporal horizon and incumbent-emergent dynamics.

Three horizons analysis is the specific shape modal reasoning takes when alternative possible futures are structured into three nested temporal layers.


Feedback is the underlying primitive; this prime SPECIALIZES it by adding a threshold, a two-attractor structure, and active consumption of input as maintenance in the low regime. A positive feedback loop alone is not a trap. Feedback supplies the prerequisite condition: Outputs influence inputs. Threshold Bounded Vicious Cycle operates against that background: A system has a low regime that consumes any small input as maintenance and a high self-sustaining regime, separated by a threshold an intervention must clear in both magnitude and duration. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


The prime requires a critical value separating a deficit-restoring low basin from a surplus-compounding high basin. Its magnitude-and-duration intervention rule cannot be stated without the boundary value, though Threshold alone does not supply bistability or active input consumption.

The basin boundary is a constitutive Threshold inside the compound prime, completing ancestry that its current Feedback-only edge omits.


Threshold-driven order emergence describes collective patterns appearing discontinuously at critical parameter values from smooth microscopic interactions — phase transitions, crystallization, consensus lock-in. The higher-level ordered state has properties not present in the disordered constituents and not trivially predictable from them, satisfying the emergence pattern of higher-level-novelty-from-lower-level-constituents. The threshold variant specifies a particular emergence mechanism: discontinuous crossover at critical points rather than gradual aggregation. The general lower-level-to-higher-level commitment of emergence supplies the structural frame on which the threshold sharpening operates.

Threshold-driven order emergence presupposes emergence because discontinuous appearance of collective order at criticality is a particular emergence-claim.


Threshold-driven order emergence requires a critical value of a control parameter at which the system's collective behavior reorganizes discontinuously — temperature, density, coupling strength, or shared-belief level. Without threshold's machinery — a specific input value separating a sub-response regime from a response regime with a sharp transition between them — there would be no critical point at which order emerges and no discontinuity in the macroscopic response to smooth microscopic change. The threshold prime supplies the input-value structure that makes the emergence pattern critical-point-localized.

Threshold-driven order emergence presupposes threshold because the abrupt reorganization is by definition triggered at a critical value of a continuous control parameter.


Threshold-driven order emergence describes the discontinuous appearance of ordered structure at a critical value of a control parameter, with positive feedback producing the sharpness of the transition — which is structurally what a tipping point names. Without the tipping-point machinery of alternative stable states with a sharp bifurcation between them driven by positive feedback, there would be no framework for the discontinuous regime change the order-emergence pattern requires. The tipping-point prime supplies the bifurcation-and-stable-state structure that critical-point order emergence inherits.

Threshold-driven order emergence presupposes tipping points because the discontinuous reorganization at a critical parameter value is structurally the bifurcation a tipping point names.


A threshold is the bare critical value (one component); this prime embeds it in a two-LEVEL architecture (continuous observable and dormant rule keyed to the threshold and monitoring loop and activation). Presupposes threshold. Threshold supplies the prerequisite condition: Safe vs harmful levels. Threshold-Triggered Rule Activation operates against that background: A continuous observable crossing a threshold flips a dormant rule to active. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


Both patterns require a shared finite resource, multiple consumers, correlated tail demand, capacity sized against independent arrivals, and a joint exceedance. Thundering Herd adds a specific correlating mechanism: one shared signal releases a waiter population nearly simultaneously.

Thundering Herd is Correlated Capacity Demand specialized to a shared release event that aligns otherwise independent arrivals into the joint exceedance.


In the common computing, queueing, and service cases, the synchronized burst produces actual competition among concurrent consumers for a shared finite resource, so Interference and Contention occurs inside the event. The defining defect, however, is the joint timing distribution created by the shared release signal, not steady-state overlap. Outcome-neutral cases such as predator satiation preserve the correlated-capacity mechanism without ordinary contention, making the constituent typical rather than strict and ruling out subsumption.

Thundering herds typically contain a downstream contention episode when synchronized arrivals compete at a finite choke, but contention is an effect constituent rather than the correlated-release genus.


Unverified Precondition supplies the genus: An action presumes a referent exists at the moment of use without checking. Time-Of-Check To Time-Of-Use Flaw preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A precondition verified at one instant authorizes an action taken at a later instant, and the relevant state changes in the gap between them, so the defect lives in the temporal binding between check and use rather than in either operation. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Time-Of-Check To Time-Of-Use Flaw is a specialization of Unverified Precondition, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Verification supplies the prerequisite condition: Check that an object conforms to its specification via a defined procedure yielding evidence and a verdict. Time-Of-Check To Time-Of-Use Flaw operates against that background: A precondition verified at one instant authorizes an action taken at a later instant, and the relevant state changes in the gap between them, so the defect lives in the temporal binding between check and use rather than in either operation. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.

Time-Of-Check To Time-Of-Use Flaw presupposes Verification, whose structure must already obtain for the child mechanism to be meaningful or operational.


Time preference is a kind of preference specialized along the temporal dimension: the agent's ordering over outcomes weights present rewards more heavily than identical delayed ones, producing systematic discounting. It inherits preference's general commitment to an ordering over a choice set on an evaluative dimension, and supplies the specific case where the evaluative dimension is delivery timing and the ordering relation incorporates a discount rate (exponential, hyperbolic, or quasi-hyperbolic) that converts otherwise-equivalent outcomes into ranked alternatives based purely on when they arrive.

Time preference is a specialization of preference in which the ordering systematically discounts delayed outcomes relative to present ones.


Time preference is the systematic weighting of present outcomes more heavily than equally-magnituded delayed ones, formalized through discount rates applied to future utility. The whole construction requires time to be in place as a dimension along which events are ordered earlier-to-later with a privileged direction. Without that temporal axis there is no delay to discount, no future to weigh, and no preference between present and future to express. Time supplies the directional ordering that time preference then assigns subjective weights along, so it cannot operate without time as its substrate.

Time preference presupposes time because discounting only makes sense when outcomes are ordered along a present-to-future axis.


Time value of money presupposes time preference because the discount rate that converts future cash flows to present values rests on the impatience axiom -- a unit today is preferred to the same unit later -- combined with marginal productivity of capital. Without time preference's psychological-and-economic discounting of future over present, the present-value reduction has no behavioral or equilibrium grounding; Fisher's interest-rate framework explicitly builds time value on the time-preference rate. The financial discounting machinery is the operationalization of intertemporal preference. Time Preference (Discounting Future) supplies the prerequisite condition: Present vs future value. Time Value of Money operates against that background: Present vs future value. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.

Time value of money presupposes time preference because discounting future cash flows depends on a positive preference for present over delayed receipt.


A tipping point describes a system in which gradual change in a control parameter crosses a threshold and triggers an abrupt, often hysteretic transition between qualitatively distinct regimes. The claim requires at least two alternative stable states and a bifurcation point at which the trajectory jumps from one to the other. State-and-state-transition supplies precisely that substrate: a state space, distinct stable subsets, and a transition relation. Without an underlying state structure with rule-governed transitions, there are no regimes to tip between and no bifurcation surface to cross.

Tipping points presupposes state and state transition because abrupt regime change requires alternative stable states and a transition between them.


Tolerance is a specialization of adaptation. The general adaptation pattern is structural modification in response to sustained environmental change, preserving fit. Tolerance specializes by giving the modification a particular shape: the system reduces its responsiveness to a repeated stimulus, so the same dose produces a diminished effect over time. The same internal-modification logic of adaptation applies, with diminished response gain as the specific outcome and repeated stimulus exposure as the specific trigger — the inverse signature of potentiation within the adaptation family.

Tolerance is a specialization of adaptation in which repeated exposure reduces the system's response to a stimulus.


The tolerance paradox is 'a particular, RESOLVABLE member' of the paradox family — a specific two-level case (open object-rule and meta-exception excluding the rule's own negation) that ESCAPES via a narrowly-bounded exception rather than a standing contradiction. A specialization of paradox that adds a prescription. Paradox supplies the genus: Contradictory but revealing truth. Tolerance Paradox preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A system defined by an open principle must refuse that principle to elements that would destroy it, or be destroyed by its own openness. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Every top-down analysis divides a whole into component roles that can explain or realize the whole. It adds a directional inference from the global purpose, property, or constraint downward to the lower-level structures and behaviors that must support it.

Top-down analysis is decomposition specialized to beginning with whole-system goals and constraints and deriving the lower-level parts and mechanisms they require.


Boundary is the fixed constraint whose relief gives the forcing its geometry. The surface, obstacle, sill, ridge, or bedform redirects a flow because it limits the paths available to the moving medium. Remove the boundary and only unconstrained background flow remains; remove the flow and only static relief remains.

The shaped boundary that the moving medium cannot freely cross is a constituent of every topographic-forcing interaction.


Flow supplies the moving medium in the interaction. Relief without incident flow is only geometry; once a current passes it, the boundary can deflect streamlines, create vertical motion, shed wakes, generate waves, and localize dissipation. Topographic Forcing adds the fixed spatial geometry and the resulting field reorganization.

Topographic forcing requires an incident flow whose path, momentum, and flux distribution can be reorganized by fixed relief.


A topographic map is a representational architecture: a source space laid out on a substrate by a neighbourhood-preserving map with non-uniform magnification. is-a a specialized (spatial, layout-bearing) representation.


Traceability presupposes observability because linking any element of a system backward through its derivation history and forward through its downstream uses requires that the relevant state transitions and custody transfers leave externally-visible records that can be reconstructed. Without observability's property that internal state can be inferred from emitted outputs over time, the chain of derivation and custody would be invisible and the traceability infrastructure would have nothing to record. Observability supplies the visibility-of-internal-state property; traceability builds on that property to maintain the durable, navigable chain that audit and attribution then exploit.

Traceability presupposes observability because linking backward and forward through derivation history requires that internal state changes leave externally-visible records.


Traceability links any element of a system backward through its history of derivation and forward to downstream uses. Typically the steps in that history are transformations — rule-governed mappings from inputs to outputs that preserve some properties while altering others — and traceability records how each such transformation reshaped the element. Transformation supplies the unit operation whose chain traceability captures. Some traceability chains track mere custody transfer without restructuring, so the dependence is typical rather than strict, but most live cases ride on transformation as the underlying step being traced.

Traceability typically presupposes transformation because the linked history it tracks is mostly a chain of rule-governed restructurings, though pure custody chains exist.


A trade-off is the structural situation where gains on one valued dimension require losses on another within a given feasible set, which presupposes that the feasible set is itself restricted — that not all desirable combinations are admissible. Without constraint's binding restriction on admissible configurations, every combination would be feasible and there would be no enforced exchange between dimensions; improvements on one dimension would not require sacrifices on another. The trade-off is the shape constraint takes when it binds multiple valued dimensions simultaneously.

Trade-offs presuppose constraint because the inability to improve all dimensions simultaneously is what makes the feasible set bounded by a frontier.


The tragedy of the commons depends on the externality structure: each user receives the full private benefit of consumption but bears only a 1/N share of the collective depletion cost, so the unpriced residue is imposed on other users. Without the externality framework — the divergence between private and social cost arising from effects not transmitted through prices — the rational self-interest pattern would not produce collective degradation, because the depletion would be internalized and consumption would track its true social cost.

Tragedy of the commons presupposes externality because the depletion of a shared resource is the unpriced third-party cost each user imposes on others.


Social dilemma is the structural pattern in which each agent's individually rational strategy (defect) yields a collectively worse outcome than mutual cooperation would. Tragedy of the commons is the specific case where the dominant defection is over-consumption of a shared open-access resource: each user gains the full private benefit of their consumption but bears only a fractional share of the depletion cost, so individual rationality leads to collective resource collapse. It inherits the dilemma's individual-rationality-versus-collective-welfare structure and adds the open-access-resource specification.

Tragedy of the commons is a specialization of social dilemma; many users degrade a shared open-access resource through individually rational consumption.


A transaction is a sequence of operations treated as a single indivisible logical unit — either all effects commit or none do, with no partial state visible. The construct emerged to handle multi-step state changes where transfers between parties must succeed jointly or fail jointly. Exchange supplies the underlying pattern: two or more parties transfer goods, services, or rights to each other under mutual commitment, with each transfer conditional on the other's. Transaction specializes exchange by adding atomic commit semantics, ensuring the conditional-on-each-other property is enforced even under failure, concurrency, and interleaving.

Transaction presupposes exchange because the indivisible all-or-nothing commit-or-rollback unit operates on multi-party transfers requiring mutual commitment.


A transaction guarantees that a multi-step state change either commits in full or aborts with no partial effects visible to others, which requires the system to retain the option of rolling effects back before they become durable. That option is the reversibility side of Reversibility and Irreversibility, and the commit boundary marks the irreversibility transition. The ACID atomicity guarantee presupposes the reversible-then-irreversible distinction as its structural ground.

Transaction presupposes Reversibility and Irreversibility: atomicity and rollback require the option to undo a partial commit before observers see it.


Transaction costs presuppose exchange because they are defined as the economic costs of making an exchange — searching for counterparties, negotiating, contracting, monitoring, enforcing — over and above the nominal price of what is transferred. Without an exchange relation in which two or more parties make conditional transfers to each other, there is no transaction whose execution incurs these specific frictions. Exchange supplies the bilateral-transfer structure on which transaction costs are then measured as the unavoidable overhead governing whether the exchange occurs in markets, firms, or hybrid arrangements.

Transaction costs presuppose exchange because they are the friction costs that exist only relative to the act of transferring between parties.


Transfer of learning presupposes learning because transfer is the application of acquired source-domain mastery to a different target context, and there is nothing to transfer without prior acquisition. Learning supplies the durable internal capability whose generalizability is then tested by transfer: if the original encoding did not produce a robust, abstractable trace, no transfer is possible. Transfer thus operates downstream of learning and serves as a diagnostic for whether the acquisition process supported abstraction beyond surface features rather than merely surface memorization.

Transfer of learning presupposes learning because there must be acquired source-domain capability before it can be applied to a new context.


The focal result remains recognizable while the population, regime, calibration range, historical period, or other context that bounded its truth is projected away. Removing that meaning-bearing surrounding state widens the interpretations and uses the unchanged claim can support. Transferability overclaim therefore inherits Context Stripping's preserved-focal-signal and removed-context structure, then adds an export step and a reach-versus-warrant gap as its epistemic differentia.

Transferability overclaim is Context Stripping specialized to a claim whose scope conditions are removed in transit, widening its apparent applicability beyond its evidentiary warrant.


A transformation is a rule-governed single-valued mapping with added invariant-preservation semantics; every transformation is a function. Function (Mapping) supplies the genus: Relates inputs to outputs. Transformation preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A rule-governed mapping that restructures an input into a different output, holding certain invariants fixed while altering others. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


It inherits Temporal Dynamics' commitment that order, duration, and timing determine the outcome, then fixes the object to a disturbance-indexed trajectory with an initial displacement, characteristic response times, possible peaks and crossings, and a settling or departure criterion. Temporal Dynamics covers many other timing-sensitive structures that need not be responses or approach any state.

Transient Response is Temporal Dynamics specialized to the finite adjustment trajectory after a disturbance and before a settled regime is reached or definitively escaped.


Translation and conceptual bridging converts concepts and meanings from one linguistic or conceptual framework to another, managing inevitable loss across incommensurable systems. The operation only makes sense when each framework is already a representational system — a structured mapping of a target domain onto a medium under a faithfulness convention. Representation supplies exactly that machinery; translation then operates as a meta-mapping between two such representational systems, presupposing both source and target representations and the conventions they carry as the objects being bridged.

Translation presupposes representation because converting meaning across frameworks requires both source and target to map their domains onto media under conventions.


Translation and conceptual bridging is the particularization of transformation to the domain of meaning across representational systems: the input is a concept expressed in one framework, the rule is a cross-framework mapping that negotiates incommensurability, the output is a corresponding expression in a different framework. Where transformation names structured input-to-output mapping with preserved invariants generally, translation specifies that the invariants targeted are structural-semantic essence while the degrees of freedom being reshaped are surface notation, vocabulary, and idiom.

Translation and conceptual bridging is the specific shape transformation takes when meaning is mapped across incommensurable representational frameworks.


Transparency presupposes observability because its core requirements — disclosure, accessibility, timeliness, integrity of information about processes and decisions — depend on the prior structural property that a system's internal state can be inferred from its externally-visible outputs. Without observability's apparatus by which outputs suffice to reconstruct what is happening inside, transparency would have no medium through which to deliver insight to stakeholders. Transparency inherits observability's general property and specializes it to the governance setting, adding the normative commitments that those with legitimate interest have access and that the disclosed information is accurate, accessible, and timely enough to inform participation and oversight.

Transparency presupposes observability because making decisions and processes accessible to stakeholders requires the prior capacity to infer internal state from outputs.


Triangulation cross-verifies claims by drawing on multiple independent sources, methods, or perspectives, with confidence increased at the intersection of converging streams. This presupposes aggregation: collapsing many items into a unified form that retains chosen features while suppressing detail, with the aggregation function encoding a claim about what matters. Combining independent evidence into a single judgment is precisely such an aggregation; the convergence test (do the streams agree?) is a function over the multiple inputs. Without aggregation's structured combination of many into one, triangulation has no operation by which multiple streams yield a verdict.

Triangulation presupposes aggregation because cross-verifying multiple independent sources is the act of combining many evidence streams into a single summary judgment.


Triangulation presupposes verification because its function is to strengthen the verdict of conformance: independent sources, methods, or perspectives are deliberately combined so that convergence across them constitutes stronger evidence that a claim conforms to its specification than any single stream alone. Verification supplies the general structure of checking an object against a stated criterion via a procedure yielding evidence and a verdict; triangulation is a methodological enrichment that improves the evidentiary stream feeding that verdict by reducing single-source bias and blind spots.

Triangulation presupposes verification because cross-checking against multiple independent sources is a discipline for confirming conformance to a specification.


Trilemma is 'the n=3 specialisation of competing objectives' / 'widely (and not wrongly) regarded as a special case of trade_offs' — three desirables and a proven impossibility yielding a discrete pick-two taxonomy plus dissolution moves the binary case lacks. Trade-offs supplies the genus: Balancing competing priorities. Trilemma preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Three desirable properties that cannot be jointly guaranteed, forcing a pick-any-two choice with a distinct dissolve-or-scope intervention catalogue. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Substrate-to-exploit — trust is the bare relation the attack RIDES; this prime is the adversarial exploitation of trust's TRANSITIVITY (write once upstream, harm many downstream past a bypassed perimeter). Presupposes trust as the substrate. Trust supplies the prerequisite condition: Willingly accepting vulnerability to another party's future behavior under incomplete monitoring, based on positive expectations about their competence and intentions. Trusted Intermediary Compromise operates against that background: Trust transitivity is exploited to push a hostile payload past the consumer's perimeter. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


Chaos supplies the genus: Unpredictable dynamics. Turbulence preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Chaotic multi-scale flow. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Turbulence is a specialization of Chaos, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Turbulence is not mere disorder but a specific organized pattern of disorder: irregular small-scale motions produce coherent eddies, an energy cascade across scales, and robust statistical regularities like power-law spectra that are not properties of any individual fluid parcel. That is the emergence pattern: higher-level descriptive vocabulary and behavioral regularities appearing from local constituent interactions without being trivially predictable from them. Turbulence specializes emergence to the fluid-dynamical multi-scale cascade.

Turbulence is a kind of emergence: organized multi-scale structure and statistical regularities arise from local fluid interactions.


Turn-taking is the runtime allocation of a single one-at-a-time channel across contenders via an allocation rule that selects who goes next — a specialization of allocation (assign a limited supply across competing claimants). The channel/allocation separation is the structural core.


Turn-taking enforces at-most-one occupancy of a shared channel (mutual exclusion's core safety invariant) plus an explicit allocation/scheduling rule layered on top. Mutual Exclusion supplies the genus: Guarantee that at most one party occupies a designated state or resource at a time. Turn Taking preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Contenders share a one-at-a-time channel by an allocation rule that selects who goes next. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Turnover presupposes invariance because its defining commitment — the aggregate form, function, or identity persists while constituents cycle through — is precisely an invariance claim: structure is preserved under the transformation of member replacement. It inherits invariance's joint specification of what is preserved (the whole's structure) and which transformations preserve it (constituent swap-out and replenishment). Without invariance's preserved-feature apparatus, there would be no persistent whole against which the cycling parts could be measured.

Turnover presupposes invariance because the structural identity of the whole must persist as the named feature preserved under member replacement.


Turnover presupposes recurrence because what makes turnover a coherent structural phenomenon is that the slots, roles, or aggregate forms of the system reappear across time while the occupants change. Without recurrence's pattern of reappearance across iterations or instances, there is no persistent whole against which member-flux can be measured as turnover. The rate at which parts are swapped is meaningful only relative to a recurrent structural template that survives the swap, making turnover a recurrence-of-structure layered over change-of-substance.

Turnover presupposes recurrence because the persistence-amid-replacement pattern is the recurrent reappearance of role-fillings as individuals cycle through.


A two-sided market is the cross-side (asymmetric, two-coupled-schedule) specialization distinguished from one-sided network_effect; it is the multi-sided strengthening. Network effect is the broader genus. Network Effect supplies the genus: Value increases with users. Two Sided Market preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A platform mediates two distinct user groups whose participation creates value for each other, so each side's marginal value rises with the other side's size and the two demand schedules must be balanced together. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


The specific economic structure (cross-side externality, asymmetric pricing, tipping) that platforms instantiate; presupposes a mediating platform. Platform Design supplies the prerequisite condition: Extensible core systems. Two Sided Market operates against that background: A platform mediates two distinct user groups whose participation creates value for each other, so each side's marginal value rises with the other side's size and the two demand schedules must be balanced together. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Two-sided matching is a specialization of allocation. The general allocation pattern assigns limited supply across competing claims under a feasibility constraint and a criterion. Two-sided matching specializes by structuring the assignment as pairings between members of two sets, where both sides carry preferences and no money-price clears the market. The same who-gets-how-much commitment of allocation applies, with mutual selection across a bipartite relation as the specific mechanism and stability and efficiency as the specific evaluative criteria.

Two-sided matching is a specialization of allocation in which pairings form by mutual selection across a bipartite preference structure rather than by price.


Two-sided matching forms pairings across two sets where each side carries a ranking over potential partners, and central solution concepts like stability and efficiency are defined in terms of those rankings. Without Preference — an evaluator's ordering over a choice set — there is no stability to check (no blocking pair can be identified) and no efficiency criterion to apply. Matching presupposes preference as the primitive that supplies the rankings the allocation must respect.

Two-Sided Matching presupposes Preference: stability and efficiency results are defined relative to each side's preference order.


Shares the fast-store/slow-store substrate pair with caching but REVERSES the origination flow (born-fast-migrates-slow vs born-slow-mirrored-fast); contrast-sibling rather than is a specialization of. Caching supplies the prerequisite condition: Store for faster retrieval. Two-Store Architecture operates against that background: A fast interference-prone store and a slow integrated store coupled by a periodic transfer mechanism, paying for both speed and integration by maintaining two oppositely-optimised substrates. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Type I and Type II errors presuppose hypothesis testing because they are defined relative to its dichotomous decision rule: a Type I error is a false rejection of a true null, a Type II error a false retention of a false null. Without the prior framing of inference as a structured contest between a null and an alternative with a pre-specified threshold, there is no reject/retain decision and so no distinction between these two error kinds. The Neyman-Pearson optimization of one rate at the expense of the other is internal to the testing framework.

Type I and Type II errors presuppose hypothesis testing because they are precisely the two ways its reject/retain decision can be wrong.


Type I and Type II errors are tunable in opposite directions: tightening the significance threshold reduces false positives but raises false negatives, and the converse holds at fixed sample size. The two valued dimensions — false-positive control and false-negative control — are structurally coupled within the feasible set of decision rules. That is the defining structure of a Trade-off, here instantiated as the alpha-beta relationship that all classical hypothesis testing must navigate.

Type I and Type II Errors presuppose Trade-offs: lowering one error rate at fixed sample size necessarily raises the other.


Recognizing a repeatable type presupposes abstracting away token-specific location, time, state, and history while retaining the structure shared by its occurrences. Type–Token is not a species of the abstraction operation; it is an ontological relation whose type endpoint is obtained and maintained through abstraction. Without selection of common structure across token differences there is no repeatable type to distinguish from the individual occurrences. Abstraction can produce models, interfaces, or categories with no token layer, while a type-token system cannot define its shared type without abstraction.


Ultra-stability is Ashby's pattern in which a system holds essential variables within viable bounds not by returning to a fixed setpoint but by reorganizing its own parameters when current regulation is overwhelmed. That second-tier reorganization is exactly Adaptive Capacity: the latent reserve of flexibilities and learning mechanisms used to reconfigure beyond first-tier response. Ultra-stability specializes adaptive capacity by naming the cybernetic mechanism — step-changes in internal parameters — and the viability criterion.

Ultra-Stability is a kind of adaptive capacity: it maintains essential variables by reorganizing internal parameters when first-tier regulation fails.


Ultra-stability holds essential variables within viable bounds by sensing excursions and triggering parameter reorganization when first-tier regulation fails. Both the inner regulation and the outer reorganization loop require Feedback — output rerouted back to influence subsequent input — as the structural arrangement. Without the loop, the system has no way to detect that essential variables have departed bounds or to drive corrective change. Ultra-stability presupposes feedback at both control tiers.

Ultra-Stability presupposes Feedback: essential-variable regulation requires measuring deviation and routing it back to drive corrective reorganization.


Ultra-stability is a specialization of homeostasis. Both rely on closed-loop self-regulation that holds essential variables within bounds against disturbances, but ultra-stability relaxes the homeostatic commitment to a single setpoint and allows the system to reach the viable range through different internal configurations. Where standard homeostasis tracks a reference point with negative feedback, Ashby's ultra-stability admits multiple successful endpoints provided the essential variable stays within survival bounds — a more permissive specialization of the same sensor-comparator-actuator architecture.

Ultra-stability is a specialization of homeostasis in which the system maintains a viability range rather than a fixed setpoint.


Risk Aversion supplies the prerequisite condition: Preference for certainty. Uncertainty-Driven Verification Premium operates against that background: Under uncertainty, agents pay to retreat from unverified options toward verified ones. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.

Uncertainty-Driven Verification Premium typically presupposes Risk Aversion, whose structure must already obtain for the child mechanism to be meaningful or operational.


Identifiability asks whether the target-to-observation or candidate-to-criterion map uniquely recovers one admissible answer. Underspecification fixes the answer to no: several distinct candidates occupy the same equivalence class under the explicit criterion. It adds a hidden closure that nevertheless chooses one member, a split between constraint-controlled and closure-controlled behavior, and divergence when another admissible representative is selected.

Underspecification is failed identifiability specialized to a criterion with a non-singleton admissible class, a hidden selector, and uncontrolled behavior that varies across selected representatives.


In machine learning, causal inference, and scientific model selection, the criterion is built from observed cases and the chosen answer projects beyond them, so an inductive inference hosts the underspecification. Compiler standards, algebraic inverse problems, and other formal specifications can admit the same equivalence-class-and-hidden-closure structure without moving from particulars to a generalization. Induction is therefore a typical prerequisite context, not the taxonomic genus.

Underspecification typically occurs inside an inductive selection process when observed particulars support several generalizations equally, but specifications and inverse maps can be non-unique without an inductive inference.


Petro-states, externally funded nonprofits, advertiser-funded media, and similar institutional cases contain the exact funding-bypass geometry. Inherited wealth, unused skill, and other capability-atrophy cases need no nominal principal or accountability constituency, so the constituent is conditional rather than universal.

The windfall-atrophy pattern contains severed accountability when the performance coupling removed by the easy inflow is a principal-controlled revenue channel.


Unevenness waste is the COST variance through finite shared capacity imposes — additive to the mean's cost, rising as 1/(1-rho) near the ceiling (M/M/1). Presupposes the queueing structure it prices.


Uniformitarianism is the specific shape inductive reasoning takes when the inference moves from observed present-day mechanisms — physical, chemical, biological — to unobservable past states under the assumption that the same processes operated then. It is a structurally-particularized instance of ampliative reasoning from sampled cases to broader generalizations, with the added commitments that the sample is contemporary processes, the target is the historical record, and the bridge is the methodological assumption that the kinds (and sometimes rates) of process are invariant across time. The inferential risk is correspondingly the failure of process-invariance.

Uniformitarianism is the specific shape inductive reasoning takes when present mechanisms are projected backward to license inferences about the deep past.


Union is an operation over collections. Its output and inclusive-OR membership test cannot be stated without sets or set-like collections and a membership relation, but union is not itself a kind of membership.

Union presupposes collections with settled membership tests before inclusive-OR pooling can be defined.


Criteria of Individuation supplies the genus: The rules a system fixes for what makes something one entity — when parts compose a single whole, when two presentations are the same entity, and which kind supplies a thing's persistence — together constituting its inventory of countable individuals. Unity Test preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: The rule that decides, in a given system, when a collection of parts counts as one whole rather than many. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Unity Test is a specialization of Criteria of Individuation, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Unity and variety is the specific shape balance takes when the competing weights placed in the multi-component field are consistency (the pull toward coherence and recognizability) and variety (the pull toward novelty, contrast, and adaptive difference). It is a structurally-particularized instance of distributing weights so no component overwhelms the others and the aggregate condition is satisfied, with the added commitment that the target state is a relational balance maintaining enough unity for recognition and enough variety to prevent monotony. Both poles are required; pure unity produces stasis, pure variety incoherence.

Unity and variety is the specific shape balance takes when the competing weights are coherence-pulling consistency and differentiation-pulling novelty.


Physical, biological, and network universality commonly exhibits Emergence: a stable coarse-level law arises from many unlike lower-level realizations and is not a property of any one microscopic component. The relation remains typical because formal cases such as equivalence among computational models or limiting theorems can satisfy Universality's class-and-law identity without the live Emergence entry's interacting-part and novel-whole requirements.

Universality typically appears as a macro-level regularity that survives coarse-graining despite heterogeneous microscopic realizations.


Universality partitions a population of systems by equality of the low-dimensional signature that survives coarse-graining. Equality of that signature is reflexive, symmetric, and transitive and therefore induces disjoint equivalence classes. Universality adds a detail-erasing operation, invariant signature, and shared derivable law; bare equivalence relations need not carry any of those predictive commitments.

Every Universality class is an Equivalence Relation induced by a surviving coarse-grained signature, with one derivable law added for every class member.


Universality in critical phenomena is the fact that disparate systems sharing a small set of abstract properties exhibit identical quantitative critical behaviour, with microscopic details irrelevant in the renormalization-group sense. This presupposes criticality itself: the state at a phase boundary where correlation length diverges and the system is controlled by a fixed point whose properties depend only on universality-class labels. Without criticality supplying the regime where long-distance behaviour decouples from microscopic detail, there is no domain over which universality holds; universality is a property of the critical regime, not of general dynamics.

Universality in critical phenomena presupposes criticality because the universal exponents and scaling functions only emerge near continuous phase transitions.


Universality in critical phenomena is a specialization of invariance: critical exponents and scaling functions are preserved under variation of microscopic composition, interaction details, and dimensionality (within a class). It inherits invariance's joint specification — what is preserved (the critical exponents) under what transformations (renormalization-group flow toward a fixed point) — particularized to the phase-transition case where the relevant transformation group is the family of microscopic perturbations that the fixed point absorbs as irrelevant.

Universality in critical phenomena is a kind of invariance in which long-distance behavior is preserved under changes of microscopic detail.


Universality in critical phenomena presupposes scale because its content concerns how the system reorganizes under coarse-graining: critical exponents describe how correlations behave as one varies the resolution at which the system is described. It inherits scale's commitment that properties and governing laws vary with the level of aggregation, particularized to the case where near a critical point the renormalization-group flow carries microscopic detail toward a scale-invariant fixed point that defines the universality class.

Universality in critical phenomena presupposes scale because the long-distance behavior is governed by a renormalization-group fixed point spanning scales.


The physics/critical-phenomena case (RG fixed point) is one instance of the substrate-neutral coarse-graining-preserves-a-low-dimensional-signature pattern (which also yields the CLT, Church-Turing, scale-free networks). universality is the parent. Universality supplies the genus: Systems with different microscopic detail obey identical macroscopic laws because only a low-dimensional signature survives coarse-graining. Universality in Critical Phenomena preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Shared scaling laws. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


The diffuse-ownership-of-prevention-cost commitment is a free_riding mechanism; one of the five commitments. Presupposes free_riding as a component. Free Riding supplies the prerequisite condition: The systematic under-provision that results when individuals can enjoy a non-excludable shared good without contributing proportionately to producing it. Unowned Known Risk operates against that background: A hazard that is common knowledge yet reliably un-acted-upon because prevention costs are diffusely owned, horizons mismatch, precursors are normalised, and the outcome is later recast as a surprise. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


A 'governance pathology' explaining why a subclass of KNOWN risks goes un-prevented; presupposes risk. Risk supplies the prerequisite condition: Exposure to a known distribution of possible outcomes. Unowned Known Risk operates against that background: A hazard that is common knowledge yet reliably un-acted-upon because prevention costs are diffusely owned, horizons mismatch, precursors are normalised, and the outcome is later recast as a surprise. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


It inherits a stable mapping-induced deviation and adds a receiver who models the source's motives, limits, and bias so the account can be inverted rather than accepted transparently.

An unreliable narrator is distortion specialized to a source's systematic reporting function relative to the reality it represents.


Natural Selection supplies the genus: A population of varying, heritable variants is filtered by a selection pressure so that the better-performing variants differentially reproduce or persist, shifting the population's composition over rounds — variation, selection, and retention as a substrate-neutral engine. Vaccine Escape preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A durable barrier imposed on an adaptive population acts as a selection filter, shifting the population toward variants it cannot engage, so effective coverage falls even though the barrier still works exactly as designed. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Vaccine Escape is a specialization of Natural Selection, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


's T1 names vaccine_escape as the case where the pressure (selection) is genuinely conserved — a biological instance of risk migration's conservation mechanic. After the biology_ecology frame is stripped away, the retained structural roles are those of Risk Migration: An intervention that blocks a hazard at one site without absorbing the generative pressure behind it does not eliminate the hazard but relocates it across a permeable boundary to a less-monitored region, often where controls are weaker and measurement does not follow. Vaccine Escape adds the local frame and commitments expressed in its identity: A durable barrier imposed on an adaptive population acts as a selection filter, shifting the population toward variants it cannot engage, so effective coverage falls even though the barrier still works exactly as designed. The parent pattern remains recognizable without that vocabulary, while the child is the framed realization of it. That preservation test establishes decomposition rather than taxonomic subsumption.


Validation asks whether the artifact solves the right problem in its actual operational context, which requires observations of the artifact under realistic use to be routed back as evidence against the intended-purpose specification. That return path is exactly Feedback: output measured and routed back to influence subsequent decisions about the artifact. Without the loop there is no fitness-for-purpose verdict; validation presupposes feedback as the channel through which operational reality informs the verification verdict.

Validation presupposes Feedback: confirming fitness for purpose requires routing real-world observations back to test the artifact against intended use.


Validation presupposes verification because validation's fitness-for-purpose check shares verification's core machinery -- a defined procedure that produces evidence and a verdict against a fixed criterion -- and only shifts which criterion is taken as given. Where verification asks whether the artifact conforms to its specification (building it right), validation asks whether it solves the intended problem (building the right thing). The check-against-criterion structure is the same; validation presupposes it and reapplies it with the use-context as the criterion rather than the spec.

Validation presupposes verification because both rest on checking an artifact against a stated criterion via a procedure yielding a verdict.


A discrete, dateable in-force -> invalidated status transition (with authority, trigger, effective-date, retention regime, propagation) — a specialization of state_and_state_transition where the prior state is RETAINED for the record, not destroyed. State and State Transition supplies the genus: Captures system condition and evolution. Validity-ending Event preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A discrete, dateable moment at which a previously in-force entity is declared no longer valid while continuing to exist as a retained historical object. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Commensurability is the structural property that lets diverse quantities be expressed in a common unit, enabling comparison, ranking, and trade-off. Value commensuration is the particular shape this property takes when the quantities are heterogeneous values rooted in different ethical, ecological, or social frameworks. It is a structurally-particularized instance of common-metric construction in which the translation is contested, involves loss of meaning, and is itself a moral choice rather than a neutral technical operation. The specific machinery is the constructed metric and its acknowledged distortions.

Value commensuration is the specific shape commensurability takes when heterogeneous values must be translated into a common metric for trade-off.


Value commensuration presupposes comparison because its entire purpose is to translate heterogeneous values from different frameworks into a common metric so that comparison becomes possible. Comparison supplies the general operation of placing items under a shared frame with an alignment rule; commensuration is the specific upstream construction work that builds that shared frame where none exists naturally between, say, ecological and monetary values. Without comparison as the target operation, the work of commensuration would have no purpose; commensuration exists precisely to enable comparison across frameworks that resist it.

Value commensuration presupposes comparison because constructing a common metric across incommensurable frameworks is what makes them comparable at all.


Value commensuration presupposes translation and conceptual bridging because constructing a common metric across heterogeneous value frameworks — ecological, economic, social, ethical — is an instance of mapping between incommensurable conceptual systems and managing the inevitable loss of meaning that mapping entails. Translation supplies the general structural process of converting representations across frameworks with attention to where translation distorts or omits; commensuration supplies the specific case where the source frameworks are value systems and the target is a single aggregable scale, with the same characteristic loss, distortion, and contestation that all cross-framework translation incurs.

Value commensuration presupposes translation because constructing a common metric across incommensurable frameworks is an instance of mapping between conceptual systems.


Evidence may have curiosity, archival, or explanatory value without affecting any action. Value of Information isolates the decision-theoretic quantity: the expected gain in the best available choice. If no decision, payoff, or threshold can respond to the evidence, its value in this sense is zero.

Information has decision value only relative to a choice whose selected action could change or improve after evidence arrives.


The value is defined before evidence arrives, so each possible observation must be weighted by its probability and the resulting best achievable outcome. Expected Value is therefore an internal mathematical constituent, not merely a neighboring use. Value of Information adds the comparison between acting now and acting after observing evidence.

Value of Information averages decision improvement over the possible evidence outcomes and their probabilities.


When the relevant state and action consequences are already known, information cannot improve the choice and the value collapses to zero. Uncertainty supplies the unresolved alternatives over which evidence can change beliefs; the prime adds the decision-sensitive valuation of reducing that uncertainty.

The comparison presupposes unresolved uncertainty about states or consequences that additional evidence could reduce.


The omission failure mechanism is built directly from viewpoint's access/occlusion/bias-profile structure. Viewpoint supplies the prerequisite condition: A position fixes an access set, an occlusion set, and a bias profile. Vantage-Induced Omission operates against that background: An apparatus's structural vantage makes some regions of a landscape reachable and others constitutively invisible, so its output is mistaken for the landscape rather than the landscape-restricted-to-its-vantage. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


This prime supplies the THEORETICAL NECESSITY that variation_strategies serve — variance-regeneration is mandatory because selection consumes the variance it acts on. Presupposes variation as the diversity-generating tactic family it quantifies. Variation Strategies supplies the prerequisite condition: Deliberately injecting controlled variation into a system and selecting from the results to explore alternatives, accelerate learning, and gain robustness. Variance Bounds Selection Response operates against that background: The rate at which selection shifts a population's mean equals within-population variance times selection intensity, so variance is the fuel selection consumes and must be regenerated. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


On the carrier of recorded labels, define two labels as equivalent exactly when their resolution function returns the same authority. That relation is reflexive, symmetric, and transitive and partitions labels into referent classes before one member receives authority status. Mapping cannot safely aggregate identity without that same-referent partition.

Routing every variant label to one authority presupposes the equivalence partition induced by sharing that authority target.


Alias-to-authority is implemented through indirection (a resolution layer routes a variant to its authority) but is the specific asymmetric, many-to-one, identity-aggregating use of it. Indirection is the generic mechanism; the aggregation-bearing many-to-one asymmetry is the specialization. Presupposes indirection. Indirection supplies the prerequisite condition: Introduces intermediary references. Alias-to-Authority Mapping operates against that background: One canonical form for a referent is maintained while every variant label routes many-to-one to it, so identity aggregates while the referent stays reachable by any name. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


Variation and sociolect is a specialization of diversity in which the varying elements are linguistic features and the dimensions of variation are social: class, ethnicity, gender, age, region, profession. It inherits the general diversity commitment that meaningful variation across elements has functional consequences and is more than mere heterogeneity, and specializes by fixing the variation to rule-governed linguistic alternation correlated with social factors, with apparent-time methodology and quantitative sociolinguistic patterns supplying the empirical apparatus that distinguishes systematic sociolinguistic variation from random speech-individual difference.

Variation and sociolect is a specialization of diversity in which the meaningful variation is systematic linguistic difference correlated with social factors.


Variation strategies presuppose learning because injecting controlled variation — through mutation, A/B testing, portfolio diversification, or exploratory perturbation — produces value only when the system can detect outcomes, retain what works, and update its internal capability accordingly. Without learning's durable, experience-driven self-update of an agent or system, the variation would produce alternatives that are never integrated into improved performance. Learning supplies the selective-retention machinery that converts surfaced variation into accumulated capability, making variation strategies operationally meaningful rather than mere noise-generation.

Variation strategies presuppose learning because deliberately injected variation produces value only when the system can detect, retain, and act on the surfaced alternatives.


Variation strategies deliberately apply the variation-selection-retention engine to explore alternatives and gain robustness. Natural Selection supplies the genus: A population of varying, heritable variants is filtered by a selection pressure so that the better-performing variants differentially reproduce or persist, shifting the population's composition over rounds — variation, selection, and retention as a substrate-neutral engine. Variation Strategies preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Deliberately injecting controlled variation into a system and selecting from the results to explore alternatives, accelerate learning, and gain robustness. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Set and Membership supplies the prerequisite condition: Groups and categorizes elements. Vector Space operates against that background: A collection closed under linear combination, where adding and scaling are coherent. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.

Vector Space presupposes Set and Membership, whose structure must already obtain for the child mechanism to be meaningful or operational.


Verification preserves Evaluation's bounded object, criterion frame, relevant observations, and evaluative result, then supplies the exact differentia: the criterion is a specification taken as given, the mapping is a defined checking procedure, and the result is a conformance verdict supported by evidence. Evaluations may instead use open, plural, purposive, comparative, or aesthetic criteria and need not test specification conformance.

Verification is the strict species of Evaluation whose criterion is a stated specification and whose defined checking procedure yields evidence and a conformance verdict.


Parent-to-child — verifier_prover_asymmetry is the specific loaded instance of asymmetry, the cost imbalance between finding and checking the SAME object, carrying the split-finding-from-checking design license the bare primitive lacks. Asymmetry supplies the genus: Directed imbalance in a relation whose two sides are not interchangeable under swap. Verifier-Prover Asymmetry preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Verifying a candidate solution is qualitatively cheaper than finding one, and the cost-ratio supports a characteristic class of designs that split finding from checking. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Virtualization is a specialization of indirection in which the interposed layer is designed to present an abstracted, logically separated simulation of an underlying physical resource so that multiple consumers each appear to have exclusive access. It inherits the general indirection commitment of accessing a provider through a referencing mechanism so that the provider's identity, location, or implementation can change transparently. Its specialization is that the layer additionally translates logical operations into physical ones, manages isolation, and multiplexes a shared substrate among independent instances.

Virtualization is a specialization of indirection in which the interposed reference simulates a dedicated underlying resource over a shared substrate.


Virtue ethics presupposes normativity because it is constituted as a first-order theory of what makes character and action correct, locating the standard in stable excellences of disposition rather than in rules or consequences. Without normativity's prior structure — a domain in which some states are held to be required, permissible, or prohibited relative to a standard — there is no evaluative dimension for virtues to anchor. Virtue ethics imports that ought-side machinery and supplies its own candidate for the standard: the virtuous person and the patterns of perception, emotion, and action proper to flourishing.

Virtue ethics presupposes normativity because it offers a standard of correctness — virtuous character — against which actions and persons are evaluated.


Visioning is a specialization of foresight. Specifically, it instantiates the structured-anticipation-of-futures stance in the normative mode, asking what future is desired rather than what is likely, and producing a value-laden aspirational description that orients strategic choice and resource allocation. Like other foresight methods, it operates over a defined time horizon and informs present action under uncertainty; unlike forecasting or scenario planning, its output is explicitly motivational and goal-fixing rather than descriptive, occupying the normative slot in the foresight methods stack.

Visioning is a specialization of foresight that articulates a normatively-chosen desired future as orientation for action.


The architecture exists because identity and source-vantage knowledge are unequally distributed between contributor, intermediary, and final recipient. Vouched Anonymity is a response architecture, not the unequal-knowledge condition itself. If every recipient could inspect and verify the contributor directly, the vouching substitution and its corroboration premium would have no work to do. Information asymmetry occurs without intermediation; this architecture is specifically built on and partly manages that prior condition.


The recipient must accept vulnerability under incomplete contributor monitoring based on positive expectations of the intermediary's competence and integrity. Vouched Anonymity is not a kind of Trust; it is an assurance architecture that deliberately relocates and concentrates a residual trust relation. Without reliance on the intermediary, hidden-origin contributions have no substitute credibility channel and collapse to unsupported assertions. Trust exists without hidden contributors, but this architecture cannot function unless the recipient trusts the vouching intermediary.


A multiplicative factorisation V = Exposure × Sensitivity / Adaptive-Capacity of a system-stressor pair, each factor with its own intervention family — a specialization of decomposition applied to a vulnerability scalar. Decomposition supplies the genus: Breaking a whole into parts that can be analyzed independently and recombined to reconstitute the whole, making complexity tractable through divide-and-conquer. Vulnerability Decomposition preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A system's vulnerability to a named stressor factors into exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, each admitting its own intervention family. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


This is the recipe for the VULNERABILITY FACTOR ONLY of Risk = Hazard × Vulnerability; presupposes risk and feeds the risk equation (probability multiplied back at the risk level). Risk supplies the prerequisite condition: Exposure to a known distribution of possible outcomes. Vulnerability Decomposition operates against that background: A system's vulnerability to a named stressor factors into exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, each admitting its own intervention family. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


'every war of attrition is a competition, but the converse fails' — it is the specific contest where the prize goes to whoever persists longest while paying continuously, all paid cost sunk, with a closed-form dissipation result. A strict specialization of competition (a footrace/sealed-bid auction is competition but not this). Competition supplies the genus: Rivalrous pursuit of a scarce prize where one party's gain is another's loss. War Of Attrition preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A contest decided by who pays continuously the longest, with all paid cost sunk and the prize dissipated in the paying. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Wargaming is a foresight method — disciplined anticipation of plural futures via adaptive move/counter-move rehearsal. A specialization of foresight whose distinctive move is substituting an adaptive agent for a probability distribution. Foresight supplies the genus: Disciplined anticipation of plural possible futures to keep present action adaptive across the range of plausible outcomes. Wargaming preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Rehearse a plan against an adaptive opponent, turn by turn, to surface the assumptions it hid. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Washout failure is a specific TEMPORAL variety of confounding: the confounder is the residual state of a prior condition on the same unit, decaying on a half-life, biasing a successor estimate. frames it as 'one particular member' of confounding. Confounding supplies the genus: Hidden variable interference. Washout Failure preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: When the same unit is observed under successive conditions, residual state from the first contaminates the second unless a gap long enough to dissipate it is built in, so underestimating that dissipation time reads the decaying tail of the old condition as an effect of the new one. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Wave and particle descriptions are mutually non-overlapping yet jointly exhaustive characterizations of quantum entities, the exact structure complementarity names. Complementarity supplies the genus: Two non-overlapping roles that jointly exhaust a whole and require each other. Wave-Particle Duality preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Dual nature of matter. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Wave-particle duality is a specialization of duality in which the two paired descriptions are the wave aspect (interference, diffraction, superposition) and the particle aspect (localization, quantization, discrete countability) of a single quantum entity. It inherits the general duality commitment of a structure-preserving correspondence between two formulations such that each uniquely determines the other and each can substitute for the other for specified purposes. Its specialization is that which aspect appears is fixed by experimental context, and the two are complementary rather than contradictory.

Wave-particle duality is a specialization of duality in which the paired structure-preserving descriptions are the wave and particle pictures of a quantum entity.


Wave-particle duality is the claim that physical entities exhibit both wave-like and particle-like properties depending on experimental context, which requires the wave concept as one half of the duality. Without wave's machinery — propagating disturbance with characteristic interference, diffraction, superposition, and phase relationships obeying a dispersion relation — there would be no wave aspect for the duality to ascribe to electrons, photons, and atoms. The wave prime supplies one of the two structural vocabularies the duality holds in complementary tension.

Wave-particle duality presupposes wave because the dual aspect requires that the entity exhibit characteristic wave properties under wave-context experimental probing.


Weak ties is a specialization of diversity: the structural pattern of low-redundancy bridges across structural holes brings together regions of a network with non-overlapping information, generating functional variation in what each region knows. It inherits diversity's commitment to meaningful variation with functional consequences — for robustness, adaptability, novelty — particularized to the network-topology case where the load-bearing variation is informational and the diversity is delivered precisely by the bridging-tie structure.

Weak ties is a kind of diversity in which low-redundancy bridging connections supply non-overlapping information unavailable within tight clusters.


Weak ties names the disproportionate value of low-intensity links that span otherwise-separated clusters in a connection structure. The very claim that a tie is a bridge requires a network in which there are distinct clusters, structural holes between them, and paths whose reachability depends on which links exist. Without the connection pattern as a first-class object — who is connected to whom, with cluster density and gap structure — there is no distinction between redundant within-cluster links and bridging between-cluster links for weak ties to exploit.

Weak ties presupposes network because bridging value across structural holes is only definable against a connection pattern with clusters and gaps.


Well-foundedness is the structural property that justifies induction, recursion, and termination by ruling out infinite descending chains. Its content — that any iterative descent through smaller elements must bottom out — is meaningful only against Iteration, the repeated application of a step where each round feeds the next. Well-foundedness presupposes iteration as the surrounding structure whose termination it certifies; without an iterative process to bound, the no-infinite-descent property has nothing to apply to.

Well-Foundedness presupposes Iteration: it is the structural guarantee that iterative or recursive descent must terminate.


Well-foundedness presupposes order because its definition is a property of a binary order relation on a set: every non-empty subset admits a minimal element, equivalently no infinite descending chain. Order supplies the underlying ranking-and-precedence structure with reflexivity-or-irreflexivity, antisymmetry-or-asymmetry, and transitivity; well-foundedness adds the strengthening that descent must terminate. Without the prior availability of a binary order relation to be evaluated for descending chains, the well-foundedness criterion has no object to apply to and no notion of "descending" to constrain.

Well-foundedness presupposes order because it is a property of a binary order relation: every non-empty subset has a minimal element with no infinite descending chain.