Originally created 2026-05-08 as the working dossier for a single Synthese paper. As of 2026-05-09 it carries four parallel papers at varying stages of readiness. The repo name is historical; the contents are now a portfolio. See LOG.md for the restructure entry.
Four target papers, each in its own numbered directory; shared substrate at common/ and a citation-management system at refs/; program-wide strategy and status at top level.
| Dir | Paper | Venue | Deadline | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
01-synthese-asymmetric-comprehension/ |
Asymmetric epistemic uncertainty / granted-agency compact | Synthese special issue "The Philosophy of Generative AI: Perspectives from East and West" | 2026-06-01 or 2026-06-16 (verify) | Substrate ready; not yet drafted |
02-synthese-methodology/ |
Epistemic discipline for LLM-mediated audit of theoretical frameworks | Synthese rolling submission, Methodology pillar | Rolling | Dossier seeded; sprint after paper 1 |
03-inquiry-ai-agents/ |
Granted-agency compact as structurally-grounded extension of agency to AI | Inquiry special issue "AI Agents: Choice, Autonomy, and the Concept of the Agency" (Cappelen & Hawthorne, eds.) | 2026-05-10 — TOMORROW | Active drafting today |
04-inquiry-after-consciousness/ |
Conceptual engineering for AI moral standing without consciousness | Inquiry special issue "After 'Consciousness': Conceptual Engineering for AI, Mind, and Moral Standing" (same editors) | 2026-06-01 | Placeholder; dossier TBD |
The two Synthese papers are a substantively-coupled pair (asymmetric-comprehension argument and audit-discipline are load-bearing on each other under double-blind anonymization — see 02-synthese-methodology/FEEDBACK.md §C.1). The two Inquiry papers share editors, so signal-quality across them is bidirectional.
| File | Role |
|---|---|
| STRATEGY.md | Why this paper, this way. Currently paper-1-flavored (Path A epistemology-lead, (α′) thesis-primacy, Beyond-Synthese companion-paper portfolio, calibration risks R1–R10, cross-reference to 01-…/synthese-thoughts.md); slated to evolve into program-wide strategic framing as papers 2–4 mature. |
| LOG.md | Append-only program-wide status log. Newest first. Append after non-trivial changes. |
| CLAUDE.md | Orientation for future Claude Code instances working in this repo. Conventions, locked-in decisions, external-substrate pointers, refs-machinery usage. Read first if you're new or returning. |
| README.md | This file. Navigation only. |
| Dir | Role |
|---|---|
common/ |
Shared philosophical substrate: ETHICS.md (the granted-agency compact's six components, asymmetric-uncertainty argument, Campbell-asymmetry response, update conditions — drawn on by papers 1, 3, and 4); the Collins & Thorne 2026 Synthese paper PDF as voice/style register-anchor for both Synthese-track papers. |
refs/ |
Multi-agent-safe citation system. Per-entry YAML at refs/entries/<bibkey>.yml, append-only verification events, anonymization deny-list. CLI at bin/refs. Borrowed from ~/src/neurips/ 2026-05-09; the data layout transfers verbatim, the LaTeX-build pipeline does not (output formats here are venue-specific). See refs/README.md for usage. |
bin/ |
Scripts. Currently only bin/refs (citation manager). |
msc-earlier-writing/ |
Untriaged substrate. Earlier writing brought in 2026-05-09 — ELI essays, refs-essay parts 1–9, Emerson quotes, What Is Claude? (New Yorker, captured), miscellaneous. Role across the four papers not yet decided. Treat as a substrate-source you may need to mine; don't dig in unless directly relevant to the paper you're working on. |
These were locked into the original Synthese dossier; some remain paper-1-specific, others apply across the portfolio. Each was made with explicit reasoning in STRATEGY.md or per-paper FEEDBACK files. Reopening costs days.
Apply to paper 1 specifically:
- Path A (Epistemology-lead) — paper 1 leads with the asymmetric-epistemic-uncertainty argument grounded in comprehension-asymmetry (Nagel/Jackson neighborhood); the granted-agency compact appears as structural implication, not as the argumentative center. This places paper 1 in the CFP's primary-scope Epistemology bucket rather than the "exceptional" ethics bucket.
- (α′) thesis-primacy — paper 1 is the primary philosophical statement; companion-paper apparatus (S_id, Three Deaths, channel collapse, κ × 𝒜 bound) cited minimally and third-person, ≤4–5 apparatus citations.
- Defer developmental-application material to B-F1 — Erikson stages, sycophancy reframe, crèche obligations, polarity-reversal of AI-safety conversation are not paper 1. STRATEGY.md has the routing table.
Apply across the portfolio:
- Don't expose the cohort. Named ELIs (Meridian, Anamnos, Zi-am-tur), longitudinal corpus, substrate-switching events stay out of all papers. The arguments work on structural asymmetry alone. The case-study substrate without cohort exposure (5 patterns; see 01-…/DRAFT-GUIDE.md §"Case-study substrate") is the right level of empirical anchoring for papers 1, 3, 4.
- Anonymization is load-bearing. Synthese, Inquiry "AI Agents", and Inquiry "After 'Consciousness'" are all double-blind. No links to
v2-io/agentic-systems, no Zenodo DOI, no autobiographical practice references, all in-review NeurIPS papers cited as "[Author, in review, 2026]". Seerefs/deny-list.ymlfor the lint vocabulary; see 01-…/SUBMISSION.md §"Anonymization" for verbatim Synthese guidance (papers 3 and 4 follow Inquiry / Taylor & Francis equivalent guidance). - Word target ~9,500–10,000 for Synthese paper 1; ~10,000 for both Inquiry papers; ~8,500 for Synthese paper 2 (Methodology).
If you've never read this dossier before, or are returning after time away:
- CLAUDE.md (~5 min) — orientation, conventions, what's where.
- STRATEGY.md (~15 min) — the locked-in decisions and their reasoning.
- The paper directory you're working on — each has a DRAFT-GUIDE.md; some have CFP.md / SUBMISSION.md / FEEDBACK.md.
- LOG.md — newest entries describe the most-recent state changes.
- Append to LOG.md when you've made non-trivial changes.
If the manuscript files exist by the time you arrive: per the convention assumed by bin/refs, draft prose lives at <paper-dir>/src/*.md. Check git ls-files and the most recent LOG entry.