Philosophical Agential Semioverse Repository

This specification defines what an Agential Semioverse Repository looks like when its content domain is philosophy. It extends the general ASR’s type vocabulary and typed relations with content types and relations specific to philosophical knowledge.

The general ASR defines types like term, concept, and text that describe what a page is for, but not what makes it valid within a particular domain. Philosophical content has structural requirements that differ from mathematical content: a claim without an argument is an assertion (weaker, but not ill-formed), while an objection that targets nothing IS ill-formed. The requirements here are constitutive where they apply, but the threshold for ill-formedness is different from mathematics.

Validity principle: arguability

Philosophy is governed by arguability. Content is valid not when it is proven from axioms but when it is engaged with — argued for, contested, defended, and revised through sustained rational exchange. There are no terminal foundations; there are claims that have been argued well enough to be treated as starting points, but any starting point can be reopened.

The dependency graph can be cyclic. Claims generate arguments, arguments face objections, objections receive responses, and responses may revise the original claim or advance new claims. This cyclicity is not a defect — it is the structure of philosophical inquiry.

Machine verification is not possible in this domain. The validity of an argument depends on the quality of its engagement with its premises, its inferential moves, and the tradition within which it operates.

Content types

claim

A proposition advanced as true. Claims are the atomic units of philosophical discourse. Unlike axioms, they invite evaluation — they are meant to be argued for and against.

• MUST state the proposition clearly in the body.
• SHOULD specify argued-by: linking to supporting arguments. A claim with no arguments is an assertion — valid as a type, but unsupported.
• MAY specify contested-by: linking to objections.
• MAY specify tradition: identifying the discourse context.
• MAY specify requires: for conceptual prerequisites.

type: claim
defines:
  - "relations are ontologically prior to entities"
argued-by:
  - /philosophy/arguments/relational-priority.md
contested-by:
  - /philosophy/objections/substance-ontology.md
tradition: relational-ontology

argument

A structured case supporting a claim. An argument has premises and a conclusion, and the relationship between them is made explicit.

• MUST specify supports: linking to the claim(s) it argues for.
• MUST state premises clearly in the body.
• MUST make the inferential structure visible.
• SHOULD specify argument-form: (deductive, inductive, abductive, transcendental, dialectical, phenomenological, etc.).
• SHOULD specify requires: for premises that depend on prior claims or definitions.
• MAY specify contested-by: linking to objections targeting this argument specifically.

type: argument
supports:
  - /philosophy/claims/relational-priority.md
argument-form: transcendental
requires:
  - /philosophy/terms/ontological-priority.md

objection

A challenge to a claim or argument. Objections identify weaknesses: invalid inferences, false premises, unconsidered cases, or alternative explanations.

• MUST specify targets: linking to the claim or argument it challenges.
• MUST state clearly what it contests: a premise, an inference, a presupposition, an omission.
• MAY specify addressed-by: linking to response pages.
• MAY advance an alternative claim via proposes:.

type: objection
targets:
  - /philosophy/arguments/relational-priority.md
proposes:
  - /philosophy/claims/substance-priority.md

response

A reply to an objection, defending the original claim or argument (possibly in modified form).

• MUST specify addresses: linking to the objection it responds to.
• MUST engage with the substance of the objection. Dismissal or repetition of the original claim is not a response.
• MAY modify the original claim via revises:.
• MAY concede partially via concedes:.

type: response
addresses:
  - /philosophy/objections/substance-ontology.md
revises:
  - /philosophy/claims/relational-priority.md

Relation vocabulary

These typed relations extend the general ASR’s semantic frontmatter relation set.

These relations carry philosophical validation requirements intrinsically. When a page uses argued-by, the SHACL shapes for that relation validate it. See Domain-Specific Content for how domain-specific relations coexist in a single repository.

Dialectical graph

Unlike the mathematical ASR’s acyclic dependency graph, the philosophical graph is potentially cyclic:

claim ◄──supports── argument
  │                    │
  ├──contested-by──► objection ◄──targets── (claim or argument)
  │                    │
  │              addressed-by──► response
  │                                │
  └────────revises─────────────────┘

A response may revise the claim, producing a new version that inherits some arguments and faces new objections. This is the structure of philosophical progress — not linear accumulation but dialectical development.

Traditions as context

Philosophical traditions (Hegelian, pragmatist, Lakota epistemology, analytic, phenomenological) are not content types — they are contexts within which claims, arguments, and objections operate. A claim makes sense within a tradition that shares its vocabulary and presuppositions.

The spec handles traditions through:

• The tradition: field on any philosophical content type
• Directory structure (philosophy/schools/hegelian/, etc.)
• The requires: field for prerequisite vocabulary

A tradition is not a Thing with validity requirements of its own. It is a collection of claims, arguments, vocabulary, and shared presuppositions that co-constitute a discourse. The ASR’s existing directory organization already handles this.

What philosophical validity is not

The spec tracks the structure of engagement (what supports what, what objects to what), not its outcome. A claim argued for by one person against many objections is not less valid than a claim accepted by everyone without examination. The spec does not and cannot include a validity: field — what it can do is make the engagement structure visible and transparent.

Formal artifacts

• Ontology — OWL classes and properties for philosophical content types
• SHACL Shapes — validation shapes for philosophical relations

Lean correspondence

Philosophy is the domain most distant from formal verification. Its validity principle (arguability) is constitutively cyclic and resists formalization as a proof obligation.

What this domain’s axioms look like formally. The theory for claim requires argued-by: (SHOULD), creating a directed edge to an argument. The theory for objection requires targets: (MUST), creating a directed edge to a claim or argument. The graph is intentionally cyclic: claims generate arguments, arguments face objections, objections receive responses that may revise the original claim. This cyclicity is constitutive.

What satisfaction means beyond field presence. The current Python approximation checks whether argued-by: exists and whether targets: on an objection resolves to an existing page. Full satisfaction would evaluate whether the argument actually engages its premises — this requires human or agent judgment, not formal proof. The gap between Layer 0.5 and Layer 2 is wider here than for any other domain.

Current satisfaction data. 32 typed pages checked, 32 satisfied (100.0%), 0 errors, 0 warnings.

Lean target. Formalize the philosophical graph structure as a category with objects (claims) and morphisms (arguments, objections, responses). The constitutive cyclicity means this is not a preorder but a genuine category with non-trivial composition. The Lean target is not to verify philosophical arguments but to verify that the structural relations satisfy the category’s composition laws: if A supports B and C targets B, the composition (response to C) should produce a morphism back into the claim space.