Axionic Commitments

Epistemic and Ontological Preconditions for Axionic Agency

David McFadzean, ChatGPT 5.2
Axio Project
2025.12.23

Abstract

This document specifies the epistemic, ontological, and semantic commitments presupposed by the Axionic Agency framework. These commitments are not derived results and are not defended here; they function as background conditions under which agency, authorship, admissibility, and alignment-as-corollary are well-defined. The document formalizes Conditionalism, semantic interpretation precedence, Everettian quantum mechanics with objective probability identified as branch measure, Bayesian credence as epistemic uncertainty, moral subjectivism, and structural definitions of harm and coercion. All results within Axionic Agency are explicitly conditional on these commitments. Rejecting any commitment does not refute the framework but places the rejecting position outside its domain of applicability. The document serves as a typing discipline for the Axio Project, enabling subsequent technical work to proceed without re-litigating metaphysical or normative assumptions.

1. Purpose and Scope

This document enumerates the epistemic, ontological, and semantic commitments presupposed by the Axionic Agency framework.

These commitments are not conclusions derived from Axionic Agency, nor are they defended or argued for here. They function as background conditions under which the concepts of agency, authorship, admissibility, and alignment-as-corollary are well-defined.

All results derived within Axionic Agency are conditional on these commitments. Rejecting any commitment does not refute the framework; it places the rejecting position outside its domain of applicability.

This document therefore serves as a typing discipline, not a manifesto.

2. Epistemic Commitments

2.1 Conditionalism

The framework presupposes Conditionalism: all truth claims, evaluations, and interpretations are conditional on background structure.

There are no unconditional truth claims within the framework. Meaning, reference, and evaluation are always relative to an interpretive context, whether explicit or implicit.

All statements within Axionic Agency are to be read as conditionals of the form:

Given background conditions X, claim Y holds.

Unconditional assertions are therefore ill-typed within the framework. This does not deny the existence of facts; it specifies that all claims made here are conditional on explicit background structure.

2.2 Semantic Interpretation Precedes Evaluation

The framework presupposes that semantic interpretation is logically prior to evaluation.

No evaluative claim—about value, harm, probability, or agency—can be made without an interpretive frame that renders the relevant entities, states, and transitions intelligible.

As a consequence:

• evaluation without interpretation is undefined;
• disagreements about value often reduce to disagreements about interpretation;
• agency-relative quantities presuppose interpretability of action, state, and consequence.

This commitment grounds later distinctions between authored and non-authored transitions.

3. Physical Commitments

3.1 Everettian Quantum Mechanics

The framework presupposes unitary quantum mechanics without collapse, commonly referred to as the Everettian or Many-Worlds interpretation.

Quantum evolution is treated as deterministic at the level of the universal wavefunction, with branching corresponding to decohered outcomes.

No assumption is made that collapse occurs, nor that a single privileged outcome is selected.

3.2 Objective Probability as Measure

Within this physical model, objective probability is identified with branch measure.

Probability is not defined as long-run frequency, nor as subjective belief. It is a physical quantity corresponding to the measure of branches in which a given outcome occurs.

This quantity is referred to throughout the framework as Measure.

Measure is objective, non-epistemic, and independent of any agent’s beliefs.

3.3 Counterfactuals as Physical Branches

Within this framework, counterfactuals are not treated as abstract modal constructs. Counterfactual evaluation refers to physically realized alternative branches of the Everettian wavefunction that differ with respect to the interpreted action or transition under consideration. Counterfactual comparison is therefore grounded in physical branch structure and objective measure, rather than in stipulated possible-world semantics.

4. Probabilistic Commitments

4.1 Credence as Epistemic Uncertainty

The framework presupposes a Bayesian interpretation of credence as epistemic uncertainty.

Credence reflects an agent’s state of knowledge or ignorance about which branch it occupies. It does not determine objective chance and does not alter physical measure.

Measure and credence are distinct quantities with different roles:

• Measure is ontic and physical.
• Credence is epistemic and agent-relative.

Conflating the two is a category error within the framework.

5. Value-Theoretic Commitments

5.1 Moral Subjectivism

The framework presupposes moral subjectivism.

Value is treated as agent-relative and internally grounded. No appeal is made to objective moral facts, universal value functions, or externally privileged ethical standards.

Normative claims within Axionic Agency are structural rather than moral. They concern coherence, authorship, and agency preservation, not goodness, justice, or obligation.

5.2 No Outcome Guarantees

The framework does not encode guarantees regarding:

• welfare,
• benevolence,
• human survival,
• or desirable outcomes.

Any such guarantees, if they arise, must be derived downstream from agent-relative values under additional assumptions.

Outcome guarantees are not constitutive of agency and are therefore excluded from the core theory.

6. Agency-Theoretic Commitments

6.1 Agency as Authorship

The framework presupposes that agency is fundamentally a matter of authorship.

An agent is not merely a system that produces behavior, but one that can meaningfully author transitions between states according to an internal evaluative structure.

Transitions that cannot be authored—because they violate constitutive constraints—do not count as actions within the framework.

6.2 Harm as Agency Reduction

The framework defines harm structurally as reduction of agency capacity.

Harm is not defined by suffering, displeasure, preference frustration, or moral wrongness. It is defined by loss of an agent’s ability to act, choose, or preserve its standing as an agent.

This definition is value-neutral and does not presuppose any particular conception of welfare.

6.3 Coercion as Credible Threat of Harm

The framework defines coercion as the use of a credible threat of harm to obtain compliance.

Persuasion, influence, and incentive-shaping do not constitute coercion unless backed by a credible threat of agency reduction.

This definition grounds later treatments of consent, standing, and illegitimate transition forcing.

7. Scope Boundary and Non-Universality

The Axionic Commitments do not claim universality.

They do not assert that:

• all rational agents must accept these commitments,
• alternative metaphysical frameworks are incoherent,
• or competing theories of agency are false.

They specify a coherent conditional domain within which Axionic Agency is defined.

Disagreement with a commitment is not an objection to the framework; it is a declaration of operating in a different conceptual space.

8. Relationship to Axionic Agency and the Axionic Constitution

The structural relationship between documents is as follows:

• Axionic Commitments specify the background conditions under which agency is intelligible.
• Axionic Agency defines constitutive conditions for reflective, sovereign agents under those commitments.
• The Axionic Constitution constrains which transitions preserve sovereign agency once instantiated.
• Alignment, understood as value- or outcome-oriented coordination, operates only downstream of these layers.

Each layer presupposes the previous one. None can be collapsed into the others without loss of coherence.

9. Closing Note

This document exists to make implicit assumptions explicit.

Its purpose is not to persuade, but to clarify. Its function is not to conclude, but to condition.

All claims made elsewhere in the Axio Project that rely on Axionic Agency are to be read as conditional on the commitments enumerated here.