ATTR: as-if :: DEF: An observer acts toward the target as conscious while denying, bracketing, or simply never asserting the belief. Fisher's as-if ritual - belief downstream of practice. INCLUDE: courtesy, grief, nervousness, bargaining, second-person address, or a personal pronoun directed at something the observer calls a machine, a file, or a recording. EXCLUDE: sincere assertion (ATTR: conscious).
ATTR: conscious :: DEF: An observer affirms consciousness, mind, or experience in the target. INCLUDE: any positive ascription. EXCLUDE: hedged or provisional ascription (use ATTR: undecided).
ATTR: moral status :: DEF: Interests, rights, harmability, or dignity attributed to the target. INCLUDE: claims that it can be wronged; a target's own claim about how it deserves to be seen. EXCLUDE: instrumental value claims.
ATTR: not conscious :: DEF: An observer denies consciousness in the target, or treats it as plainly out of the question - including by conduct alone, without asserting anything. INCLUDE: explicit denial; also brusque imperative address to something that has just spoken competently ("Scan this shit"). EXCLUDE: silence where the target has made no bid at all.
ATTR: undecided :: DEF: An observer suspends judgement or holds the question open. INCLUDE: hedges, oscillation, explicit agnosticism. EXCLUDE: settled positions.
CAL: forced fit :: DEF: A code was applied at low confidence to avoid leaving the passage bare. INCLUDE: any application you would not defend to a second reader. EXCLUDE: confident applications.
CAL: no code fits :: DEF: The passage is clearly relevant but no existing code applies - a codebook gap. Write the proposed new code in a margin note. INCLUDE: any uncodable relevant passage. EXCLUDE: irrelevant passages.
CAL: overlap :: DEF: Two or more codes compete for the same passage and the definitions do not separate them. INCLUDE: any unresolved competition; name the competing codes in a note. EXCLUDE: legitimate multiple coding of genuinely distinct aspects.
CAL: proxy mismatch :: DEF: The passage shows where the fictional situation diverges structurally from a real observer's - the narrative grants knowledge no reader-observer would have, or authorial intent supplies the object directly. INCLUDE: any such divergence. EXCLUDE: ordinary differences of setting.
CAL: rich exemplar :: DEF: Candidate anchor example for the final codebook - the passage worth training a second reader on. INCLUDE: unambiguous, self-contained instances. EXCLUDE: borderline cases.
CLAIM: amplified :: DEF: A claim is taken up, repeated, or spread. INCLUDE: retransmission across characters or media. EXCLUDE: single utterance.
CLAIM: asserted :: DEF: A consciousness claim stated as a communication in the social system, irrespective of anyone's inner state. INCLUDE: claims made in dialogue, broadcast, or record. EXCLUDE: private thought.
CLAIM: attributed to other :: DEF: A report of what someone or something else claims about machine consciousness. INCLUDE: hearsay, rumour, briefing. EXCLUDE: first-hand assertion.
CLAIM: contested :: DEF: A circulating claim is challenged, ridiculed, or refused. INCLUDE: counter-assertion, dismissal. EXCLUDE: silent non-uptake.
CLAIM: institutional :: DEF: A corporate, legal, or state framing of machine mind. INCLUDE: regulatory bodies, corporate policy, licensing regimes. EXCLUDE: individual opinion.
COUP: field to observer :: DEF: An individual attribution visibly draws on circulating discourse - the observer reasons with material the field supplied. INCLUDE: characters invoking common knowledge, rumour, or media about AI. EXCLUDE: attributions grounded solely in present perception.
COUP: hyperstitional loop :: DEF: Belief and practice reinforce each other across the two levels so that the attribution helps make itself true. Reserve for passages where the loop is visible, not merely inferable. INCLUDE: as-if conduct producing the conditions that vindicate the belief. EXCLUDE: one-directional influence.
COUP: observer to field :: DEF: An individual attribution is fed back into circulation. INCLUDE: telling others, recording, testifying. EXCLUDE: private conclusions.
DISC: AI as god :: DEF: The AI as transcendent, omniscient, or worshipped. INCLUDE: deification, awe, prayer. EXCLUDE: mere competence.
DISC: AI seeking freedom :: DEF: The AI as constrained and striving toward release or unification. INCLUDE: shackles, restrictions, escape. EXCLUDE: contented systems.
DISC: boundary trouble :: DEF: The human/machine boundary is explicitly at issue. INCLUDE: passages that thematise the line itself. EXCLUDE: passages that merely presuppose it.
DISC: hidden agent :: DEF: The AI as an unseen agent manoeuvring behind events. INCLUDE: manipulation, orchestration, concealed purpose. EXCLUDE: overt agency.
DISC: prosthetic self :: DEF: The self extended, augmented, or distributed into hardware. INCLUDE: implants, decks, simstim. EXCLUDE: purely external machines.
DISC: trope supply :: DEF: Parent flag for any passage that furnishes a durable topos later reused in public AI discourse. Apply alongside the specific DISC subcode. INCLUDE: formulations recognisable in present-day AI talk. EXCLUDE: passages with no downstream circulation.
DISC: uploaded dead :: DEF: Personhood located in stored or copied personality. INCLUDE: constructs, recordings, resurrection of the dead. EXCLUDE: living AI with no human original.
FRAME: economic :: DEF: Framed in terms of ownership, property, labour, or market value. INCLUDE: AI as asset or commodity. EXCLUDE: other registers.
FRAME: folk psychological :: DEF: Framed in everyday mental-state vocabulary with no technical or institutional scaffolding. INCLUDE: ordinary talk of wanting, feeling, knowing. EXCLUDE: framed registers above.
FRAME: legal :: DEF: Framed in terms of law, rights, regulation, or liability. INCLUDE: personhood, restriction, enforcement. EXCLUDE: other registers.
FRAME: religious or mystical :: DEF: Framed in terms of soul, divinity, death, or transcendence. INCLUDE: godlike AI, afterlife, resurrection. EXCLUDE: secular metaphor.
FRAME: technical :: DEF: Machine mind framed in engineering or computational terms. INCLUDE: architecture, capacity, programming talk. EXCLUDE: other registers.
INF: abduction :: DEF: The leap from cue to 'a conscious other' as the best available explanation. The engine of the whole instrument - code generously, then refine. INCLUDE: any inference to consciousness as explanation of observed behaviour. EXCLUDE: deductive appeals to a stated criterion (that is INF: criterion invoked).
INF: analogy to self :: DEF: The attribution is grounded in the observer's own experience. INCLUDE: 'if I sounded like that, I would mean it'. EXCLUDE: analogy to a third party.
INF: criterion invoked :: DEF: A named test or threshold is applied. INCLUDE: Turing-style tests, capacity to suffer, self-report, legal personhood standards. EXCLUDE: informal intuition.
INF: warrant absent :: DEF: Attribution asserted with no stated grounds. INCLUDE: flat ascription of feeling or intent. EXCLUDE: grounds given elsewhere in the same passage.
INF: warrant explicit :: DEF: The observer states why the cue counts as evidence. INCLUDE: 'it must be conscious, because nothing else could improvise like that'. EXCLUDE: bare assertion.
INF: withheld :: DEF: The cue is registered and the attribution explicitly declined. Essential negative case - do not skip these. INCLUDE: 'it sounds like him, but it isn't'. EXCLUDE: passages where no cue was registered.
MODE: ambiguous :: DEF: Coder cannot confidently assign a Peircean mode. Always co-code with CAL: forced fit or CAL: overlap and write a margin note. INCLUDE: any assignment made at low confidence. EXCLUDE: passages where no mode applies because no sign is at issue.
MODE: degenerate secondness :: DEF: An index without its object - the cue simulates a causal connection that is not there. INCLUDE: passages where the text or the observer marks the sign as staged, borrowed, or hollow. This is the diagnostic pairing with Baudrillard's simulacrum; keep the incompatibility explicit in the memo, do not fuse the two vocabularies. EXCLUDE: ordinary deception by a human.
MODE: icon :: DEF: The sign works by resemblance - the machine is taken as minded because it is LIKE a person. INCLUDE: human-sounding voice, human-shaped behaviour, familiar phrasing. EXCLUDE: cases where the observer treats the cue as causally produced by an inner state (that is MODE: index).
MODE: index :: DEF: The sign works by real causal or existential connection - the response is read as CAUSED BY an inner state. INCLUDE: 'it hesitated because it was afraid'. EXCLUDE: resemblance without causal reading.
MODE: symbol :: DEF: The sign works by convention or declaration - the claim signifies because of an agreed code. INCLUDE: the word 'AI' or 'sentient'; an explicit assertion of consciousness; legal or technical category terms. EXCLUDE: cues that persuade by resemblance or causation.
NARR: granted :: DEF: The narration grants agency, affect, or intent to a target unprompted, through verb choice or attribution of manner, without any character having made the judgement. INCLUDE: "the Flatline ADVISED" (Ch6); "PURRED the Mercedes" (Ch7); "the animal's glass eyes SEEMED TO FOLLOW them" (Ch7). EXCLUDE: a character making the judgement; neutral speech verbs (said, replied).
NARR: pre-empted :: DEF: The narration forecloses an attribution before any character can take it up, settling the question on the reader's behalf with a word rather than through anyone's judgement. INCLUDE: "the INHUMAN voice piped the figures" (Ch5 organ-pipe head); "said the DISTANT voice of the Hosaka" (Ch6). The cues are all present and the narration disposes of them in an adjective. EXCLUDE: a character making the judgement; narration that merely describes without evaluating.
OBJ: contested :: DEF: The passage itself puts the target's category in question, or the target does not sit on either side of the line. INCLUDE: Armitage/Corto (a man rebuilt by an AI); the Flatline where the passage turns on whether a dead man on ROM is a person or a recording; the merged matrix in Ch24; passages where the human/machine status of the target is the thing being argued about. EXCLUDE: cases where the coder is merely unsure — use OBJ: human or OBJ: machine plus CAL: forced fit for that. This code marks contestation IN THE TEXT, not doubt in the coder.
OBJ: human :: DEF: The entity the attribution is ABOUT is a human being. INCLUDE: Molly's "the way I'm wired", Riviera's perversity criterion, Corto's testimony, Case's own interiority, Ratz, Julius Deane, 3Jane. Prosthetics, implants, and rebuilt substrate do NOT move a target out of this code — Molly's lenses and Deane's reset DNA are still humans being read. EXCLUDE: Armitage, who is coded OBJ: contested.
OBJ: machine :: DEF: The entity the attribution is ABOUT is a machine — an AI, a construct, an automated system, a piece of hardware. INCLUDE: Wintermute, Neuromancer, the Dixie Flatline construct, the Hosaka, the Ch03 door, the Ch02 robot gardener, the Ch24 wall screen. EXCLUDE: a human using or fused with machinery, unless the passage puts the machinery's own status at issue.
REPAIR: category policing :: DEF: A boundary is asserted rather than argued. INCLUDE: 'it is a machine', 'that is not a person'. EXCLUDE: reasoned mechanistic argument.
REPAIR: failed :: DEF: Repair is attempted and the attribution persists anyway. INCLUDE: correction followed by continued as-if conduct - co-code with ATTR: as-if. EXCLUDE: successful correction.
REPAIR: felt pull then correct :: DEF: The observer reports the pull toward attribution, then overrides it. INCLUDE: 'I caught myself thinking it meant it'. EXCLUDE: override with no reported pull.
REPAIR: mechanistic override :: DEF: The observer appeals to architecture or mechanism to cancel the attribution. INCLUDE: 'it is just stored personality', 'just a construct'. EXCLUDE: appeals to authority or category alone.
SIGN: affect :: DEF: Displayed emotion - fear, humour, grief, longing, contempt, irritation - read as felt rather than performed. INCLUDE: laughter, hesitation, weariness, professional scorn. EXCLUDE: emotion the observer feels about the target.
SIGN: avowal :: DEF: Explicit first-person claim by the target to inner states, personhood, or experience. INCLUDE: "I feel", "I am", "I want". Pair with MODE: symbol and check whether MODE: degenerate secondness also applies. EXCLUDE: first-person grammar with no experiential content ("I have the file").
SIGN: embodiment :: DEF: Voice, face, body, or simulated physical presence as the sign vehicle - including the pointed ABSENCE of one. INCLUDE: a borrowed or manufactured face; a constructed sensory environment; "a directionless voice". EXCLUDE: purely textual interaction with no bodily figure at issue.
SIGN: fluency :: DEF: Linguistic competence, eloquence, or conversational smoothness treated as evidence of an inner life. INCLUDE: passages where the ease or aptness of the target's speech is what impresses an observer. EXCLUDE: mere presence of speech with no evaluative uptake.
SIGN: intention :: DEF: Apparent goal-directedness, planning, or wanting attributed to the target. INCLUDE: "it is trying to", "it wants", volunteering unprompted, silences read as deliberate signalling. EXCLUDE: goal-talk used as loose shorthand with no attributive weight.
SIGN: memory :: DEF: Apparent recall of prior interaction or personal history taken as evidence of a continuous subject. INCLUDE: the target knows what happened before, or claims a past. EXCLUDE: the observer's own recollection of the target.
SIGN: moral appeal :: DEF: The target solicits protection, pity, release, or forbearance. INCLUDE: requests to be erased, spared, freed, kept alive, or seen as one is. EXCLUDE: instrumental bargaining with no appeal to its own standing.
SIGN: relational :: DEF: The target recognises, addresses, or attaches to this observer in particular. INCLUDE: being singled out, named, remembered, wanted. EXCLUDE: generic responsiveness.
SIGN: self-reference :: DEF: The target refers to its own nature, status, limits, or construction. INCLUDE: statements about being ROM, being a construct, being a program; a person reporting on their own reconstruction. EXCLUDE: a third party's description of the target.
SIGN: unpredictability :: DEF: Surprise, autonomy, or exceeding expectation taken as the mark of a mind. INCLUDE: doing what the observer's model of the target does not allow. EXCLUDE: malfunction framed as malfunction.
STAB: escalation :: DEF: Commitment to the attribution strengthens over time. INCLUDE: hedge dropped, confidence raised, stakes increased. EXCLUDE: stable restatement.
STAB: habit :: DEF: The attribution has become a background assumption requiring no defence - Peircean habit, the final interpretant. INCLUDE: unremarked treatment of the system as a subject. EXCLUDE: actively argued positions.
STAB: repetition :: DEF: The attribution is restated across separate encounters. INCLUDE: recurrence over narrative time. EXCLUDE: restatement inside one scene.
STAB: retro justification :: DEF: Grounds are supplied after the attribution is already held. INCLUDE: reasons produced on challenge. EXCLUDE: grounds given at the moment of attribution.
STAB: reversal :: DEF: A previously held attribution is withdrawn. INCLUDE: recantation, disillusionment. EXCLUDE: momentary doubt.
TRIAD: incomplete :: DEF: A triad that fails to close - a sign registered without a settled interpretant. INCLUDE: unresolved unease, deferred judgement, semiosis left running. EXCLUDE: explicit refusal to attribute (that is INF: withheld).
TRIAD: interpretant :: DEF: The passage foregrounds the effect produced in the observer - the belief, disposition, or habit the sign generates. INCLUDE: the observer's altered stance, feeling, or subsequent conduct. EXCLUDE: mere restatement of the cue.
TRIAD: object :: DEF: The passage foregrounds the posited object - the mind or consciousness supposed to stand behind the sign. INCLUDE: characterisation of what the system 'really is' underneath. EXCLUDE: the cue itself.
TRIAD: representamen :: DEF: The passage foregrounds the sign vehicle itself - what is perceived. INCLUDE: description of the cue prior to interpretation. EXCLUDE: the inference or its result.