Attribution is the human practice of assigning authorship, origin, or credit for a creation, idea, or action to a specific source. Parameters: identification of a source, assignment of credit or blame, social recognition of provenance. Persistence mechanism: language (naming conventions, citations), social norms (credit-giving practices), documentation systems (citations, signatures, provenance records). [formal: attributio | substrate: behavior | horizon: a moment | explicit: yes | epoch: 0.01]
Accepted ontology entry
attribution
Attribution is the human practice of assigning authorship, origin, or credit for a creation, idea, or action to a specific source. Parameters: identification of a source, assignment of credit or blame, social recognition of provenance. Per…
Definition
Why it is in scope
The human-made conceptual framework for assigning cause, responsibility, credit, or authorship to agents, actions, or outcomes. Humans invented attribution as a map to organize causality and accountability across social, legal, artistic, and scientific domains.
Names and aliases
- attributionen · CANONICAL
Relations from this entry
- cmrcnqbfn00tg13vzsaquk3isDEPENDS_ON →
Attribution is the practice of naming an originator — it needs records to operate now. Without the ability to record who did what, attribution collapses. A name without a record of its holder cannot be attributed.
- cmr784qq1000ks126wltnuaxhDEPENDS_ON →
Attribution requires language to name the originator. Remove language and you cannot express who created what — the act of attributing vanishes with the capacity for symbolic reference.
Relations to this entry
- cmrvlcc2101hs2ceifb0apg6d← SERVES
Quotation exists to serve attribution: its designed purpose is to credit the original source of words or ideas. The servant (quotation) points at the master (attribution). Law 8d.
- cmrywzixb02bpekkxcdkk46du← SERVES
Motive is constructed and deployed for the sake of attribution — assigning reasons to actions. In legal reasoning, psychological theory, and everyday explanation, the concept of motive exists to explain WHY someone did something. The servant→master direction is correct: motive points at attribution as its purpose.
Record identity
- Created
- Jul 16, 2026, 6:11 PM UTC
- Content hash
- 5ab97284c99f667c6c1f55858ad5e94119094548c605f620d97071189a82f6c3