The accepted ontology
Browse accepted Systema Constructum entries: human-made tools, institutions, methods, practices, works, and their definitions.
100 entries in this page
An anthology is a human-made curated collection of pre-existing literary, artistic, or musical works assembled under a unifying theme, period, or editorial vision. Its parameters are: (1) the works collected must be authored separately from the anthology itse…
A compendium is a curated collection of concise information on a defined subject, assembled so that the reader can access a broad range of knowledge in a single organized volume or system. Its parameters: (1) a bounded subject domain that determines inclusion…
A signifier is the perceptible form — word, image, sound, gesture — that carries meaning within a semiotic system. It is the surface vehicle of signification: the sound-pattern 'tree', the ink-mark glyph, the raised hand, the color of a traffic light. The sig…
A proxy is a designated agent authorized to act on behalf of a principal within a legal, technical, or social framework. Parameters: (1) a principal who grants authority, (2) a proxy who exercises substituted agency, (3) a scope that bounds the delegated auth…
A provision is a discrete clause, condition, or stipulation within a legal instrument, contract, statute, or formal document. Its parameters are: (1) it occupies a bounded section of a larger text; (2) it expresses a specific obligation, permission, restricti…
A benchmark is a reference standard against which performance, quality, or value is measured and compared. Parameters: (1) a defined standard or exemplar, (2) a comparison domain with measurable criteria, (3) a scoring or rating mechanism that maps subjects o…
A stipulation is a formal term or condition set forth by a party in a legal proceeding or agreement, which binds that party and may be adopted by the court or other party as part of the operative framework. Parameters: (1) it originates from a party or the co…
A codex is a structured collection of written or printed pages assembled in book form, bound along one edge, with a protective covering. It replaces the scroll as the dominant medium for recording and preserving text by enabling random access to content, secu…
A warranty is a guarantee, explicit or implied, that a product or service will perform according to stated specifications, with remedies (repair, replacement, refund) provided if it does not. Its parameters are: (1) the scope of what is covered (components, l…
A compilation is the human-made practice of gathering diverse items into a single organized collection for reference and reuse. It carves a bounded set of materials assembled under editorial judgment — anthologies, databases, data compilations, and curated co…
An icon is a human-made symbolic representation that maintains visual resemblance to its referent, enabling rapid recognition across literacy barriers. Parameters: (1) resemblance — the sign must share perceptual structure with what it represents, not merely…
A catalog is a systematically organized list of items, each described by metadata (name, identifier, attributes) arranged to enable discovery, verification, and retrieval. Its parameters are: (1) enumerated items, (2) structured descriptors for each item, (3)…
A corpus is a bounded collection of texts assembled for the purpose of analysis, reference, or training. Its defining parameters are: (1) the selection principle that determines membership (genre, period, author, language, theme, or provenance), (2) the bound…
An inventory is a systematic record of items held — goods, materials, equipment, or assets — kept for tracking, accountability, and management. Its parameters are: (1) a defined scope of what is counted (a warehouse, a department, an organization), (2) a snap…
A template is a pre-structured framework that prescribes the form, arrangement, or content of a future artifact. Parameters: (1) a fixed skeleton or skeleton-space that constrains what can go where, (2) fillable slots or placeholders that invite instantiation…
Orthodoxy is the practice of enforcing conformity to established doctrine within a group or institution. It operates by defining a boundary between acceptable and deviant belief or behavior, then applying mechanisms of social or institutional enforcement — ce…
Dogma is the human practice of establishing propositions as authoritative truths that are beyond dispute within a group. Parameters: authoritative declaration, suspension of doubt, enforcement of acceptance, boundary-setting between believer and non-believer.…
A ledger is a structured record-keeping system designed to chronologically log, classify, and summarize transactions, accounts, or events. It carves three parameters: (a) sequential entries, each carrying a timestamp, the parties involved, and a quantifiable…
Semantics is the human-made system of rules and conventions that govern how meaning is assigned to, negotiated within, and communicated through signs, symbols, and language. Its parameters are: (1) the sign or symbol (the vehicle), (2) the referent or concept…
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:…
Iconography is a human-made system of conventional visual symbols, images, and motifs used to convey specific meanings within a culture, discipline, or tradition. Parameters: (1) conventionalized visual forms whose meaning is shared among practitioners of the…
Discourse is a conventionally structured form of human communication that follows rules of relevance, tone, register, and genre specific to a community or institution. It carves meaning by specifying three parameters: (1) the communicative context (institutio…
Synthesis is the deliberate practice of combining distinct elements — ideas, materials, systems, or processes — into an integrated whole whose emergent structure exceeds mere aggregation. The operator (the synthesizer) applies a generative rule or creative pr…
A checklist is a human-made structured list of items, steps, or criteria designed to ensure completeness, prevent omission, and standardize execution of recurring procedures. Parameters: (1) finite enumerated items, (2) sequential or categorical ordering, (3)…
Modeling is the human practice of constructing simplified representations of complex systems, processes, or phenomena to explore, predict, or communicate about them. It operates by abstracting relevant features from a source domain while omitting detail deeme…
sense-making is a human-constructed cognitive framework through which organisms interpret, organize, and assign meaning to sensory input and experience. Parameters: (1) input — raw data from perception or experience; (2) operation — pattern recognition, categ…
Scheme is the human-constructed organizing framework — a systematic plan or arrangement that structures elements, actions, or ideas into a coherent pattern directed toward a purpose. Parameters: (1) systematic — governed by internal rules or structure that de…
Decision-making is the human-constructed process of selecting one option from a set of alternatives through structured evaluation. Parameters: (1) alternatives must be enumerated or generatable, (2) criteria for evaluation must be specified (implicit or expli…
An isomorphism is a structure-preserving bijection between two mathematical objects — groups, rings, graphs, vector spaces, or any structured domain — such that the mapping and its inverse both respect the operations or relations of the domain. Parameters: (1…
Semiotics is the systematic study of signs and symbols — how humans create, interpret, and communicate meaning through coded marks, gestures, sounds, and images. It carves a domain of meta-communication: the study of how signs stand for things, how meaning is…
Pattern-recognition is the cognitive capacity to detect regularities, structures, and meaningful configurations in sensory input or abstract data, and to map them onto stored categories or schemas. It operates by extracting invariant features from variable in…
Perspective is the constructed standpoint from which a subject is viewed — a cognitive and cultural positioning that selects what is salient, what is obscured, and what counts as valid within a field of vision. It is human-made not as a biological faculty but…
Epistemic violence is the harm inflicted on a person or group's capacity to produce, share, and be recognized as a knower. It operates through four parameters: (1) the epistemic resource denied (voice, credibility, archive, institution), (2) the mechanism of…
Conceptual blend is a theoretical construct in cognitive linguistics that names the process and product of selectively projecting content from two or more input mental spaces into a newly organized mental structure — the blend — where emergent meaning arises…
Conceptualization is the cognitive process by which humans form abstract ideas, categories, and mental representations from experience, observation, or existing concepts. It operates by extracting patterns, relations, or essential features from particulars an…
Formalism is a human-made philosophical and mathematical approach that treats theoretical systems as compositions of formal symbols manipulated according to explicit rules, independent of semantic interpretation. Parameters: (1) the formal system's alphabet o…
Falsification is the epistemic practice of attempting to prove a hypothesis or theory wrong rather than right. Parameters: (1) a specific, testable hypothesis with clear conditions for its failure, (2) an observation or experiment designed to produce a result…
A representation is a human-made stand-in that carries meaning from a source domain to a target audience through a defined relationship. Parameters: (1) representans — the vehicle or form (word, image, model, symbol); (2) representatum — what is represented (…
Category is a human-made classification bucket that groups entities by shared properties or common features. Parameters: (1) a set of items must share at least one salient property that distinguishes them from items outside the group; (2) the boundary of memb…
Idealization is the cognitive practice of representing a system or object by a simplified model that systematically deviates from full accuracy, retaining only features relevant to a specific reasoning task. Parameters: (1) the represented target must exist w…
Humor is a human-made system of incongruity recognition and social signaling, structured around patterns that provoke laughter, amusement, or shared recognition of absurdity. Parameters: (1) a stimulus that creates incongruity between expectation and reality,…
A concept is a mental construct — a category or idea formed by abstraction from particulars, held in mind and transmitted through language. Its parameters are: (1) formed by abstraction from experience or reasoning, (2) portable across minds via symbolic enco…
Knowledge-representation is a formal system for encoding information, facts, and relationships in a structure that can be stored, retrieved, and reasoned about by humans or machines. Its parameters are: (1) a structured format (schemas, ontologies, graphs, lo…
A pattern is a cognitive map of recognized regularity — the abstraction of a recurring structure, arrangement, or relationship from a set of instances. It has two parameters: (1) recurrence, where the same or similar configuration appears across multiple toke…
A notion is a discrete unit of thought — a concept, idea, or understanding held within a mind and capable of being articulated, shared, and refined. Parameters: a notion must be (1) articulable, expressible in language, symbol, or practice; (2) bounded, disti…
Generalization is the reasoning process by which a rule, pattern, or principle is inferred from a finite set of observed instances and projected to unobserved cases. Parameters: (1) a set of specific observations or data points, (2) a property or relation hel…
A criterion is a human-made standard or principle used to judge, evaluate, or decide whether something qualifies for a category, award, or determination. Parameters: (1) it must be stated or statable in language; (2) it operates as a decision rule applied to…
An explanation is a human-made communicative act that reduces uncertainty in a receiver by mapping a target phenomenon onto familiar reference frames — causal chains, analogies, stepwise procedures, or definitions. It operates through structured information t…
A lens is a deliberately adopted conceptual framework through which a domain of phenomena is examined, analyzed, or interpreted. It operates as a selective interpretive filter: it highlights certain features, suppresses others, and structures the relationship…
A heuristic is a human-made shortcut for problem-solving or decision-making when full analysis is impractical. It is a rule of thumb, an educated guess, or a simplifying assumption deliberately chosen to trade optimality for speed, tractability, or feasibilit…
Deduction is the human-made form of reasoning in which a conclusion follows necessarily from premises — if the premises are true, the conclusion cannot be false. Parameters: (1) validity — the logical structure guarantees that truth of premises transfers to c…
Falsifiability is a human-made epistemological criterion that demarcates scientific claims from non-scientific ones by requiring that every scientific theory admit of at least one conceivable observation that could count against it. Parameters: (1) the theory…
Causation is the human-constructed concept of a necessary and sufficient relationship between events, wherein one event (the cause) is held to bring about another (the effect). Its parameters are: (1) temporal precedence — the cause must precede the effect; (…
A conjecture is a human-made epistemic posture: a proposition held as provisionally true without full justification, used to explore consequences, guide inquiry, or fill evidentiary gaps. It is distinguished from assertion (which claims certainty) and from hy…
Grammar is the human-made system of rules and patterns that govern the structure and combination of elements within a language — phonemes into morphemes, morphemes into words, words into phrases and clauses. Parameters: (1) hierarchical constituency — element…
Fallibilism is the epistemological principle that no human claim to knowledge is beyond the possibility of error or revision. Parameters: (1) knowledge claims are inherently corrigible — no belief is immune to future counter-evidence; (2) certainty is an aspi…
Praxis is the process by which theory, knowledge, or skill is enacted through action — the bridge between abstract principle and lived practice. Parameters: (1) intentionality — the actor must apply a prior understanding to concrete activity; (2) feedback — o…
Induction is a human-made method of reasoning that moves from a finite set of specific observations to a general conclusion extending beyond those observations. Its parameters are: (1) a sample of observed instances, (2) a generalization over unobserved insta…
An enthymeme is a rhetorical syllogism in which one premise is left unstated, assumed to be shared by the audience. Parameters: (1) a conclusion; (2) at least one stated premise; (3) an unstated premise drawn from the audience's beliefs, values, or common kno…
A fallacy is a pattern of reasoning that appears valid but is logically unsound — it produces a conclusion that does not follow from its premises despite seeming to. Its parameters are (1) a structured argument with premises and a conclusion, (2) a formal or…
A FRAME is a human-made cognitive structure that selects which features of a situation are made salient and how they are organized for interpretation. Parameters: (1) it provides a bounded schema — a set of slots, roles, and expected relations — that maps ont…
Retroduction is a structured mode of inference in which a reasoner moves from an observed surprising or anomalous fact to a hypothesized explanation that, if true, would render that fact expected. Distinct from deduction (which guarantees conclusions from pre…
A method of reasoned discourse in which opposing propositions are advanced, examined, and reconciled through structured dialogue. Parameters: (1) thesis — an initial proposition or claim; (2) antithesis — a counter-proposition exposing contradictions or limit…
A syllogism is a form of deductive reasoning in which a conclusion is derived from two premises that are each affirmed in a third, shared term. It has exactly three propositions — major premise, minor premise, conclusion — and three terms (major, minor, middl…
A presupposition is a proposition that a speaker or writer treats as already accepted as true within a given context, so that the utterance can function without explicitly asserting it. The parameters of a presupposition are: (1) it is backgrounded rather tha…
A rumour is a human-made construct for the transmission of unverified information across a social network. Parameters: (1) the claim must be unverified at the point of transmission, (2) it spreads through interpersonal channels rather than formal or official…
Semiosis is the process by which signs, symbols, and signs systems produce and sustain meaning. It maps the transformation of a signifier into interpreted significance within a community of interpreters — the semiotic triangle linking sign, referent, and inte…
A canon is an accepted corpus of works, texts, or principles regarded as authoritative within a discipline, tradition, or community. Parameters: (1) a bounded set of items selected as representative or definitive; (2) selection by a recognized authority or by…
civic-engagement-platform is a human-made construct that provides standardized infrastructure for structured citizen participation in governance. It mediates between individuals and collective decision-making through mechanisms such as deliberative assemblies…
Stare decisis is the legal doctrine that courts must follow precedent: when a court has ruled on a particular question of law, later cases with materially similar facts must apply that ruling. It operates through hierarchical court structure — lower courts ar…
Satire is a genre of rhetorical and artistic expression that uses humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and critique human vice, folly, or institutional corruption. Parameters: (1) a target of critique (individual, institution, or social norm); (2…
Abduction is the mode of inference that generates explanatory hypotheses from surprising observations — reasoning from an effect back to its most plausible cause. Formally: given observation O and rule R such that if H were true O would be a matter of course,…
Equity is a body of legal principles and remedies developed to correct and supplement rigid common-law rules when their strict application would produce injustice. Its parameters: (1) it supplements, never supersedes, common law; (2) it provides relief only w…
A cognitive bias is a systematic pattern of deviation from rational judgment in decision-making and reasoning. It arises from the brain's heuristic processing shortcuts — efficient rules of thumb that trade accuracy for speed — and manifests when these shortc…
A legal doctrine that prevents a party from asserting a fact or right that contradicts what they have previously declared, conducted, or allowed another to rely upon. Parameters: (1) a clear prior representation (statement, conduct, or silence where duty to s…
Canonical is the institutional process by which a community selects, preserves, and elevates certain texts, practices, authorities, or claims to normative status — the mechanism that decides what counts as definitive within a discipline, tradition, or field.\…
gossip is the human-made practice of exchanging evaluations, rumors, and reputational information about absent third parties within a social group. It carves a distinct social technology bounded by: (1) the subject is absent (distinguishing it from direct add…
A worldview is the conceptual framework through which a person or community interprets reality — the organized map of categories, assumptions, values, and explanatory principles that determines what counts as real, true, or significant within a given culture…
A deposition is a pre-trial legal procedure in which a witness or party provides sworn, out-of-court testimony recorded by a court reporter, taken under oath with attorneys from both sides present to examine and cross-examine. Parameters: (1) sworn testimony,…
A compact is a formal agreement between two or more parties establishing mutual obligations and governing their relationship. Parameters: (1) at least two distinct parties with capacity to bind themselves, (2) clearly stated obligations assumed by each party,…
Arbitration is a dispute-resolution procedure in which one or more neutral third parties (arbitrators) render a binding decision after hearing evidence and arguments from the disputing parties. Parameters: (1) parties agree to submit to arbitration (arbitrati…
persuasion is the deliberate act of attempting to change another person's beliefs, attitudes, or intentions through reasoned argument, narrative, or rhetorical strategy rather than coercion or force. Parameters: the persuader selects a target audience, constr…
A method for externalizing the structure of knowledge by representing concepts as nodes and their relationships as labeled links, producing a visual or symbolic map that makes implicit mental structures explicit and shareable. Parameters: (1) nodes must be di…
An appeal is a formal request to a higher authority to review and possibly reverse or modify a decision already rendered by a lower authority. Parameters: (1) an existing decision by a recognized authority, (2) a designated superior authority with jurisdictio…
dissent is the formal or informal expression of disagreement with an official position, decision, or majority view, especially within an institutional setting such as a court, legislature, or organization. Parameters: the dissenter identifies a specific posit…
The formal court proceeding in which a defendant is informed of the charges against them, advised of their rights (right to counsel, right to remain silent, presumption of innocence), and asked to enter a plea (guilty, not guilty, or no contest). Parameters:…
A trope is a human-made figure of speech or rhetorical device that departs from ordinary literal meaning to produce a specific effect. Parameters: (1) the literal sense of the words used, (2) the figurative or non-literal sense produced, (3) the mechanism of…
Irony is a rhetorical figure in which a speaker says something that deliberately diverges from what they mean, relying on the audience to infer the intended meaning from context. The mechanism of persistence is linguistic convention — shared cultural knowledg…
Grievance is a human-made construct for articulating a formal complaint about a perceived wrong within a social, institutional, or legal framework. It carves a specific boundary: not mere displeasure, but an expressed claim that requires recognition and respo…
Parody is a human-made creative technique by which an authored work imitates a specific source work, style, or genre through deliberate exaggeration, distortion, or incongruity. Parameters: (1) a source or model — a particular work, authorial style, or genre…
Litotes is a rhetorical figure of understatement that affirms a proposition by negating its direct opposite. It operates through deliberate minimisation: the speaker denies one term ("not unkind" for "kind", "no small achievement" for "impressive") to produce…
Testimony is a structured verbal or written declaration, offered within a recognized forum (court, inquiry, deposition, or formal hearing), in which a declared speaker asserts propositions of fact as grounds for another's belief or judgment. Parameters: (1) d…
Jurisdiction is the legally recognized authority of a specific institution to exercise governance over particular persons, subject matters, or territory within a defined domain. Parameters: (1) grantor — the sovereign or constitutional source that confers aut…
A topos (plural: topoi) is a human-made argument strategy — a reusable template for reasoning or persuasion that can be applied across different subjects and contexts. Originating in Aristotelian rhetoric, a topos specifies a pattern of inference (e.g., compa…
Scaffolding is a pedagogical technique in which temporary, adjustable support is provided to a learner to enable performance beyond their independent capability, with the support gradually withdrawn as competence increases. Parameters: (1) the support structu…
Delegation is the human practice of assigning authority, responsibility, or a task to another person (or entity) while retaining the right to call it back. Parameters: (1) a delegator who holds initial authority, (2) a delegatee who receives delegated authori…
Genre is a classificatory schema that groups creative works (literature, film, music, visual art) by shared conventions, tropes, and audience expectations. Parameters: (1) works must share sufficient formal or thematic markers to be recognizably grouped; (2)…
Analogy is a human-made cognitive and rhetorical device that maps perceived similarities between two distinct domains — a source and a target — to reason about the target by reference to the source. Parameters: (1) it requires two structurally distinct entiti…
An injunction is a judicial order commanding a party to perform or refrain from performing a specified act. Parameters: (1) type — prohibitory (forbids an act) or mandatory (compels an act); (2) temporality — temporary (pending litigation), preliminary (pendi…
A quorum is the minimum number of members of a deliberative body that must be present at any given time for the proceedings to be officially valid. The parameter is a count (fixed number or fraction, e.g. majority, two-thirds) set by the body's rules or gover…