Glossary

The capacity of a system to initiate, sustain, and revise its own activity in relation to its goals and environment. Agency is not merely output but the active origination of behavior. In Alignment Theory, diminished agency is one early sign of substitutive dependence.

See: Agency, Executive Control, and Inner Regulation · Low Agency Increases Steerability

A structural framework for understanding how adaptive systems remain robust or become fragile depending on how their load-bearing functions are carried. The core claim: capacity decays when function is preserved without participation.

See: Revised Framework Center · What the Framework Actually Claims · Where to Start

Apparent order that is being carried from outside the focal system rather than arising from strengthened participation in the function itself. Borrowed order can maintain surface stability while the system's own load-bearing capacity continues to erode.

See: Counterfeit Order · Scaffolding and Counterfeit Order

The conditions under which Alignment Theory reaches its limits, fails to apply, or requires significant qualification. The framework does not claim to explain all dysfunction, and its honest use requires knowing where it does and does not fit.

See: Boundary Conditions and Failure Cases

The gradual erosion of a system's ability to carry its own load-bearing functions, typically without visible decline in immediate outputs. Capacity decay is often invisible precisely because function is being preserved by external substitution.

See: Why Structural Dependence Hides Behind Functional Success · The Formation Mechanism

Structural integration across a system's functions such that behavior, identity, and load-bearing capacity are mutually reinforcing rather than maintained by external scaffolding. Distinguished from mere performance or surface consistency.

See: Coherence Markers · Counterfeit Order

Support that belongs to healthy functioning itself — not an add-on or a replacement, but a genuine part of how the system carries its functions. Constitutive co-regulation preserves and deepens participation rather than eroding it.

See: Participation, Co-Regulation, and Substitution · The Four Modes of Support

A condition in which the outward appearance of order and functioning is maintained by external control rather than by the system's own structural coherence. Counterfeit order is a form of borrowed order that specifically replaces the function it mimics.

See: Counterfeit Order Essay · Auditing Counterfeit Order

A set of brain regions (medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, angular gyrus) that are most active during self-referential thought, narrative integration, and rest. In Alignment Theory, the DMN is understood as the neural substrate for self-modeling, moral imagination, and integrative formation.

See: How the Revised Model Maps to the DMN · The DMN and the Self-Model · Renewal of the Mind

Temporary support ordered toward stronger future participation. In developmental scaffolding, external carrying of a function is appropriate and beneficial because it is calibrated to fade as the developing system grows capable of bearing the load itself.

See: The Four Modes of Support · Parenting and Development · Education Stress Test

See Stable Distributed Competence.

The process by which a system develops genuine load-bearing capacity over time, as opposed to merely acquiring outputs or behavioral compliance. Formation changes what the system can carry; performance does not.

See: The Formation Mechanism · How Formation Fails · Why Performance Is Easier Than Transformation

The four types of support relation in Alignment Theory: (1) constitutive co-regulation, (2) developmental scaffolding, (3) stable distributed competence, and (4) substitutive dependence. The first three preserve or build participatory capacity; the fourth erodes it.

See: Load-Bearing Function and the Four Modes · Four Structural States

A 2×2 framework crossing support presence (low/high) against participatory capacity (low/high), yielding four distinct structural conditions: unsupported formation, healthy participation, atrophied dependence, and developmental growth.

See: The Four Structural States

The load-bearing arrangement or dependency pattern operating in a system without being clearly recognized by the participants within it. Hidden structure is often revealed only by perturbation — when the external carrying is disrupted.

See: Suffering and Hidden Structure · Why Structural Dependence Hides

The condition in which a system's functioning flows from genuine structural integration rather than from compliance, performance, or borrowed support. Inward coherence is not isolation from relation but genuine participation in load-bearing function.

See: What Inward Coherence Is · On the Inner/Outer Distinction

A function whose degradation changes resilience, viability, developmental integrity, or durable competence rather than merely reducing efficiency. The framework distinguishes load-bearing functions from peripheral functions because their erosion is qualitatively different — it changes what the system can do on its own terms.

See: Load-Bearing Function and the Four Modes · Biological Stress Test · Load-Bearing Human Capacities in the AI Age

The system's active share in forming, carrying, and revising a load-bearing function — as opposed to merely receiving its outputs. Participatory capacity is the framework's central diagnostic variable. When it erodes, structural fragility grows even if outputs remain stable.

See: Participation, Co-Regulation, and Substitution · Revised Framework Center · The Four Modes of Support

The production of expected outputs without the formation of the underlying capacity that genuine participation would require. Performance is easier than transformation because it bypasses structural change. In Alignment Theory, distinguishing performance from formation is one of the primary diagnostic tasks.

See: Why Performance Is Easier Than Transformation · When Inner Life Becomes Performance

The diagnostic question: what becomes visible when stress, variation, delay, loss, or disruption hits the system? The perturbation test is the primary tool for distinguishing genuine structural capacity from borrowed or substituted function, because hidden dependence becomes visible when the substitute is removed or stressed.

See: Biological Stress Test · Shared Core Structure Across Domains

The process of restoring participatory capacity after substitutive dependence has taken hold. Reintegration is harder than initial formation and involves gradually re-exposing the system to the load-bearing function in ways that rebuild rather than re-substitute.

See: Reintegration Conditions · Addiction and Recovery

See Developmental Scaffolding. When scaffolding hardens — i.e., when it stops being temporary and becomes a permanent external carrier of the function — it transitions into substitutive dependence.

See: Scaffolding and Counterfeit Order · When Scaffolding Hardens

Durable shared competence across persons, tools, and environments that does not hollow out the focal system's role in carrying the function. Distinguished from substitutive dependence by whether the focal system remains a genuine participant in the shared function.

See: The Four Modes of Support · Organizational Systems

A condition in which continuing function relies on external carrying in ways that make the focal system less able to bear the load on its own terms. Structural dependence is often invisible because function appears stable; it becomes visible when the external support is disrupted.

See: Why Structural Dependence Hides Behind Functional Success · Substitutive Dependence

Support that preserves output while reducing participation in the load-bearing function over time. The defining pathology in Alignment Theory: the system's outputs are maintained, but the structural capacity required to produce those outputs without external carrying is eroded.

See: Participation, Co-Regulation, and Substitution · AI Civilization and Human Formation · Addiction and Recovery

Any external or distributed structure that helps carry a load-bearing function over time. Support relations are not inherently problematic — the framework distinguishes between types of support by whether they preserve, deepen, or erode participatory capacity.

See: The Four Modes of Support · Four Structural States

The condition or event that causes a system to shift from one structural state to another — typically from developmental scaffolding into substitutive dependence, or from substitutive dependence into reintegration.

See: The Transition Trigger