Paper M7 — Layered Definitions and Explanatory Weight
Paper M7 establishes a formal framework for managing definitions, primitives, and explanatory objects across the Cohesion Dynamics research programme. As the programme has expanded through A-series, M-series, B-series, and G-series, important explanatory objects are being repeatedly re-instantiated in prose rather than reused as named, layered definitions—leading to wordiness, loss of formal sharpness, drift in meaning, and difficulty in later formalization.
Key Contributions:
- Layered definition system categorizing every definition into exactly one explanatory layer
- Explicit criteria for explanatory weight determining when concepts should be promoted to reusable definitions
- Definition lifecycle (pull and push) for maintaining definitional coherence
- Definition Stewardship Duty as first-class editorial procedure
Epistemic Role: This is a meta-structural consolidation paper—no new physical claims, axioms, or empirical results. Provides programme-level infrastructure for managing definitions and explanatory objects across all series. Enables the programme to become more precise, navigable, and publication-ready while preserving falsifiability and avoiding definition sprawl.
Scope: M7 does not introduce new axioms, modify existing axioms, make physical/empirical claims, force papers to use specific definitions, or collapse ontology into representation. It systematizes how the programme expresses and organizes its theoretical objects.
Paper ID: CD-M7 | Series: M-series (Formal Mechanisms) | Status: Draft | Dependencies: A; informed by M1–M6 (examples of reuse pressure in B-series and G-series)