To Whom the Ought Is Addressed

Qin, Han

doi:10.5281/zenodo.23269635

Abstract

Institutions say ought every day. How Is Institution Possible answered on what grounds an institution stands; it stopped at the conditions on purpose and handed the normative question on. This series takes up the half of that question that concerns the construct, and the first thing it has to make clear is to whom these oughts are addressed. The answer is that they take the construct as their normative object. How Is Institution Possible separates duty from accountability by source and by what is bound: the source of a duty lies in the bearer's own law, and it binds the person himself; accountability binds the position, not the person. So what an institution can put to a person is a demand on his position; to use such a demand to avow or to constitute his own law on his behalf is to substitute an outside demand for his law. The line is drawn by what a demand binds and on what grounds, not by who is addressed. A construct has no law of its own, so saying ought to it replaces no one's law. The normative root of these oughts is "A human being is an end in itself"; the step from a person's standing as an end to demands on a construct is one this series openly undertakes at the construct, and it does not pose as a derivation; the step at the person this series leaves alone, and hands to the Critiques. The oughts are addressed to every construct that has institutional identity, bad institutions included. An institution does not presuppose that the people inside it are all acting by their own law; its presupposition is mixed reality, and what is mixed is realization, not standing. The ought takes hold in three layers: the construct takes the ought, the position takes accountability, the person takes his own law. The interior is drawn by entanglement, and reach of influence is not reach of authority. An institution's ought can only land on positions, by way of accountability, and it must have a source, a content and a registration; it may require a position to do something, but not a person to think something. The one who carries it out is an end: on role performance alone, an institution cannot certify his law; the construct's name does not shield his responsibility, and the construct's failure does not fall automatically on him alone. The construct itself does not act; its acts can be traced back to their invocation by particular persons, and the part of them that operates as constraint is judged by the line of limit. Carrying the criterion of cultivation over from another's questioning to an institution's provision of conditions requires three things to come with it: refusal is preserved, cultivation is named by the elevation actually achieved, and good intentions do not vouch for it. "Anti-colonization" in the main line is taken in the narrow sense. This series establishes only oughts; whether they can be achieved is handed to series that carry judgment. The paper has ten propositions (Z1 to Z8, with Z7 in three parts), listed together at the end.

Introduction

A river runs past the west wall of a paper mill. A few kilometers downstream, a household farms fish at the water's edge.

The mill has been running for more than twenty years. This spring it received a new effluent permit, with stricter limits than the old one. Management issued a document whose first sentence read: "This mill ought to meet the effluent standard and not let anyone downstream be harmed." Below it were a few items: the monitoring post takes samples daily, and any exceedance is reported within two hours; for whichever shift an exceedance occurs on, the cause is established and entered in that shift's appraisal.

At the monitoring post is a technician who has done the job for more than ten years. On the shop floor there is a shift supervisor. The household downstream has no employment relation with the mill and has never signed any contract with it; they simply share a river.

That sentence in the document, "This mill ought," is addressed to whom?

To the mill director? The director signed it, but when the director is transferred, the sentence does not go with him. To the monitoring technician? He goes out to take samples every day, but "not let anyone downstream be harmed" is not something he can achieve alone, nor something he should carry alone. To the mill? The mill is a permit, a set of rules, some positions, a few buildings. It cannot read a document.

The question looks like one of wording, but it is the first question institution theory has to answer. How Is Institution Possible (Foundational Paper 6; cited as F6) answered on what grounds an institution stands; it stopped at the conditions on purpose, and handed the question of the ought on (F6 §2.1, §3.2). This series goes on to ask what an institution is for, and what it ought to achieve. To answer, it has to write oughts; to write oughts, it must first make clear to whom they are addressed, where they come from, how they reach persons, and how they do so without legislating for anyone. This paper answers exactly that.

The series sets out to establish five oughts: the institution's acts cross no line against anyone inside it; it guards the lines between those inside it, and the way it guards crosses no line either; it provides conditions for the cultivation of those inside it; it lets cultivation between those inside it happen; it itself remains open to questioning and correction, and the channel of questioning is not controlled by the party questioned. Each ought has its own paper. This paper proves the content of none of them. It establishes only what the five share: to whom they are addressed, on what grounds, on what premise, and how they take hold.

The answer runs in eight steps. §1 says that the oughts are addressed to the construct; §2 says where they come from; §3 states the institution's premise, mixed reality; §4 sets out the three layers in which the ought takes hold, construct, position and person, and where the interior is drawn; §5 says how the ought lands on a position; §6 says that the executor is an end; §7 says that the construct itself does not act, and on whom its acts fall and by what they are judged; §8 arrives at the main line. The paper has ten propositions (Z1 to Z8, with Z7 in three parts), listed together at the end.

On form: the body of this paper names no outside theorists and cites no historical events. The conclusions of upstream papers are restated in plain words, with paper and section given in parentheses. How this series meets existing theory is left to its Paper 0. One fictional example runs through the paper: that mill, that river, those few people. The example points to no particular country and no real mill. It was chosen because a mill, a river and a set of operating rules are recognizable anywhere.

§1 The Ought Is Addressed to the Construct

Institutions make demands on people every day: when to start work, how to report data, whom to go to when something goes wrong. When such a demand lands on a person, what exactly is it?

One foundational paper in this system is titled One's Own Law, and it had already drawn the division needed here. It separates law from ethics. Law is an external construct: "It does not claim to be morality; it simply says: these are the rules, and violating them has consequences." Ethics is different: it "attempts to extrapolate a subject's internal law into a demand upon others," and that is a boundary-crossing (A16 §1). The whole paper establishes only one lemma: "Cannot not legislate only for oneself." (A16 Note 1) A person's cannot-not legislates only for himself and is not extrapolated onto others; conversely, his is one he reached himself, and no one else can legislate it for him.

On the side of institutions, F6 draws this line more finely. It establishes a word of its own, accountability, and sets it apart from duty in two columns: one for source, one for what is bound. For duty, "the source of a duty lies in the bearer's own law, it binds the subject itself"; accountability is "The contentful requirement that falls on a member's position when a construct exercises power over that member. It binds the position and not the subject itself." It goes on: "only a subject can bear a duty, whereas both constructs and subjects can bear accountability. A duty's source must lie inside the bearer, and a construct has no inner source." (F6 §1.3)

With this division, what an institution can say to a person becomes clear. What an institution can put to a person is a demand on his position: the monitoring technician takes samples daily and reports exceedances. This is accountability, and what it binds is the post; like the law of One's Own Law, it says only that this is the rule, and does not claim that this is his morality. What an institution cannot put to him is the other kind, the kind that binds him himself, because the source of that kind can lie only in his own law. If the institution, instead of saying what his position should do, says how he as a person should be, and requires him to take a demand from outside as one from within, it has stepped into the place of his own law. This matches exactly the words One's Own Law uses when it defines ethics: "law disguised as morality" (A16 §1). This is legislating for him from outside.

Saying ought to a construct is a different matter. At its close, How Is the Inter-Ontological Possible (Foundational Paper 5; cited as F5) left a question: does an organization have a cannot-not of its own? It warned at once that this might also be "the mis-assignment of a first-person source to a construct that has no interior source" (F5 §7.3). F6 takes up the question and first blocks one way of speaking: "an institution has no cannot-not of its own"; "A construct has no first person." (F6 §2.3) A construct has no law of its own.

So saying ought to a construct replaces no one's law: it has no law to be replaced in the first place. Institution theory has to write oughts, yet must not legislate for persons; so the oughts of this series take the construct as their normative object.

One point must be made precise at once, so that this cut is not read as a convenient way out. The document writes "This mill ought," not "You ought," yet in the end the sentence still has to land on persons: the monitoring technician has to go and take samples, and the shift supervisor has to run his shift. Calling it an institutional demand does not clear the account of its actual effects on persons. When someone says "This is the mill's rule, not me asking you to do it," it still has to be checked on whom the rule lands, how, and whether rightly: whether it has established an accountability at that position, and whether it crosses that person's line. These two checks are taken up in §4, §5 and §7. Shifting the addressee to the construct only means that the ought no longer legislates for persons from outside; it is not a certificate of exemption from inspection.

The converse holds too. To say to the monitoring technician "Your post must keep honest records" is to use a "you" in the sentence while speaking of a position; if it meets the conditions under which an accountability stands, it stands. The line does not depend on whether the sentence contains a "you"; it depends on what a demand binds and on what grounds it binds.

Z1 The oughts of this series take the construct as their normative object; saying ought to a construct replaces no one's law. What an institution can put to a person is a demand on a position; it may not use such a demand to avow or to constitute his own law on his behalf. The line is drawn by what a demand binds and on what grounds it binds, not by who is addressed. Calling something an institutional demand does not exempt it from answering for its actual consequences: how it acts on persons through particular arrangements must still go through the check on whether an accountability stands, and be judged against the boundary between limit and violation.

§2 Where the Ought Comes From

Being addressed to the construct is not the same as coming from the construct. The mill has no first person, and it cannot produce oughts of its own. These oughts come from two places: the people who share this entanglement, and the entanglement itself. The monitoring technician, the shift supervisor, the workers on the shop floor, the fish-farming household downstream: they are all entangled with the mill, and the river is the place where they are entangled.

One step further down: on what grounds do these oughts stand? This system puts the root on an openly undertaken normative premise: "A human being is an end in itself." How Is Subjecthood Possible (Foundational Paper 4; cited as F4) lists it as Postulate One and states what kind of premise it is: "This postulate is a normative premise this paper openly undertakes. It is not derived from the operation of negation, and it does not pose as the result of any physical test." What it gives is a person's standing: a person is an end, not because of any capacity he has or any recognition he has received. It also states that the postulate may be declined: "Refusable. Whoever refuses Postulate One domiciles a branch of his own, and that branch may be inhabited." (F4 §2.3) The oughts of this series stand on this postulate, and so they stand on the same footing: whoever refuses it founds a branch of his own, and this series does not strike that branch from the record. Only, being refusable does not mean that, within this stance, a construct is exempted from the scrutiny here because it does not itself accept the postulate.

From "a human being is an end" to "the mill ought to ..." there is still a step: from a person's standing, to demands on a construct. That step is not something Postulate One already gives. F4 marks a gap of the same form on the side of how persons are treated: on the way from standing to the treatment of persons, "there is a further step about how persons are to be treated, and this paper does not build it. That undertaking has its own address." (F4 §2.4) On the side of the construct, F6 does not take that step either. That paper stopped at the conditions on purpose: "This proposition establishes conditions only; it establishes no office and no ought. Whether all institutions ought to adopt such an institution is a normative question already handed on." And again: "Normative force is not adjudicated in this paper." It names only one destination: "The step from 'cannot be taken in' to 'ought to be acknowledged' is handed to the critique of practice." (F6 §3.2, Proposition IV; §2.1, Premise V)

Yet there are two questions to ask: how one person is to treat another, and how a construct ought to be arranged. The gap F4 marks lies on the first; it says only that such an undertaking "has its own address," and does not say how many addresses there are. The second has a step of the same form, from a person's standing as an end to demands on a construct, and F4 does not write it. F6 says that non dubito has two bearing-addresses, "with different offices, and neither can stand in for the other" (F6 §2.1, Premise V); the two steps fall exactly at these two places. To read them onto the two addresses in this way is this series' own reading. At the construct, this series undertakes the step openly; below, every step this series undertakes itself, rather than receiving it from upstream, is marked "(own undertaking)." At the person, this series leaves the step alone and hands it to the Critiques. Neither stands in for the other: this series does not write oughts for persons, as §1 has already said.

The oughts that follow are addressed to every construct that has institutional identity. F6 defines "institution" broadly, broadly enough that bad ones fall inside: "slavery, caste systems and colonial administrations all have institutional identity." It adds at once: "classification issues no legitimacy." (F6 §2.2) This sentence matters a great deal to this series. A bad institution is still an institution, so it too is within the range of those the ought addresses; it fails the ought precisely because the ought is addressed to it as well.

F6 already contains a ready-made form of this step. Two people share a water source, exit is impossible, and they need a rule; what that rule bears is a term that cannot be cancelled at will: "it may not place any party sharing this water source outside the range of what must be treated as an end." (F6 §2.3) But that paper states that this holds only under the condition it names: "While a framework still runs on the premise of subjects' standing as ends." This series goes one step further: it does not wait for a construct to run on the premise of persons' standing as ends before addressing an ought to it; whether or not the construct runs that way, the ought is there (own undertaking).

So what this section states is a stance, not a derivation, and it says so. Writing this way is not new in this system: F4 openly undertakes Postulate One; F6 says its Premise V is "borne rather than derived" (F6 §2.1); this series, on the side of the construct, openly undertakes its oughts. All three state that they are undertakings, and none poses as a derivation.

Z2 The normative root of an institution's oughts is "A human being is an end in itself" (F4, Postulate One). The step from a person's standing as an end to demands on a construct is one this series openly undertakes at the construct; it does not pose as a derivation. The step at the person this series leaves alone and hands to the Critiques; neither stands in for the other. These oughts are addressed to every construct that has institutional identity, without the condition that the construct already runs on the premise of persons' standing as ends. This stance may be refused; within it, a construct is not exempted from scrutiny by its own non-acceptance of it.

§3 The Premise: Mixed Reality

The mill is neither wholly bad nor wholly good.

The monitoring technician is unbending in one thing: whatever the reading is, that is what he records, and no one's pleading will change it. Yet in another thing he also uses the new apprentice as an errand boy. The shift supervisor often sees a person as a number behind the output figures; yet last year, when a worker's child fell ill, it was he who went and won that worker three months of leave. The household downstream is the same. The same person treats others as ends in one matter and as means in another.

This system calls this condition mixed reality, and says that "mixed reality is the normal state"; a community in which everyone is acting by his own law is only an ideal type (Moral Law P6 §I).

So an institution does not presuppose that the people inside it are all acting by their own law. Its presupposition is mixed reality itself.

F6 has dealt with one variety of this. It says that there is a kind of order in which the framework has already undertaken non dubito toward everyone, while among persons there is not yet real mutual non dubito; it calls this cell the third cell (F6 §2.2a). F5 speaks to the other side: what its main theorem explains is how recognition between persons is possible, not how persons coexist in general; "The stretch in which acknowledgment has not occurred and coexistence must proceed regardless lies outside this paper's range" (F5 §2.1). Institution theory lies precisely in that stretch. The mill and the household downstream are entangled with each other without first waiting for mutual recognition.

What is mixed in mixed reality has to be stated precisely. F4 divides "end in itself" into two senses. One is standing: everyone has it, and it does not rise or fall with what a person has or has achieved. The other is realization: how far individual, relational and institutional conditions actually support a person. It says: "Standing intact, realization poor, is a combination with content, not one defined away in advance." (F4 §2.5) Among the people in the mill and the people downstream, realization is uneven; not one of them is short of standing. What is mixed is realization, not standing.

Three consequences follow.

First, guarding the line cannot wait until the parties already hold non dubito toward one another. F6 says that the framework's office here is, "while mutual non dubito among members has not yet formed, to keep open the positions in which co-construction could still come about: members can still answer, still refuse, still exit" (F6 §2.1, Premise V). Mixed reality is not the only reason guarding the line matters; what mixed reality supplies is this: when guarding begins cannot be judged in advance by a person's tier; it can only go by events.

Second, cultivation between persons cannot presuppose that everyone is acting by his own law. People in the mill help one another, and that help can be asymmetric, and can come one occasion at a time. This belongs to Paper 5.

Third, an institution's identification of a person goes no further than the event, and does not turn into an identity assigned by tier. F6's proviso says: "There is no finally condemned evil person, but there are diagnosable evil operations — this paper's proviso therefore judges operations, not persons." (F6 §2.1, Premise V) Moral Law, when it treats how an institution identifies a member's posture in a given matter, also says: "This identification is event-level, not permanent classification" (Moral Law P9 §5.2). If the shift supervisor treats people as numbers today, the mill may check him on this matter and limit him; it may not, on that account, give him the identity of "a man who only ever sees people as numbers." F4 guards a deeper layer: "Within an already specified domain of objects, no appraisal of capacity or of recognition issues a certificate of standing as an end." It also states that this does not abolish factual verification; "it denies only that such appraisals carry a licence to confer or revoke standing as an end" (F4 §2.4). However accurate the identification, it is only an appraisal of what he did; it does not touch his standing as an end.

One thing is not said here: that the burden of guarding rises and falls with some "degree of mixture." There is no such quantity. How heavy the guarding must be is a matter for the particular entanglement and the actual risk to say, case by case; the means of guarding are bounded by authority (Paper 3).

Z3 An institution does not presuppose that its internal subjects are all acting by their own law; its presupposition is mixed reality. What is mixed is realization, not standing. Guarding the line does not wait until the parties already hold non dubito toward one another to begin; it is triggered by events, not prejudged by a person's tier. An institution's identification of a person goes no further than the event and does not become an identity; this does not cancel the checking of particular facts.

§4 Construct, Position, Person

When the document came down, it landed in three places.

On the mill: this mill ought to meet the effluent standard and not let anyone downstream be harmed. This is an ought, addressed to the construct.

On the monitoring post: take samples daily according to the standard, keep honest records, report any exceedance within two hours. This is not an ought; it is accountability. As §1 said, accountability binds the position and not the subject itself (F6 §1.3). On Accountability · Wei says what a "position" is more finely: its F37 is titled "A Position Is a Single Registration Event." When the monitoring technician takes up this post, that is a registration; the accountability lands on this registration, not on "him as a person."

On the monitoring technician himself: he does not alter readings. Why he does not alter them, whether for fear of being held to account, for fear of an accident, or because he simply holds that readings may not be altered, the mill does not avow on his behalf. Which of these comes from his own law is another matter; that he followed the rules does not by itself prove it (§6). What binds him himself is only his own law.

Three layers, three sentence forms. The construct takes the ought. The position takes accountability: it binds the position, it is no longer held once the registration is exited, and its name does not vouch for its content. The person takes his own law: what binds him himself is only the law he sets himself, and no ought is written for him.

These three layers line up exactly with F6's two addresses. That paper places non dubito in two places: one is the framework's non dubito, the institution's public commitment to everyone; the other is the subject's non dubito, the posture a person actually holds. It says: "what co-construction requires is mutual non dubito among subjects; the framework's non dubito does not achieve co-construction on the members' behalf." (F6 §2.1, Premise V) The construct end faces the framework address; the person end faces the subject address. The oughts of this series are addressed only to the framework address.

There is one more group of people, with no cell among the three layers. The household downstream are not mill people and hold no registered position at the mill. Yet they have no way to leave the river, and they are already entangled with the mill.

This is why the "interior" has to be drawn clearly. This series draws the interior by entanglement, not by identity. A construct's interior is made up of two parts: the people in the entanglement it handles, and the people its acts reach who have no way to avoid it by exiting. People in the first part are not necessarily unable to leave; the monitoring technician can resign. The second part is people like the household downstream. Only the two together make the interior; neither part is the whole. Drawing people into the interior by entanglement means only that these people cannot fall out of the mill's oughts; it does not give the mill authority to manage them, educate them, or redirect them: reach of influence is not reach of authority. Whether the mill is organizing their lives is judged by the actual relation, not by what the mill says. In the propositions below, "internal subjects" and, in the body, "those inside" refer to the same people.

How does the ought take hold for the household downstream? Being affected by the mill does not mean they must carry an accountability for it. The ought does not take hold through their positions; it takes hold by two routes: through the mill's constraints on itself, and through other positions in the mill that have a source. The five oughts apply to them each on its own conditions and are not reduced because they have no position; the channel through which the mill is questioned must be within their reach as well (Paper 6). If there is a further institution above, with the corresponding authority, that layer also undertakes the guarding within its own range; but "there is a layer above" cannot be a reason for this layer to be absent.

Finally, one word to separate. This section has spoken of two kinds of "exit," and they are not the same. The monitoring technician can resign the post; that is exiting a registration: "Exit terminates the answering load the position currently carries," and "it does not by itself erase the record of prior discharge or failure to discharge, nor cancel other processing positions that have independent grounds" (F6 §1.3). The household downstream cannot leave the river; that is being unable to get out of an entanglement. The first is a matter of accountability; the second is a matter of where the "interior" is drawn.

Z4 The construct takes the ought, the position takes accountability, the person takes his own law. The interior is drawn by entanglement: those in the entanglement the construct handles, together with those its acts reach who have no way to avoid it by exiting, make up the interior; reach of influence is not reach of authority, and whether the construct is organizing their lives is judged by the actual relation. For internal subjects in the entanglement who hold no registered position at the construct, the ought does not take hold through their positions; it takes hold through the construct's constraints on itself and through arrangements, with a source, at other positions within the construct; the five oughts apply each on its own conditions and are not reduced for want of a position.

§5 How the Ought Lands on a Position

The mill's ought says "not let anyone downstream be harmed." How does it become something the monitoring technician has to do every morning?

First, how it cannot land: it cannot land on a person in the form of an ought. The document cannot write "The monitoring technician ought to care about the people downstream." Whether he cares is his own law; if the mill writes it, it is legislating for him.

Where it can land is on a position. To land, it needs three things in full.

The first is a source. This demand on the monitoring post comes from the mill's effluent permit and the operating rules the mill set on that basis, not from the passing wish of some manager.

The second is a content. On Accountability says that accountability points to "a demand whose content, whose position of application, and whose conditions of discharge are already identifiable" (On Accountability F46). "Take samples daily according to the standard, keep honest records, report any exceedance within two hours" is identifiable; "be responsible for the environment" is not.

The third is a registration. Only when the monitoring technician takes up the post does this demand actually stand at his position. Registration is what makes the demand actually stand at that position; it does not supply the content by itself, nor does it by itself prove that the demand is warranted (On Accountability F46).

Next, what must be checked once it has landed. If what the demand binds is a person, one must see whether his position is still preserved: he "must be preserved as a subject position able to answer, to refuse, and to revoke the registration" (On Accountability F53). On Accountability calls this check the T5 gate. If what is bound is a construct, for instance when the mill makes demands of an outside testing firm it contracts, the demand does not pass through this gate; it is checked by the conditions under which a construct's accountability stands (On Accountability F47). When the demand reaches a real person, his line is checked there.

Passing the gate does not make the demand warranted either. On Accountability says it plainly: "That T5 has not given way is not a sufficient condition for a demand's being warranted or for its being free of violation." And: "the name accountability does not distinguish nurturing from suppression from colonization." (On Accountability F53, F56) A demand can meet every condition under which an accountability stands and at the same time cross a person's line. That has to be judged separately, by limit and violation (§7).

F6 puts all of this in one sentence: "A construct may require a position to do something; it may not require a person to think something." (F6 §3.3) F5 states the same line elsewhere: when persons hand a dispute to outside arbitration, "What is ceded is procedural adjudicative authority over disputes about action, not constitutive authority over one's own law." (F5 §5.4)

When this rule reaches cultivation, it calls for particular care, because this is where it most easily slips. The mill has started a training program that teaches workers to read drawings and to do electrical work. The mill can register "run the classes on time, prepare the materials, rearrange shifts for those who wish to attend" as the accountability of some position. The mill cannot register "get the workers cultivated" as an accountability; nor can it treat "the workers identify with the mill's direction of development," or any designated thing the workers are to avow or grow into within themselves, as a result that can be obtained by compulsion. Task output, operational capability and particular actions are another matter: whether a worker can read a drawing, whether a process step is done to standard, can be examined and can be written into the requirements of a post, and are checked separately by accountability and by limit and violation. Teaching, feedback, care and the provision of resources, these particular things, can carry accountability; a person's being cultivated, or avowing his own law, cannot. The same act can also be done by the instructor by his own law: when he teaches, he is both discharging an accountability and doing what he himself wants, which is to teach people well. On Accountability F57 is titled "Accountability and Duty Can Coexist," and goes on: "The two can land at once upon one and the same act." The two do not stand in for each other: the mill can neither demand the part that is his own law nor certify it on his behalf.

Z5 An institution's oughts do not land on persons in the form of oughts. When they land as demands on positions, they must have a source, a content and a registration; where the recipient is a subject, check whether his position is preserved, and check the line of limit separately; where the recipient is a construct, check by the conditions under which a construct's accountability stands. The other party's being cultivated, his avowing his own law, or his producing a designated outcome of self-avowal or self-constitution may not be made a result to be obtained by compulsion; demands for task output, operational capability and particular actions are checked separately by accountability and by limit and violation.

§6 The Executor Is an End

The mill is a means. The people who work in it are not. The monitoring technician, the shift supervisor, the instructor of the training program: they do things for the mill, and what they do is accountability; they themselves are ends. This has two sides.

One side is protection. The mill can establish the content of the monitoring technician's role: what his post requires, and whether he did it. On these alone, the mill cannot certify his own law, still less avow it on his behalf. F6 says: "An external arrangement can establish the content of a role, but cannot by itself certify what stands within the bearer's own law" (F6 §3.1(f)). The words "by itself" matter: it is not that nothing about a person can be checked, but that role performance alone cannot bear the weight of certifying his own law. The sentence was originally written in the cell on marriage, about a demand between spouses not to keep silent; here only the two things it separates are borrowed: the content of a role is one thing, a person's own law is another. If the monitoring technician does not alter readings out of his own law, that is his; the mill can write "keeps honest records" in his appraisal, but it cannot write "out of conscience" on his behalf, nor can it require him to act out of conscience.

The other side is non-dissolution. That autumn, there was one exceedance. Two accounts come easily in the mill. One is: "It was the mill's decision." The other is: "The monitoring post reported late." The first hides a person inside the construct; the second shifts the construct's account onto one person. F6 blocks both: "A construct's name may not be used to shield an individual responsibility that has independent grounds," and in the same paragraph, "nor may a construct's failure be transferred automatically onto some member" (F6 §1.3). On Accountability gives an example of the same kind: "The address of attribution falls on the company, while the hands that move are a few people in the compliance department; the two are not one thing." (On Accountability, F39 elaboration) The mill has its account; the person who signed, the person who opened the valve, the person who should have reported and did not, each has his own; none settles another's.

"I was only following the rules" fails on both sides. It cannot make the person who carried it out disappear into the construct, and it cannot make the construct disappear behind the person who carried it out. The finer points of this sentence are left to Paper 2.

Z6 The executor is an end. An external arrangement can establish the content of a role; it cannot certify the executor's own law on the strength of role performance alone, still less avow it on his behalf. The construct's name does not shield an individual responsibility that has independent grounds, and the construct's failure is not automatically transferred onto any one person.

§7 On Whom the Construct's Acts Fall

Up to this point the paper has kept speaking of "the mill's acts": the mill releases effluent, the mill sets operating rules, the mill runs a training program. But the mill does not open a valve. This section has to make clear what is being said when one speaks of "the construct's acts," and on what grounds the criteria for judging what one person does to another may be used to judge what a construct does. It proceeds in three steps, each carrying its own load.

Act and attribution

Power Theory gives a hard sentence here: "Apparatuses do not wield power; individuals invoke apparatuses to wield power." It also says: "Any expression of abstract entity wielding power can and must be reduced to key-node individual wielding power." (Power Theory P2, Abstract; §V.3) The mill releasing effluent is the dispatcher opening a valve, the mill director signing that production plan; the mill setting operating rules is a few people drafting and one person issuing. F6 says the same thing: "Discharge and remedy of an organizational accountability are realised through particular nodes and procedures." (F6 §1.3)

So "the construct's acts" can always be traced back to its invocation by particular persons. The construct is the address of attribution, not the subject of the act; F6 says, "A construct's holding accountability is a matter of where responsibility is addressed at the level of jurisdiction; it does not confer subject status on the construct." (F6 §1.3) On Accountability, in treating the chain of accountability, has a precedent of the same shape: "Where the issuing end is a construct, the construct does not hold a recognition-based right in its own name, and its power-face is borrowed from the right held by the subject who invokes that apparatus (per Power Theory P2 M2); the construct is that chain's address of attribution" (On Accountability F42). The address of attribution and the person who actually did the thing are both there, and neither hides the other: this is where the two sentences of §6 come from.

One reading must be guarded against here. Power Theory says "The topological legitimacy of an apparatus is borrowed" (Power Theory P2, Abstract). "Legitimacy" here is the topological condition under which an apparatus can take part in a chain of power, the source of the efficacy it borrows, not ethical warrant. This step takes only "traced back to the persons who invoke it," and draws no warrant for any act from "borrowed."

Limit and violation

Not everything the mill does is a constraint. The materials handed out in the training program, the new instruments supplied to the monitoring post, these do not necessarily act on anyone's rights position. This step concerns only the part that operates as constraint: stipulating who must do what and when, and what someone must bear if he does not; releasing something into someone's river.

Rights Theory judges constraints by limit and violation: a constraint within the line is a limit; one that crosses it is a violation (Rights Theory P5 F21). What it judges is the structural effect of a constraint on a person's rights position, "decided by structure, not by motive" (Rights Theory P5 F21), without asking who is acting. So the part of the mill's acts that operates as constraint can be judged by this line. This step is one this series takes (own undertaking): to treat the construct's acts as constraints of the kind this line judges, they must first pass through the reduction of the previous step, and land on the positions that invoke them.

When many registrations are put together, can it happen that each one, taken alone, is within the line, while together they cross it? The question is real; this paper does not answer it, and leaves it to Paper 2.

Carrying over the criterion of cultivation

The training program is up and running. Does it count as the mill cultivating its workers?

Rights Theory separates cultivation from colonization by a structural criterion: cultivation is those acts within the limit that actually raise a person up; colonization is a boundary-crossing disguised as cultivation (Rights Theory P6 F26). But its range of judgment has a restriction. It says that its division between cultivation and colonization governs "one form on the Shi spine," the questioning of another; a person's cultivation of himself lies on the Dao spine, is another form, and is not judged by this division (Rights Theory P6 F26). The mill running a training program is not another person questioning someone; it is a construct providing conditions.

To carry that criterion over to an institution's provision of conditions, three things must come with it.

First, refusal and change of direction are preserved. Rights Theory says that cultivating questioning "preserves the subject's positions of refusal, interruption, and self-reconstitution" (Rights Theory P6 F25). Workers can stay away from the training program, can come and then stop coming, can learn electrical work and then change trades to do something else; the training program may take away none of these.

Second, cultivation is named by the elevation actually achieved, with a statement of where the elevation lands. The cultivation Rights Theory speaks of has two forms: in one, a person's own law grows a stretch further; in the other, the public space of rights gains a position that had not been registered before (Rights Theory P6 F25). After the training program has run for a year, one worker, as he learns, finds that what he wants to do is electrical work and that he does not want to stand at the paper machine for the rest of his life; he goes and gets his license on his own, and later changes jobs. In this matter his own law has grown a stretch, which comes close to the first form. Merely having learned one more trade is not necessarily that; where nothing has grown, it is not called cultivation. "It did some good" is not the same as elevation. And conversely: where there is no elevation, this is not grounds for saying the training program failed, nor that the workers failed; whether the mill has discharged its burden of providing the conditions it undertook is checked separately (Paper 4).

Third, it is not vouched for by good intentions, design purposes or labels. Rights Theory says that cultivation and colonization are "cut apart by a structural criterion, not by motive, feeling, or the good-and-bad" (Rights Theory P6 F26). However good the mill's intentions in running the program, and however much its sign reads "Growth Plan," neither proves that it is cultivation.

This step is one this series takes (own undertaking). Wherever later papers name something "cultivation," they point back here.

Z7a The construct's acts can be traced back to their invocation by particular nodes; the construct is the address of attribution, not the subject of the act; the address of attribution and the actual actor do not hide each other.

Z7b That part of the construct's acts which operates, as constraint, on the rights positions of internal subjects is judged as limit or violation by the line of limit: decided by structure, not by motive.

Z7c To carry the criterion of cultivation over from another's questioning to an institution's provision of conditions, three things must come with it: refusal and change of direction are preserved; cultivation is named by the elevation actually achieved, with the elevation specified as landing in the person's own law or in the public space of rights; it is not vouched for by good intentions, design purposes or labels.

§8 The Main Line

The main line of this series can now be stated.

Toward its internal subjects, an institution holds to anti-colonization and strives for cultivation; it itself remains open to questioning.

"Holding to" names the first two oughts. They are divided by what they govern. The first governs the mill's own acts: it crosses no line against anyone inside it, and the monitoring technician, the shift supervisor and the fish-farming household downstream are all included. The second governs the acts of those inside toward one another: if a veteran technician on the shop floor drives a newly arrived apprentice to the point where he cannot refuse and cannot speak, the mill has to step in. Its stepping in does not wait for the apprentice first to grow into someone who can hold his own, nor for the veteran technician first to show good will, nor for the apprentice first to admit that this is bullying, nor for a complete adjudication; but there must be traces of the operation that can be checked. Stepping in is itself an act of the mill, so it too falls under the first ought: the way the mill steps in may not cross the line, the means it uses are bounded by its authority in this matter, and if it steps in beyond its authority, the stepping in itself crosses the line. Neither ought varies with how thick or thin the relation is. What is held to is the ought, not any particular method of guarding; methods can change, the ought is not withdrawn. These two oughts belong to Paper 2 and Paper 3 respectively.

Holding to does not mean the mill can always achieve it. A running mill, to stop one kind of line-crossing, may have to change its configuration, add equipment, rearrange its shifts; and to stop one person crossing another's line, a single intervention may not be enough. Whether it can be done, and how to make the transition and attribute responsibility when it cannot, are matters that call for judgment; they are handed to specific theories of institutions, such as the Theory of Government or a theory of the firm. This series grants that in practice an ought may not be achieved, and does not on that account withdraw or discount any of them.

"Anti-colonization" in the main line takes the narrow sense Rights Theory gives the word: colonization is a boundary-crossing disguised as cultivation (Rights Theory P6 F26). So the line that "holding to" keeps is wider than "colonization": if effluent presses on the bodies and livelihoods of the household downstream, if a configuration seals off a person's way of refusing, these crossings do not necessarily pose as cultivation, and they all fall within the first two oughts. The main line speaks of the axis between cultivation and colonization; it is not a list of the first two oughts. Taking the narrow sense has this series' own reason: anti-colonization is itself an act of the mill, governed by the first ought; were "colonization" taken broadly, the mill would have to police influence, teaching and persuasion between persons that lie within the line, and it would itself be the first to cross the line.

"Striving for" names the third and fourth oughts. The third is the mill providing conditions for persons' cultivation; the fourth is letting cultivation between persons happen. The third, and the "leaving room" half of the fourth, go by relational thickness: as much of a person's time, attention, livelihood and path of development as the mill actually arranges, so much must it correspondingly explain how it leaves and provides usable room for him. The more the mill arranges for those on the shop floor, the more it has to explain; for the household downstream, whose lives it does not arrange, there is little content to these in that relation, yet the first ought is not reduced in the least. The other half of the fourth, not sealing off the paths, between persons, of refusal, revision, exit and change of direction, does not vary with relational thickness. "Striving for," because an institution reaches only conditions, never outcomes; and also because an institution cannot achieve the pure kind of cultivation. F5 says that institutional-layer autonomy support "cannot achieve pure nurturing," and that the pure kind exists only in relations between persons (F5 §4.2). So the mill provides conditions and leaves the pure kind to persons among themselves. Once the conditions are provided, whether to use them, how, and toward what, is the other party's share, and the institution does not decide it for him: this is the first of the three things §7 carried over. These two oughts belong to Paper 4 and Paper 5.

"Open to questioning" names the fifth ought, and is also the shape the first four take in time. The mill will produce problems of its own, and it has to answer for them, so questioning cannot stop. What cannot stop is not the endless re-asking of the same matter: a matter that has been answered can be closed; what cannot be withdrawn is the conditions of being questioned and of explaining. This belongs to Paper 6.

Z8 Toward its internal subjects, an institution holds to anti-colonization and strives for cultivation; it itself remains open to questioning.

Where This Paper Stops

This paper has proved only these things: to whom the sentences of this series are addressed, where they come from, on what premise they stand, how they take hold, and where the interior is drawn; and why the criteria upstream set for persons can be used on the acts of a construct, and what must be carried along when they are.

It has not proved how an institution is possible; that is F6's work. Nor has it proved the particular content of any ought: how not crossing the line is judged is written in Paper 2; guarding the line, Paper 3; conditions, Paper 4; between persons, Paper 5; openness to questioning, Paper 6. How one person is to treat another it does not write; that is the work of the Critiques. Still less does it write how to achieve them, or whether they can be achieved; that is the work of specific theories of institutions, such as the Theory of Government or a theory of the firm.

That mill and that river will be used again in the papers that follow.

The Ten Propositions of This Paper