Commitment
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Commitment is foundational to Relation Theory. This paper establishes how it binds a person, and how it does not.
Commitment does not bind exit, and it does not sign for tomorrow. It binds a person in two places, and neither rests on locking tomorrow: on my side, it rests on where I stand, and as long as I still stand where I promised, there are things I cannot cancel; on the other party's side, it rests on the effects already left. Leaving is entered on the books, and revising keeps the books on the change; a commitment already made to others is not cleared from the books by one act of leaving. Structurally, no relation can lock tomorrow.
Commitment is entered as three things: what was promised, in word and deed; where one stands, and revising; the effects left. A commitment that concerns only oneself is kept apart from a commitment to others: for the former, a change made tomorrow with the books kept on it completes a revision or an exit; for the latter, one's own change or leaving does not clear the books on the other party's side. Commitment does not turn into a duty to the other party. That tomorrow cannot be locked lies in the layer of qualification, and is necessary; locking lies in the layer of running, and is possible; where tomorrow is locked in running, what is violated is the exit right (its basic component), which is a person's basic right. Locks are read by structure: words that only characterize exit slide in the direction of colonization; raising the cost of exit outward while the way is still passable carries the direction of colonization; short of trapping, neither of these is yet a lock; only what seals off exit itself, by whatever means, is locking. Breach of faith is entered apart: dropping and falsity are first-person matters, and from outside only non-fulfillment, obstruction and joint revision of the agreement are reported. A commitment of today to tomorrow that is marked as one tomorrow can avow anew, and whose revising and exit are actually reachable, does not fall into locking.
An implicit commitment is still avowal on my side and where I stand, only not said out loud; it cannot be inferred from duration or habit alone, nor decided on my behalf by someone else, but it can be described fallibly. Stability means only that a stretch of dealings is maintained over time; it carries no evaluation, and it is read party by party; the side maintained only by lock, cost, stalling or habit that has been surreptitiously swapped is where structural instability lies. This paper gives no norms of planning rationality and no list of duties to keep commitments.
Introduction
Commitment is foundational to Relation Theory, and giving it a paper of its own is not only reasonable but important. Some relations really do not need commitment, but long-term stable relations, for the most part, carry an implicit commitment. What is said here is stable, not good: Relation Theory speaks of structure, not of good and bad, or good and evil. Between a reader and an author, neither has promised the other anything; between two old friends, in twenty years neither has said a single "I promise you," and yet a commitment may long have been there.
What this paper has to answer is a question that looks self-contradictory. Commitment does not bind exit; the exit right (its basic component) cannot be taken away; so it is necessary that commitment cannot lock tomorrow. Yet what one has promised does bind. If it cannot lock tomorrow, by what does it bind? If it binds, why can it not lock?
Upstream has already prepared both halves of the answer. The Second Critique, Chapter Five §2, says by what a person's own choice binds him: "It rests on where one stands." The Conflict Treatise and Action Theory give what remains after one leaves. This paper puts the two halves together, and applies them to promises between persons, and also to today's promises to tomorrow.
The whole paper uses one example, of two old friends. When they were young, Lao Lin and Lao Xu shared a rented room; later each married and had a household of his own, and for twenty years they ate a meal together on the first Saturday of every month. No one ever said this was an agreement. One year Lao Xu's father was in hospital, and Lao Lin said: "This month I'll take meals to the hospital for you every day." So Lao Xu filled that month with shifts. Another year, Lao Lin told himself he would quit smoking, and he told Lao Xu as well. Later still, Lao Xu moved to another city, and phoned to say: "From now on I might not be able to make that dinner."
§1 By What a Commitment Binds
H23 Commitment does not bind exit, and it does not sign for tomorrow. It binds a person in two places, and neither rests on locking tomorrow: on my side, it rests on where I stand; on the other party's side, on the effects already left. Leaving is entered on the books, and revising keeps the books on the change; a commitment already made to others is not cleared from the books by one act of leaving
At the moment Lao Lin said "This month I'll take meals to the hospital for you every day," Lao Xu had not yet had time to arrange his shifts. Does this sentence bind Lao Lin? It does. By what?
Where one stands. What this paper calls where one stands is taken from the Second Critique, Chapter Five §2. There it says by what a person's own law binds him: "It rests on where one stands." "To adopt is to have taken up a position: not doubting that others are ends." "As long as he still stands here — still actually holds the premise, not merely says so — those things he cannot cancel. A single obstruction, or a single failure to manage it, does not by itself show that he has withdrawn the premise (Action Theory, D5)." This is not a psychological inability to act: "not because they cannot be done, but because, once they are done, the two statements, that he stands here and that he cancels this, cannot sit together in one person".
One can leave. In the same place: "he can leave in a given matter, but the leaving goes on the books: that matter is entered in his own books and cannot be treated as though he had never stood".
Tomorrow is not locked. "The law binds the person who stands here today; it does not sign for the person of tomorrow — tomorrow he may revise. But revising is not dropping"; "Revising keeps the books: what the old law was and why it changed, he says plainly himself. Dropping is quietly setting it down when it suits, with no account kept."
Coming to commitment. "Three things are entered apart: leaving in one matter; revising the whole law; still holding the law and not managing it this time. A commitment already made to others is not written off by one act of leaving." The Second Critique, Appendix Three §4, gives the formal explanation: keep where one stands as the antecedent, and cannot-be-cancelled and can-leave hold at once, "in the states where one stands, no cancelling; in the states where one has left, cancelling is possible".
This paper's core propositions are set up on these sentences. That commitment does not bind exit answers to "he can leave"; that it cannot lock tomorrow answers to "it does not sign for the person of tomorrow"; that exit does not settle the effects it has left answers to "is not written off by one act of leaving".
Why there must be the side of where one stands. To put commitment's binding only on the effects already left is too light. Go back to the moment Lao Lin promised: if commitment bound a person only through the effects it leaves, the promise at that moment would bind nothing at all. But the one who promises knows himself that it is not so: as long as he still stands where he promised, there are things he cannot cancel, even if the other party has arranged nothing yet. The side added here is where one stands.
What this step borrows must be stated. In the Second Critique, where one stands means, in its own sense, the position one stands in after adopting non dubito. The half about the books is one the Second Critique itself extends to commitment: "A commitment already made to others is not written off by one act of leaving"; this paper uses it as it stands. The half about what cannot be cancelled reads, in the original, "As long as he still stands here ... those things he cannot cancel," and is limited there: "Where the binding stops is then plain: where he stands." To apply it to the place where one has promised, that is, to say that as long as I still stand there, what I promised enters later judgment as a cannot-not already in place, is this series' own carrying-over (own undertaking; see the Introduction to Paper 1). On Action Theory's side there is ground for it. Action Theory Paper 1, D3: "When two lines drawn on one matter collide, the one not followed is not cancelled by that, nor is 'there was no choice' used to sign for it after the fact." The example in Action Theory Paper 6, §3: "That afternoon he had already promised another colleague, and there was time for only one of the two." The thing promised is not treated as never promised because a later thing is more urgent.
H24 Commitment is entered as three things: what was promised, in word and deed; where one stands, and revising; the effects left
What was promised, in word and deed. What was said can be checked, and others can register it. That others cannot avow on my behalf does not mean that what I said is gone once I privately deny it. A false commitment is also read here: at the time of promising, one never stood there.
Where one stands, and revising. Whether I still stand where I promised. Leaving in one matter, revising the whole and continuing to stand there while not managing it this time are entered apart, as three things.
The effects left. The arrangements, reliance and expectations the other party makes on the strength of the commitment. Lao Xu's filling that month with shifts was an arrangement made on the strength of Lao Lin's sentence. The Conflict Treatise §2: "Departure can happen; departure does not by itself close those accounts"; Action Theory Paper 7, D41: exit does not delete recognition; the first half of Action Theory Paper 8, D49: "What a person has done himself cannot be acknowledged by someone else in his place"; Meaning Theory P1 Y12 lists "an unsettled commitment" among the items that can still enter the field of reasons. Exit does not settle it; nor does it automatically become the demand "You must stay." Not being settled does not mean having to resume contact, having to answer without limit or having to repair.
Rights Theory P5 F20 has, on the side of basic rights, a piece of corroboration of the same form: a withdrawal where there is neither a hand laid nor an embedded position "registers on no gradation within the structure of rights — which is not to say it weighs nothing, but that its weight does not lie in this register of readings." This series reads the effects that exit does not settle as this weight: it does not lie in the readings of rights; it lies in the dealings Relation Theory reads.
H25 A commitment that concerns only oneself and a commitment to others are kept apart: for one that concerns only oneself, a change made tomorrow with the books kept on it completes a revision or an exit; where the promise has been made to another, or has entered his conditions of occurrence as a promise to him, one's own change or leaving does not clear the books on the other party's side
Of the three entries, the first two are there for both kinds of commitment; the third is there only for a commitment where the promise has been made to another, or has entered his conditions of occurrence as a promise to him. The latter of these is the case where the other party arranges things on the strength of the promise, as with the dinner on the first Saturday of each month, if it is an implicit commitment (H29). When a plan that concerns only oneself is told to another, what enters his conditions of occurrence is the effect of that telling, not a promise to him, and it is not included. This delimitation is one this series takes on itself (own undertaking). How merely telling another of one's plan is read, see the example of quitting smoking below.
Today toward tomorrow, a commitment that concerns only oneself binds by where one stands, and by the conditions today leaves to tomorrow. A change made tomorrow with the books kept on it completes a revision or an exit. Action Theory Paper 4, D22: "interrupting is not giving up, changing is not betraying"; the Second Critique, Chapter Five §2: "tomorrow he may revise. But revising is not dropping". Here nothing is left on the books of another party's side; leaving is still entered on one's own books.
Where the promise has been made to another, or has entered his conditions of occurrence as a promise to him, one's own change or leaving does not clear the books on the other party's side. Releasing tomorrow's self, given as a reason, is not enough to erase a commitment that involves others. Lao Lin's telling himself he would quit smoking is of the first kind. He also told Lao Xu. By Paper 1, H1, once Lao Xu heard it, that sentence had already entered Lao Xu's conditions of occurrence; it is an effect and is entered as one, only thin: Lao Xu learned that he meant to quit. From then on Lao Xu no longer offered him cigarettes, and this effect thickened by a layer. But to Lao Xu that sentence was only something told: an intention, not a commitment. So it does not count as a promise made to another; when Lao Lin later changed his mind, what he has to own toward Lao Xu's side is only that Lao Xu once knew of it, and the arrangements Lao Xu made on that basis. The quitting Lao Lin set himself is still a commitment that concerns only himself. What entered Lao Xu's conditions of occurrence is the effect of that telling, entered by H1; it does not move this commitment, which concerns only Lao Lin, into the second kind, and what has to be owned on Lao Xu's side comes from this effect, not from an account this commitment keeps on Lao Xu's side. This division, and the general sentence drawn from this example, that merely telling another of one's plan is, to that person, an intention and not a commitment, are both steps this series takes on itself (own undertaking). His promise to bring the meals for a month is of the second kind: Lao Xu's shifts had already been arranged on it.
§2 It Does Not Bind Exit
H26 Commitment cannot lock tomorrow: that it cannot lock lies in the layer of qualification, and is necessary; locking lies in the layer of running, and is possible; where tomorrow is locked in running, what is violated is the exit right, which is a person's basic right; it is precisely the layer of running that Relation Theory has to read
The layer of qualification. Meaning Theory P1 Y4, the second feature: "the structural positions of avowal, revision and exit still belong to that bearer. Running can be obstructed; the position is not taken away from outside." The fourth: "An earlier position cannot seal off a later one". Nor does today sign for tomorrow. So it is necessary that tomorrow cannot be locked.
The layer of running. Tomorrow can be put out of reach. The cost of exit can be raised until it is little different from being locked; Economics P2 §5.1: "Exit costs can be high enough to be practically equivalent to lock-in". Cost here is taken in Economics P2's sense, and includes consequences such as the risk of retaliation; it does not correspond to what the Second Critique calls cost: Second Critique, Chapter Two, writes "Cost is not consequence." Exit can also be compressed by what the Conflict Treatise §5 calls asymmetric operations.
How the cost was raised must be divided into inward and outward. If I withdraw my own side, and the cost of his leaving rises as a result, that carries no direction of colonization; if I act outward so that the cost of his leaving, of saying no or of seeking help rises, that carries the direction of colonization (Paper 1, H8); raised to the point of sealing off his exit itself, it is, at the layer of basic rights, a violation besides. Rights Theory P5 F21: "a constraint may set the conditions of a standing bond, but it may not seal exit, refusal, and revocation themselves — P4 fixed the self-determination floor of Exit Rights on the basic layer." A commitment can set continuing conditions; that is the side of it that acts. It cannot seal off exit itself.
Locking violates the exit right. Once exit is locked, the exit right is violated: the exit right here (its basic component) is a person's basic right. What is done to exit at the layer of running is therefore read as three kinds, divided by structure, not by means. The first is a characterization spoken aloud: "You promised, so you're not allowed to leave"; "Leaving is betrayal." This hangs a qualifying condition on the commitment and characterizes exit on the other party's behalf; it slides in the direction of colonization (Paper 4, H37; Paper 6, H57). Whether it has taken hold depends on whether this characterization has occupied, in him, the step at which he himself should judge this exit (Paper 1, H8); where he, reconsidering for himself, comes to accept the same evaluation, sameness of content alone does not make this direction one that has taken hold; where the two cannot be told apart from outside, the reading stops at undetermined, as in Paper 1, H8, and how he himself understands it needs the first person. The second is raising the cost of exit outward while the way is still passable: calling on others to isolate him, adding consequences; this carries the direction of colonization (Paper 1, H8). The third is sealing off exit itself, by whatever means: holding back his papers, cutting off all his contact with the outside, shutting him in or raising the cost until he is trapped. Only this is locking: at the layer of basic rights it is a violation, and it also carries the direction of colonization; the two lines are both present (Paper 1, H9). The first two, short of trapping him, are not yet a lock: exit is still within reach, and the way is still passable, only hard to travel; where the cost is raised until he actually cannot leave, it falls under the third. The third looks only at whether exit has been structurally sealed off. Words that only characterize exit, "Leaving is betrayal," are the first kind; while exit is still actually passable, if he from then on lets this characterization stand in for his own judgment of whether to leave, the first kind has taken hold; merely not having left does not by itself show this. Words that announce consequences, "If you leave, I'll make sure you can't keep working in this line," raise the cost outward; once spoken they are already the second kind, without waiting to be carried out; where the consequences are structurally so great that he actually cannot leave, it falls under the third, and what is looked at is whether the consequences can be carried out and how great they are, not how afraid he is. Fear by itself does not show that exit has been sealed off. Violation is read by structure: what is sealed off is a violation, regardless of how the other party later understands it, and regardless of the means used; whether the first two kinds have taken hold depends on the other party. Nor is sealing off exit the only kind of violation at the layer of basic rights: a single concrete exercise being blocked can also be a violation (Rights Theory P5 F20; Paper 1, H9). The division into three kinds is one this series takes on itself (own undertaking). How Is Institution Possible (Foundational Paper 6; cited as F6), Appendix D, item 7(a), is a working demonstration: "A relationship maintained by 'cannot leave' is not co-construction; it is captivity."
The exit right. When this series speaks of exit, and writes that the position of exit is not taken away from outside, nor sealed off by one's earlier self, it uses Meaning Theory's "position." The words "the exit right" are taken in the sense of basic rights. Rights Theory P4 F18 establishes the exit right as a hinge right, straddling the basic and the recognition sides: "Its basic component is the self-determining floor of not being trapped, not being engulfed by a closing relation, on the Dao spine; its recognition component is the exit channel the subject holds in some identifiable relational or institutional position." The same item of F18 goes on: "Without such a registered or recognized relational position there may be flight, refusal, or slipping free, but no exit right in the strict sense." The dealings Relation Theory reads may have no registered position at all. This series does not read recognition-based rights (Paper 1, H11); the exit right it speaks of means only F18's basic component, the self-determining floor of not being trapped, together with Rights Theory P5 F21's "it may not seal exit, refusal, and revocation themselves"; the exit right in the strict sense that F18 speaks of includes the recognition component, and this series does not read it. The section in which F18 stands (§V) first sets the exit right apart from flight and refusal: "Flight is slipping out of a stretch of oppression or a bind, not presupposing a recognized membership position; refusal is not entering some relation or not accepting some channel — this is the refusal P1 F5 gave on the Dao spine; whereas an exit right is the withdrawal of one's participation from a registered, identifiable, attributable relational or institutional position." When this series speaks of exit, it follows the usage of the Conflict Treatise, Action Theory and the Second Critique: withdrawing one's own side, no longer lending one's strength, presupposing no registered position; in dealings with no registered position, this falls, in F18's division, at the level of flight, refusal or slipping free. Within a relation there is no talk of a "right": exit in Relation Theory is this act, and is not treated as a right; the exit right (its basic component) appears only where violation is discussed, and what it guards is the self-determining floor of not being trapped that lies beneath this act, not the right of withdrawing from a registered position. This does not alter F18; Relation Theory does not discuss power or recognition-based rights, and so takes only the basic component. When exit is locked, it is precisely this component that is violated. Within the self-relation there is no talk of violation: where a person, by a vow, makes the step of his own revision actually unreachable in running, this is read as locking (Paper 2, H18, H19).
In what manner one leaves at exit is not governed by commitment. The Conflict Treatise §12 sorts leaving into "at least four" kinds; leaving under another name without facing the matter is avoidance. That is a first-person constraint on a person as he leaves, not something commitment places on him.
H27 Commitment does not turn into a duty to the other party; it binds a person by where I myself stand and by the effects already left, not by my owing the other party something
Once there is a duty, exit can no longer be spoken of. Rights Theory Paper 0, M1: "SAE Rights Theory has no concept of a duty toward others; it has only one inward duty, the subject's answerability to its own law". The Introduction to On Accountability: "What is called a duty toward others is the pushing-outward of a subject's inner law into a demand upon other people; that is ethics, structurally an overreach, and it is deleted." The Second Critique, Chapter Five §2, also writes that "this book does not discuss the lateral ought"; the same section has another sentence of the same form: "the duty faces inward, and its content concerns others; others cannot use it to make claims on me". The latter sentence, in the original, speaks of the normative validity of cultivation, not of commitment; here it serves only as corroboration of the same form.
So the sentence "You owe me a month of meals" does not make sense structurally. What Lao Xu can say is: you promised to take my father his meals every day, and I arranged my shifts on it. The first sentence reads commitment as a duty; the second speaks of what was promised, in word and deed, and of the effects left, and both of these are true. That commitment does not turn into a duty is not to be read as commitment having no binding force, or as breach of faith not needing to be entered on the books: the binding force lies in where one stands and in the effects left, and breach of faith is entered on the books all the same (H28).
§3 Breach of Faith
H28 Breach of faith is entered apart, as dropping, falsity, non-fulfillment, obstruction and joint revision of the agreement; dropping and falsity are first-person matters, and from outside only non-fulfillment, obstruction and joint revision of the agreement are reported, together with traces
Since commitment does not turn into a duty, breach of faith on my side, of the kind that comes after the promise, is dropping: "Dropping is quietly setting it down when it suits, with no account kept" (Second Critique, Chapter Five §2). It is kept apart from a change made with the books kept, and kept apart from leaving in one matter too. A false commitment is one where, at the time of promising, one never stood there; it falls under the entry of what was promised, in word and deed.
To describe a breach of faith, first check what was promised, its conditions and the words and deeds that followed; then sort it into non-fulfillment, obstruction, joint revision of the agreement, dropping and falsity. One day Lao Lin did not go with the meals. Was he ill himself that day (obstruction), had the two of them agreed that someone else would go that day (joint revision of the agreement), or did he simply not go (non-fulfillment)? What dropping and falsity have to ask is whether he keeps the books on it, and whether he stood there when he promised; both of these lie with him.
So the third person has an upper bound. From outside, only non-fulfillment, obstruction and joint revision of the agreement are reported, together with visible traces; dropping and falsity are given only fallible descriptions, read by the Conflict Treatise's three registers, and are not pronounced as verdicts. Falsity or dropping is not inferred from one non-fulfillment: "A single obstruction, or a single failure to manage it, does not by itself show that he has withdrawn the premise". Nor is one matter hardened into a person's character. The Conflict Treatise §14 and §23 say that the ending of a relation passes no final judgment on the person; still less does one breach of faith.
§4 Expectation and Implicit Commitment
H29 A commitment is my placing an expectation with the other party; expectation can also grow without passing through me. An implicit commitment is still avowal on my side and where I stand, only not said out loud: it cannot be inferred from duration or habit alone, nor decided on my behalf by someone else; a tacit understanding can be spoken of, fallibly
Commitment and expectation. Expectation has already been defined in Paper 1, H10: what one party, on the strength of dealings, arranges on his own side and points at the other party's later conduct. Expectation can grow without passing through me; a commitment is my placing that expectation there. That I give someone an expectation does not mean that I have promised him anything; if I have promised and the other party has not yet had time to arrange anything on it, the promise still has weight on my side (where one stands, H23). One avenue by which expectation comes is one-sided understanding; the Conflict Treatise §22: "That I have understood why they are like this does not mean they have agreed to my understanding, still less that the matter is thereby settled."
Implicit commitment. About the dinner on the first Saturday of each month, in twenty years no one said a word. Yet it can be a commitment: an implicit commitment is still avowal on my side and where I stand, only not said out loud, and it can grow slowly. Value Theory P2 V20 writes that some avowals "form gradually and settle only after years"; P4 V46, restating it, says "P2 has established". In long-term relations a commitment can be carried along by habit; this side can be read through the first half of Action Theory Paper 4, D20: "a law is held in place by habit".
The guard line. An implicit commitment cannot be inferred from duration or habit alone, nor decided on my behalf by someone else. Value Theory P2 V20: "A liking that has persisted thirty years without ever being claimed remains a persistent preference"; P4 V46: "However long it runs, accumulation does not bring a content into a position it has not gained in constitution." Meaning Theory P1 Y2: "An outsider's attribution of a name to him, where he never took it as his own, does not enter this first-person ledger on the strength of that naming".
"You've been like this for so many years, so it's as good as a promise to me": this sentence can be taken apart. The half about whether it was taken up, whether in his heart he promised, cannot be inferred; the half about effects, the arrangements and the reliance these years have left in the other's life, is real, and exit does not settle it. Lao Xu phones to say he might not be able to come anymore; what that monthly meal over twenty years has left in Lao Lin's life does not vanish with one phone call; whether Lao Xu, back then, promised in his heart, Lao Lin cannot infer.
A tacit understanding can be spoken of. The guard line blocks completing a certification, or an avowal on someone's behalf, directly from traces; it does not block fallible description and grounded inference. Avowal "does not require the bearer to say I avow this," and value contents can be "embodied and tacit" (Value Theory P2 V20). Repeated words and deeds, how deviations are handled, how things are renegotiated: all of these are material. What can be said is written in a visible form: how arrangements have grown to fit the other party, how a deviation is caught when it appears. One year Lao Lin had to go away on business at short notice; Lao Xu said not a word of complaint, and the next month he was waiting at the same restaurant as usual; this is visible. What cannot be said comes down to two sentences only: "All these years, so you promised"; "I'm deciding on your behalf that you promised."
Made anew each day. F6 Appendix D, item 8(e), is a working demonstration: "We can only make commitments based on who we are now, and then choose, every day in the future, to honor that commitment. Marriage is not one promise; it is the same promise made anew each day." This paper reads it as follows: whoever stands there on any given day is the person of today; fulfillment must finally be done by the person now. It is not read as a commitment lapsing every day and being made over every day. This item comes from the marriage principles, and this paper takes from it only the layer that does not vary with the kind of relation. At the value layer there is a piece of corroboration of the same form, Value Theory P2 V20: "A value content already avowed does not vanish on the instant through sleep, anaesthesia, unconsciousness, or other temporary incapacity. What persists is not the act of avowal, which need not run continuously; what persists is the first-person belonging and that position of revision." Being asleep, having not thought of it for a while, having made no fresh declaration this time: none of these by itself cancels what was undertaken before.
§5 Stability
H30 Stability means only that a stretch of dealings is maintained over time, and carries no evaluation; it is read party by party: the question is not whether this relation has grounds, but, for each side, whether his staying in these dealings has grounds in his own law
Because this paper speaks of structure and not of good and bad, good and evil, it uses "stable," not "good." Upstream, the same word appears in several places, with different uses: F6's stability of institutions; Meaning Theory P1 Y12, "do not require ... a stable center"; the Conflict Treatise §26, as evidence, "whether they are stable"; F6 Appendix D, item 6(b), is an evaluative use, "Do not suppress your own development for the sake of relational 'stability.' Stability achieved through suppression is false." This paper does not take that evaluative layer. A sentence of Value Theory P4 V54 can be used as it stands: "Stability proves nothing either. A content that has not moved in ten years may be a position standing open with nothing he has wanted to change, or a position locked with nothing he can change."
Read party by party. Each side keeps an account of its own; the question is not whether "this relation" has grounds but, for each side, whether his staying in these dealings has grounds in his own law.
Having grounds comes in two kinds. One is commitment, explicit or implicit, which rests on where one stands. The other is choosing for oneself, each time, to stay, without having promised anything. Earlier it was said that long-term stable relations, for the most part, carry an implicit commitment; the "for the most part" here leaves room precisely for the second kind. Stability is not used to prove that there is an implicit commitment, and implicit commitment is not used to explain all stability; the two do not testify for each other.
Four cells. Dealings that both sides actually take part in maintaining, read party by party, can fall into four cells: each side has grounds; only one side has grounds, while the other stays only by lock, cost, stalling or habit that has been surreptitiously swapped; both sides are maintained only by conditions; the material is insufficient and no judgment can be made. The fourth cell is written party by party, stating which side, and which item of material, is missing; insufficient third-person material is no reason to declare that neither side has grounds. Having grounds and being under a lock can coexist: the first cell does not prove that all channels are open.
A side that takes no part in maintaining these dealings does not enter the four cells. In a one-way relation, only the maintaining side is read: the party-by-party half applies as before, and the four cells do not; for one-way effects, it is recorded separately which condition has kept entering, when it changed and on what material. The reader's relation to the author is one-way; on the reader's side one can ask whether there are grounds, while on the author's side nothing is being maintained.
Knowing. A relation in which both know is of course more stable: this is a view. This paper does not use it as a premise of derivation, nor as a hypothesis awaiting test; any use of it is left to be argued for some particular kind of relation. Knowing is another matter: the four cells are divided by whether each side has grounds for maintaining, not by who knows what; which side knows what is stated case by case. F6 Appendix D, item 7(b): "Knowing the other can leave at any time but chooses to stay—this carries infinitely more meaning than 'the other cannot leave, so they stay.'" Laughter IV §7.2 adds a further bar: "Mutual knowledge does not yield mutual non dubito."
H31 Structural instability: for a given party, his staying in these dealings has no grounds in his own law and is maintained only by such conditions as lock, cost, stalling or habit that has been surreptitiously swapped, while what has not been settled underneath is still there; it falls on the side that stays only by conditions
Does everything that stays by being locked, by being stalled or by habit count as structural instability? This paper defines it as above, and narrows it at two points.
One is habit. Action Theory Paper 4, D20: "a law is held in place by habit, and is also swapped out within habit". The first side has grounds; only the second rests on conditions alone. So this paper narrows "habit" to habit that has been surreptitiously swapped.
The other is stalling. The Conflict Treatise §14 writes that stalling is "the substitution of a standing condition for conflict," "becoming the background hum under everything else in the house." The incompatibility has not been settled; the Conflict Treatise §6: "The incompatibility has not been closed out by avoidance. It remains in the shared field."
Structural instability falls on the side that stays only by conditions; where both sides are like this, the whole of the dealings is.
It is not a prediction that the relation will break up. F6 v3 does not inherit "the inevitable-collapse reading of 'closed constructs accumulate remainder, and remainder will eventually tear the construct apart'," and withdraws "Accumulating remainder until collapse"; the Conflict Treatise §6 also writes: "Nothing here predicts that the consequences are necessarily worse." Nor is it a moral accusation against either party. To say "He's keeping you with a lock" is to swap a structural reading for a verdict; this paper says only what that side stays by. From outside, several of the cells all look "stable"; they are read by the three registers.
§6 Today's Commitment to Tomorrow: How Locking Is Read
H32 A commitment marked as a present arrangement that tomorrow can avow anew, with revising and exit actually reachable, does not fall into locking; one actually used as an irrefutable final ground that seals revision, or one that actually seals revising and exit, falls into locking
Whether today's commitment to tomorrow has locked tomorrow in running can be read by borrowing the shape of Value Theory P3 V38. What V38 establishes is pre-occupation at subjects-to-be; its original object is the subject-to-be whose first person has not yet come to run of itself, and its main use lies in the theory of parent and child; here only its shape is borrowed, to read the locking of an adult's tomorrow by his today, and the main anchors are the fourth feature of Meaning Theory P1 Y4 and the Conflict Treatise §9. Of the three signals below, the first fails here, the third points to the same thing as Y4's fourth feature, and only the second is actually borrowed; Value Theory P3 V33 serves only as corroboration at the value layer.
Carried over to today and tomorrow, V38's three signals come out differently.
First, "whether there is an arrangement transferring the authority to interpret as the first-person position matures." This one fails here: today and tomorrow are not guardian and ward, and the later position does not depend on today to confer its qualification. Whether the later person can actually reopen, revise or exit is just the running reading of Y4's fourth feature, and it belongs there.
Second, "whether the refusals, deviations, and restructurings that a subject-to-be gradually produces can really alter that arrangement, or are read uniformly as not yet understanding." This one carries over: remove the antecedent "not yet understanding," and ask instead whether tomorrow's deviations can really alter today's arrangement, or are read uniformly as weakness or as losing one's ground. The reading falls on the first half; the second half is what it looks like when tomorrow's step of revision has been voided in advance. A single instance of first being read as weakness is only pressure, and does not reach locking; Value Theory P3 V33: "Harmful is not the same as locking. A narrowing, a pressure, an unpleasant action which has not reached that threshold falls in the third class and has its own place."
Third, "whether the present configuration is marked as a present arrangement open to revision, or as a final content irrefutable in future." This points to the same thing as Y4's fourth feature and is not borrowed separately; and it is only a necessary reading: being marked revisable on paper does not exclude revising being actually out of reach, and it must be checked together with whether revising and exit are actually reachable.
What can be read out is only locking, not the colonization of V38's branch. V38 belongs to the external branch, and one and the same bearer's today toward his tomorrow is not external; V38 also states: "In a domain where the first-person position has not yet come to run of itself, self-colonization is undefined." Where an external warrant occupies the constitutive position, self-colonization at the value layer is read separately, by V36 (Paper 2, H19).
Take Lao Lin's sentence about quitting smoking. If he treats it as an arrangement that tomorrow can avow anew, so that when he wants a cigarette tomorrow he can still ask himself "Do I still want to keep to this?", it does not fall into locking. If he writes it as an irrefutable final word, so that every time he wants to change it he himself overrules it on the spot with "I said so," and the step of changing it is never truly reachable, then at that point it falls into locking. If each wish to change is merely first read by himself as weakness, while the step of changing is still reachable, that is pressure, and it does not fall into locking.
§7 Boundaries
This paper gives no norms of planning rationality (Action Theory Paper 0, §8). Contracts, accountability, the framework commitment in the body of F6, and the part of commitment that enters between persons and constructs are not in this series; commitment does not turn into a duty (H27).
Vows such as "Faithful unto death" or "I will never leave you" are read as expression and as where one stands; they do not sign for tomorrow. Two cases must be read apart. Where such a vow is treated as something that seals one's own revision in running, that is the self-relation: it falls into locking, and there is no talk of violation. Where the other party turns it against my exit, that is between persons: to use it to say "You swore, so you're not allowed to leave" slides in the direction of colonization; to use it to raise outward the cost of my leaving carries the direction of colonization; where exit has been sealed off, by whatever means, it is a violation at the layer of basic rights (H26).
This paper does not prove a list of duties to keep commitments; it does not prove that the more commitments there are, the more stable the relation; it does not prove that a relation without commitment is not a relation; it does not prove that having promised, one cannot leave.
§8 Drawing Together and Downstream
This paper has established ten propositions (H23 to H32). Taken together, they say: commitment binds a person in two places, on my side by where I stand and on the other party's side by the effects left, and in neither place does it lock tomorrow; three things are entered apart; what concerns only oneself and what concerns others are entered apart; that tomorrow cannot be locked lies in the layer of qualification, and locking lies in the layer of running; once locked, what is violated is the exit right, which is a basic right; locks are read by structure, and sealing off exit itself is locking whatever the means; commitment does not turn into a duty; of a breach of faith, only the visible kinds are reported from outside; implicit commitment is still avowal and where one stands, is not inferred from duration and can be spoken of fallibly; stability is read party by party, and structural instability falls on the side that stays only by conditions; a commitment of today to tomorrow that is marked as one that can be avowed anew, with revising and exit actually reachable, does not fall into locking.
Downstream. How expectation grows out of dealings, and how it is rewritten, belongs to Paper 4. How the cells of stability sediment over time, and how one cell becomes another, belongs to Paper 5. What continues after exit, and repair and ending, belong to Paper 6.
References
All SAE works below are cited by concept DOI, which always resolves to the latest version. Quotations are checked item by item in the accompanying audit table.
I · Works directly cited in this paper
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 1: What a Relation Is, and What It Is Not [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545047
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 2: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23541778
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 4: Dealings and Expectation [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545057
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 6: Asymmetry, Divergence and Ending [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545087
Qin, H. (2026). SAE: The Second Critique [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23250387
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Conflict Treatise: How Subjecthood Is Not Swallowed by Conflict Itself [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22313628
Qin, H. (2026). The Place of Judgment (SAE Action Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22974154
Qin, H. (2026). Not Doing and Cannot-Not-Doing (SAE Action Theory, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970752
Qin, H. (2026). Can and Cannot (SAE Action Theory, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970769
Qin, H. (2026). Not Legislating for Others (SAE Action Theory, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970777
Qin, H. (2026). Living by One's Law in Mixed Reality (SAE Action Theory, Paper 7) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970781
Qin, H. (2026). Finding One Another (SAE Action Theory, Paper 8) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970783
Qin, H. (2026). What Kind of Relation Meaning Is (SAE Meaning Theory, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22652134
Qin, H. (2026). On the Occurrence and Recognition of Value (SAE Value Theory, Paper 2) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21437038
Qin, H. (2026). On the Colonization of Value (SAE Value Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21611154
Qin, H. (2026). On the Dynamics of Value (SAE Value Theory, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22050204
Qin, H. (2026). The Interface and Transformation between Recognition-Based Rights and Power (SAE Rights Theory, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21093939
Qin, H. (2026). On the Limitation and Violation of Basic Rights (SAE Rights Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21212595
Qin, H. (2026). On How Rights Presuppose No Duty (SAE Rights Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21285136
Qin, H. (2026). On Accountability · Wei (SAE Rights Theory, Specialist Paper) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22853810
Qin, H. (2026). The Other End of the Bridge: Economic Rationality When 15DD Faces a Party Who Does Not Enter 15DD (SAE Economics, Paper 2) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19381666
Qin, H. (2026). How Is Institution Possible: From Inter-Ontological Remainder to Co-Constructive Framework (SAE Foundational Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19328662
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Laughter · IV: The Laughter of Despair and the Knowing Smile [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23287669
Interfaces
- Main upstream: the Second Critique, Chapter Five §2 and Appendix Three §4 (where one stands; not signing for tomorrow, leaving entered on the books); the Conflict Treatise (§9, §12, §14, §22).
- Also used: the Second Critique, Chapter Two; Action Theory Paper 0 (§8), Paper 1 (D3), Paper 4 (D20, D22), Paper 6, Paper 7 (D41) and Paper 8 (D49); Meaning Theory P1 (Y2, Y4, Y12); Value Theory P2 (V20), P3 (V33, V38), P4 (V46, V54); Rights Theory Paper 0 (M1), P4 (F18), P5 (F20, F21); F6 Appendix D; Economics P2; Laughter IV (§7.2); On Accountability.
- This series: Paper 1 (H1, H8, H9, H10); Paper 4 takes up how expectation grows out of dealings; Paper 5 takes up how the cells of stability sediment; Paper 6 takes up what continues after exit.