Dealings and Expectation
来往与期待
This paper reads two things in dealings: response, and expectation.
The other party's response is material, not a settling of the account. It enters my conditions of occurrence and becomes material for the next expectation; the mere fact that a response has occurred settles nothing, and does not certify that the other party has avowed anything; a checkable promise made within a response is read separately, by Paper 3. Expectation grows out of repeated dealings and sediments into a construct that one party arranges on his own side, directed at the other party's later conduct; it changes the conditions of what can later be said and done, yet it does not bring it about that the person of whom it is expected has avowed anything. Expectation is for now classed neither as duty nor as accountability; it has two exits from that slot: the person of whom it is expected takes it on in his own law, or it becomes a role requirement explicitly arranged by both parties and maintained by relational power. Expectation alone does not establish, in reverse, that either of the two holds. Saying an expectation out loud is a form of questioning; to attach a qualifying condition to an expectation, fixing for the other party what something means to him, for instance by hanging it as a criterion on who he is or what he cares about, is to slide in the direction of colonization, and whether that takes hold depends on the other party's later understanding and action. Only where the qualifying condition has become a position, such that no response of the other party can be registered as a refutation, is there a value-layer signature of introjection; the third person speaks only of direction, position and signature. Within a relation, not colonizing is hard.
Mutuality is two one-way recognitions meeting; if they do not meet, each one's share is still there as before. Mutuality is not exchange, nor a state a relation is meant to reach. 16DD is something that happens on an occasion, not a grade that a person or a relation is in; this series takes up its moment, the moment of 16DD: two one-way recognitions meet at one moment, and neither side, by its own anticipation, avows the jolt within the other on the other's behalf. An outward laugh obtained by demand or by prior agreement alone cannot constitute this moment and cannot certify it, nor does it rule out that the moment happens otherwise; what can hold only by treating a third person as material does not count. A 16DD that can hold at any time and in any place, this series only registers; it does not take it up.
Introduction
Paper 1 gave expectation a minimal definition: what one party, on the strength of dealings, arranges on his own side and points at the other party's later conduct; it is a construct left behind. Paper 3 said that a commitment is my placing an expectation with the other party. This paper reads the other half: how expectation grows without passing through a promise, how it changes later conditions, and where it stops.
This paper also reads mutuality. The minimal condition of relation requires only that one side act (Paper 1, H1); one-way is enough. Yet there are also times of mutuality in dealings, and even times when, at some moment, two people each do not doubt the other. What that moment is, which part of it Relation Theory can take up and which part it cannot: this paper has to draw that line clearly.
The whole paper uses two people who write to each other. A woman who taught in a city read an essay about mountain forests and wrote a letter to its author. The author, who guarded the forest in the mountains, wrote a short letter back. For the next seven years the two kept writing to each other. In the first two years she wrote more and he answered less, sometimes only after two months; in the last five years he answered roughly monthly, and his letters grew longer and longer. Little by little she came to look forward to the letter at the start of each month. Once he was three months late, and she wrote: "If you cared about this correspondence, you would answer on time." A year later the two met for the first time, at a small station; on the platform they looked at each other and laughed, and neither said anything. Later still, he wrote that he was being transferred to a forest station farther away, and that there would be fewer letters.
§1 Response
H33 The other party's response is material, not a settling of the account: it enters my conditions of occurrence and becomes material for the next expectation; the mere fact that a response has occurred settles nothing, and does not certify that the other party has avowed anything
Action Theory Paper 0, §6.2: "In this series, the other person's response is material, not a settling of the account." This paper reads that sentence into dealings.
Response is material. A letter from him enters her conditions of occurrence: she reads it, learns that it has snowed where he is, learns that he remembered the book she mentioned in her last letter. From then on these enter into how she writes the next letter and how she waits for the next one. Not responding is material too: two months without a letter enters her conditions of occurrence just the same.
Response is not a settling of the account. The mere fact of receiving a reply settles nothing in her letter; it does not prove that he agreed with what she said in it, nor that he has taken on this correspondence; if the reply makes a checkable promise, that is another matter, read by Paper 3, H24. My having understood him does not mean he has agreed to my understanding; his having answered me does not mean he has promised anything either. 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."
Nor does response certify that the other party has avowed anything. Meaning Theory P3 Y25 sets out the boundaries of support; one of them is that if a relation "declares, on the sole basis of my judgment of success, that the other's constitution has been completed," then at that position it is already no longer support. Its original domain there is relations carried on in the name of support; carried over to here by the same shape (own undertaking; see the Introduction to Paper 1): she cannot, because his replies grow longer, declare on his behalf that this correspondence has become something he himself cares about. That is a matter on his side. Two other sentences point the same way and can be read alongside. At the value layer, Value Theory P4 V46: "However long it runs, accumulation does not bring a content into a position it has not gained in constitution." Conflict Treatise §7: "Long-run relational fact may shift the weight of my judgment; it cannot complete a certification."
§2 How Expectation Grows
H34 Expectation grows out of repeated dealings: response and non-response, on time and not on time, all become material, and sediment into that construct which one party arranges on his own side, directed at the other party's later conduct
Her looking forward to the letter at the start of each month sedimented out of these years of dealings, one letter at a time. In the first year she did not look forward to it; by the third year, if no letter had come at the start of the month, she would go and ask at the post office. This expectation did not pass through anyone's promise: he never said "I'll write to you on the first of every month," and she never had him promise it.
Expectation is on the side of the one who expects. It is a construct on her side, and from then on it enters her own conditions of occurrence: how she arranges the first few days of the month, how she reads a letter that comes late. It can enter his side by way of her words and deeds: she mentions in a letter, "It's the start of the month again," and that line enters his conditions of occurrence.
The difference between expectation and commitment can be seen clearly here. A commitment is my placing an expectation with the other party (Paper 3, H29); an expectation can grow without passing through me. Her looking forward was not put there by him. That he caused an expectation to arise in her does not mean that he promised her anything.
H35 Expectation changes the conditions of what can later be said and done: it enters the conditions of occurrence of the one who expects, and can also enter the other party's conditions of occurrence by way of the words and deeds of the one who expects; the person of whom it is expected has not thereby avowed anything
Once an expectation is there, later dealings go on within its conditions. She looks forward to the letter at the start of the month; he is a month late, and for her that month is no ordinary month; he knows she is waiting, and when he writes, he does not write in the ordinary way either. An expectation has rewritten her later conditions; by way of her words and deeds it can rewrite his as well: some things become hard to say, some things become hard to do, and some things become easier to say.
The person of whom it is expected has not thereby avowed anything. Her looking forward does not mean that he has taken on writing monthly; that in the last five years he wrote roughly monthly does not mean either that he ever took on "one letter a month" in his own law. This is the same thing as Paper 3's guard line on implicit commitment: avowal cannot be inferred from duration and habit (Paper 3, H29). Five years of letters that came roughly on time can be his choosing, each time, to write, without having promised anything.
§3 Expectation, Duty and Accountability
H36 Expectation is for now classed neither as duty nor as accountability; it has two exits from that slot: the person of whom it is expected takes it on in his own law, or it becomes a role requirement explicitly arranged by both parties and maintained by relational power; expectation alone does not establish, in reverse, that either of the first two holds
Paper 1, H10, has already cited the three grounds in How Is Institution Possible (Foundational Paper 6; cited as F6) §3.1(f): what holds in one's own law is duty; a role requirement explicitly arranged by both parties and maintained by relational power is accountability; what is only an expectation of the relation is "for now not forced into either" (rendered from the Chinese page). The third is this paper's object.
That "for now" can be written out as two exits by which expectation leaves the third slot. One: the person of whom it is expected takes it on in his own law. One day he says to himself: I mean to treat this correspondence with care, one letter a month. Then it enters the first kind, and it is a matter between him and himself. The other: it becomes a role requirement explicitly arranged by both parties and maintained by relational power. If the two have said explicitly that he will reply monthly, and this term is also maintained by the power one party holds in these dealings, then replying monthly has become one of his role requirements; that is a reading of accountability, and this series does not judge it.
This paper does not declare that expectation never passes into those two, nor that expectation has no other ground; it pins down one point only: expectation alone does not establish, in reverse, that either of the first two holds. Once an expectation has become accountability, this series acknowledges only the fact that it has become accountability, and does not judge that accountability.
H37 Saying an expectation out loud is a form of questioning; to attach a qualifying condition to an expectation, fixing for the other party what something means to him, for instance by hanging it as a criterion on who he is or what he cares about, is to slide in the direction of colonization, and whether that takes hold depends on the other party's later understanding and action; only where the qualifying condition has become a position, such that no response of the other party can be registered as a refutation, is there at that position a value-layer signature of introjection; the third person speaks only of direction, position and signature, not of what the other party really cares about
"If you cared about this correspondence, you would answer on time." This sentence is not the same as "I'm hoping you'll answer on time." Saying an expectation out loud is no problem; it is a form of questioning. But once a qualifying condition is added, the slide in the direction of colonization begins.
Saying the expectation out loud. "I'm hoping for a letter from you at the start of every month" puts her hope before him: he can answer, can leave it unanswered, can say he cannot manage it. This is a form of questioning, and it does not carry the direction of colonization. Seen from his side, this is precisely the avenue of questioning that a relation provides and that he cannot monopolize (Paper 7, H59).
Attaching a qualifying condition. "If you cared about this correspondence, you would answer on time" has one more condition in it: answering on time has been written as the mark of "caring" itself. If he is not on time, that amounts to not caring; if he says he cares, he has to be on time. The qualifying condition writes an expectation into the criterion of whether he cares, fixing for him what "caring" consists of; so from this sentence on, it slides in the direction of colonization.
What counts as a qualifying condition, this series draws by function, not by topic: whether it fixes for the other party in advance what something means to him, what his conduct counts as, who he is, whether he cares, heading toward occupying the step in which he comes to understand it himself. "If you cared ..., you would ..." and "A real friend would ..." are like this. "If you're late, I'll take it that you don't care" speaks literally of me, but when it is used to announce a criterion to the other party, it is like this too: as soon as he is late, his caring does not count; his lateness has been fixed in advance as the mark of not caring. If it only hands over a fallible reading and asks him to respond, it is read as the feedback described below; the classification is not made by these few words. "The mountain post runs best at the start of the month; that's the best time to write back" and "If you're late, I'll worry" speak of the conditions of the matter and of my situation; they are still saying the expectation out loud. "If you don't want to write any more, just let me know" touches on whether he wants to, yet does not take that as a criterion; it opens a path for him instead, and it too is still saying the expectation out loud. The topic serves only as a hint. Saying how I myself see his conduct, "This letter feels a bit perfunctory," "I feel you don't care much any more," where he can say it is not so and his understanding still counts, is saying the expectation out loud, or candid feedback; only treating a meaning as already fixed on his side, "Being late means you don't care," "You don't care anyway," or making whatever he says afterwards be rewritten into this one meaning, is fixing it for him.
"In advance" means fixing for him, without his coming to understand it himself, what this matter means to him, treating it as already fixed on his side or as the criterion for reading it afterwards, heading toward completing that step for him; the matter can be his conduct, what he has gained, or an exit (Paper 6, H57); it is not divided by whether the words are said before or after the matter or his own understanding. Handing over a fallible reading and asking him to respond is not "in advance." The direction is read by how the words were used at the time; his refuting it later, or my taking it back afterwards, does not retroactively cancel the direction that sentence already had; whether it takes hold is looked at separately, in what follows (Paper 1, H8). Laughter Overview §7.3 has a sentence that points the same way: "Inviting someone to take another look, or discussing whether something has been misread, is not colonization; colonization lies in substituting consequences for the other's judgment." This division is one this series takes on itself (own undertaking); Paper 6, H57, uses the same one.
Sliding is a direction, not an accomplished fact. Whether it takes hold depends on his later understanding and action (Paper 1, H8): if from then on he judges by this sentence whether he cares, and being on time becomes the whole of "caring" in his own mind, then this direction has taken hold; if he goes on thinking for himself about what caring is, it has not.
Settling into a position, and the signature. The value layer has a reading of its own. Value Theory P3 V35: "This is not to say that a single utterance constitutes introjection — an utterance is an event and introjection is a positional state"; V32: "the signature judges a position, not an event," and the signature is that "no response by the bearer can be registered as a refutation of that attribution." This sentence already has the shape V32 speaks of: he says he cares, and as long as he is not on time, it is rewritten as not caring; this denial "has been given its destination in advance, so that whatever he says is rewritten as something else" (V32). But it still has to become a position in the correspondence that follows; only there is there a value-layer signature of introjection. To judge this step, one does not look at whether he defends himself, but at whether his denial has anywhere to land. V32 puts it precisely: "What is to be read is not whether the bearer offered a denial, but whether this structure has a position at which a denial could land as a denial"; "Contestable means the dispute has an outcome: his denial is recorded, answered, and may change the attribution's standing." She wrote that sentence; if in the next letter she asks him why he was late and takes in his explanation, that sentence stops at a direction and does not settle into a position; if she is angry and says harsh things, then as long as she still takes in his explanation, it is still contestable (V32: "The exact wording of the signature is the irrefutability of the attribution, not its unwelcomeness"). V32's introjection was written of a community's attribution to a person, and V35 of audit relations; they are carried over to a correspondence between two people (own undertaking); this is an example set up by this paper.
A single signature is not the same as all three signatures complete, nor is it the same as the state. Even if this one signature is present, whether he has on that account taken "on time" as constitutive of his caring about this correspondence is a matter on his side; with a single signature present, this external branch still cannot be determined, and what he really avows is a further question (Paper 5, H43). So the third person has an upper bound here. What Value Theory P3 V35 establishes is that others auditing external colonization can speak only of positions and signatures; its own examples are: "Your denial has no position in this arrangement at which it could land" may be said; "What you really care about is not this — that may not be said; it requires reading the first person." V35 was originally the upper bound on value-layer audits of external colonization; carrying it over to readings of relations is an extension (own undertaking). For the value of a particular other, add Value Theory P6 V74: "For a Particular Other's Values, Third-Person Evidence Cannot Close into a Reading Guaranteed to Be Complete."
So when someone else reads this correspondence, what can be said is: that sentence attaches a qualifying condition and slides in the direction of colonization; and whether, in the letters that follow, his "I still care" has anywhere to land as a refutation. What cannot be said is: he does not really care, or she is really only controlling him. First fix the content-domain, the position, the period and the material; then report a local reading.
Not colonizing is hard. Between saying an expectation out loud and attaching a qualifying condition there is only half a sentence. This also shows, conversely, that within a relation, managing not to colonize is very hard. Two places upstream can be read alongside: How Is the Inter-Ontological Possible (Foundational Paper 5; cited as F5) §4.3, "Colonization is easy; nurturing is hard"; Action Theory Paper 6, "There can be times when cultivation does not take place; there is no time when not colonizing does not hold." Taken together: not colonizing is a boundary that cannot be cancelled, and within a relation, achieving it is hard. This series writes only this structure; it writes that it is hard, not that it cannot be done, nor that relations are always colonizing: simple interactions can carry no direction (Paper 1, H8).
§4 One-Way and Mutual
H38 Mutuality is two one-way recognitions meeting; if they do not meet, each one's share is still there as before. Mutuality is not exchange, nor a state a relation is meant to reach
Aesthetics Ray 12 writes the one-way: "he recognizes you as an end too, without waiting for you to recognize him first." When she sent her first letter, she did not know whether there would be a reply; her share did not wait for him. Aesthetics Ray 13 writes the mutual: "Mutuality is not exchange. ... two one-way recognitions meet, and only then is there mutuality"; and again: "Mutuality is two one-way recognitions meeting; if they do not meet, each one's share is still there as before."
Mutuality is not exchange. When he replies, he is not repaying her letter; when she writes a long letter, she is not waiting for one just as long. Two one-way recognitions meeting is mutuality; if they do not meet, her share is still there as before, and so is his.
Mutuality is not a state a relation is meant to reach. The minimal condition of relation requires only one side (Paper 1, H1); in the first two years she wrote more and he answered less, and those two years were this relation just the same. Mutuality is not set up as a goal, and "you haven't achieved mutuality" is not used to make demands on the other party.
Aesthetics Ray 13 has a few more sentences on mutuality in mutual chiseling, used here as written: confirmation is "a finding after the chiseling, not a demand, and not a judgment on the other's behalf"; in mutual chiseling "what is chiseled is a judgment, not a person"; "Not falling is not the same as not changing."
Consensus and audit. Consensus rests on each one's own acknowledgment; "neither side can declare agreement in the other's place" (Action Theory Paper 8, §3, D45). What two people can audit together is the few things visible in these dealings. Value Theory P6 V78: "What the two audit together is the opening and closing of relational channels": whether her saying "no" can be taken up as a "no," whether he can pause when he wants to pause; these the two can look at together. Each one's value content is not within the range of what is audited together.
§5 The Moment of 16DD
H39 16DD is something that happens on an occasion, not a grade that a person or a relation is in; this series takes up its moment, not a 16DD that can hold at any time and in any place, nor the change in the individual at 16DD
The laugh on the platform of the small station: if it was 16DD, what was it? Several statements upstream point to the same place. The General Methodology §1.7 gives the definition: "16DD Mutual non dubito. Two subjects mutually acknowledge each other as ends in themselves, mutually chisel, mutually do not doubt." Moral Law P1 §1.2: "16DD is the event-layer that emerges when subjects encounter one another." Second Critique, Rules of the House, Eleven: "A level records one operation, by moment and by domain; it does not record a person." Moral Law P9 §6.1, as quoted in Institution Theory Paper 5, wrote the same discipline: "A subject may, in different events, be at different layers — layer-matching is event-level, not permanent." Taken together: 16DD is something that happens on an occasion; it is not a grade that a person is in, nor a grade that a relation is in. This agrees with Paper 1: a moment is enough, and mutual chiseling is judged by process.
This series registers 16DD, but what it takes up is the moment of 16DD. By the notation of Rules of the House, Eleven, holding at any time and in any place means holding at every moment and in every domain; what this series takes up is the one occasion at a given moment, in a given domain (this contrast is this series' own reading). The former this series does not make its object, nor does it set it up as a state a relation is meant to reach.
The kind of 16DD that can hold at any time and in any place asks too much and is almost impossible; this degree is not written into the proposition.
What happens in the individual at 16DD, this series does not take up either. Psychoanalysis IV §2.4: "the individual-side change at 16DD — what structural transformation occurs in you when the other also confirms you — has not been fully clarified in the SAE master framework." That is an open question on the subject side. §2.3 of the same paper writes: "Bilateral confirmation (you also confirm me) belongs to 16DD (mutual non-dubito), involving the structure of the relational layer, beyond the scope of individual psychoanalysis." What this series takes up is exactly the stretch that sentence hands to the relational layer, and only its moment. Two further places in Psychoanalysis IV bear on this; they are registered in Paper 0.
H40 That moment: neither side, by its own anticipation, avows that jolt on the other's behalf; so that moment does not fall on one party by way of the other's expectation. An outward laugh obtained by demand or by prior agreement alone cannot constitute this moment and cannot certify it; what can hold only by treating a third person as material does not count
Laughter IV §7.1: "16DD requires two subjects, both standing in the position of subject, each not doubting the other." §7.2: "At 16DD, the intersection is something both sides do not doubt; it is neither demanded nor set in advance; it comes into being at the moment of looking at each other, from both sides together." The same section writes that "non dubito here means not letting my own expectation occupy that place, which is to say acknowledgment." This sentence of Laughter IV speaks of the posture on my side.
Non dubito here is not expectation. Expectation is directed at the other party's later conduct (Paper 1, H10) and belongs to the kind of prediction; Laughter IV §7.2: "Nor is non dubito prediction," and the same paragraph goes on: "So 'I do not doubt that you will laugh' acknowledges that the jolt within you is yours."
In Laughter IV's own sense: neither side, by its own anticipation, avows that jolt on the other's behalf. What is read off from this (own undertaking): within the intersection of two people's encounter, this moment does not fall on one party by way of the other's expectation. This lies exactly opposite the direction of colonization, which pours in and occupies. The antecedent is the intersection of an encounter; two people who have nothing to do with each other, each carrying no direction, are not this moment.
One thing first: an outward laugh obtained by demand or by prior agreement alone cannot constitute this moment and cannot certify it. The ground is the "neither demanded nor set in advance" in that sentence of Laughter IV §7.2; the subject of that sentence is the intersection, and it does not speak of the conditions of the encounter. One party says "Come on, laugh," and the other laughs: what is obtained is a laugh got by demand. Two people agree beforehand, "When we meet, let's look at each other and laugh," and laugh accordingly: what is obtained is an agreed laugh. What demand and agreement can guarantee is at most the outward laugh; if that moment is there, it was not obtained by demand or agreement, nor is it ruled out because there was an agreement. Laughter IV §7.2 writes that the jolt within another person "cannot be lived through by me in his stead," and also: "if you say you did not laugh within, I take your word for it, and I do not judge that you failed to see." Only using arrangement and anticipation to determine that the jolt is already within the other, or not allowing him to deny it, runs against the antecedent of this point. The outward laugh and the jolt within, Laughter Overview itself keeps apart: its inner-outer grid puts "Polite laughter · accommodating laughter · laughing along" in the row of those who do not laugh within, "expression without judgment; classed among the exclusions"; §7.3: "Being forced into an expression must further be distinguished from being forced to claim a judgment: the inner–outer grid allows the former without the latter, and forcing out an expression does not thereby force out a judgment." One party arranging things beforehand, preparing a joke, choosing a place, can provide conditions for the jolt; it cannot guarantee it, nor constitute it on the other's behalf; only taking this arrangement as a ground on which the jolt within the other ought to be forthcoming is an unspoken demand. Arranging a meeting together, making commitments, can go on as usual; as for whether that moment comes about, it has to actually happen.
Her expectation is another matter, and the reading below is also this series' own reading. Was the laugh at the small station such a moment? Before she came, she was hoping that when they met he would laugh; this expectation is neither a demand nor an agreement, and does not automatically make that moment not one. Laughter Overview §7.2 writes, "I expect you to tell me your judgment, but I do not expect in advance that your judgment and mine will intersect (this governs what lies within the scope; for 15DD and 16DD, see 7.4)"; Laughter IV §7.2 states how far that sentence reaches: "it is the unidirectional case within the scope," and at 16DD the intersection is "neither demanded nor set in advance." Her hoping does not set the intersection of the two sides, nor can it set the jolt within him on his behalf. What is to be looked at is not the laugh itself, nor what she hoped for before she came, but whether at that moment either side used its own anticipation to avow on the other's behalf. That what she hoped for came about does not by itself show that she avowed that jolt by anticipation; only if she used her own anticipation to determine that something had happened within him, and would not let him say otherwise, would her side have avowed that jolt by anticipation, and then that moment would not be of this kind. That moment is an event read by moment and by domain; it does not require zero duration.
The false glance. Laughter IV §7.2 (reading there by Psychoanalysis IV §1.2) wrote of two children who bully another child, exchanging a glance over the one they are bullying: "a 'non dubito' that can be maintained only by denying the other's independence is not non dubito but forced construct-closure." A moment between two people, if it can hold only by treating a third person as material, does not count as the moment of 16DD. "If it can hold only by" is a dependency condition: only when that moment's holding depends on treating a third person as material does it not count; if at the same moment someone else is hurt, it does not follow from the coincidence in time that this moment is false. The side facing the third person has its accounts kept pair by pair, per Paper 1, H12, and is read separately by the direction of colonization and by violation.
H41 From outside, only clues can be seen: mutual knowledge does not yield mutual non dubito, and one instance of looking at each other and laughing is not a criterion; what that moment sediments into in the dealings afterward belongs to Paper 5; it does not make later dealings mutual automatically, nor does it let one party afterward demand mutuality of the other
Laughter IV §7.2: "Mutual knowledge does not yield mutual non dubito." The same section of Laughter IV also writes: "looking at each other and laughing is 16DD's own laughter, which this series registers only and does not develop." So one instance of looking at each other and laughing is, seen from outside, a clue, not a criterion, still less a warrant. A bystander on the platform who sees two people looking at each other and laughing cannot say what that moment is; and as for the two themselves, each one's own half lies in his or her own first person, and each may also see it wrongly.
After that moment, "if they do not meet, each one's share is still there as before." What that moment sediments into in the dealings belongs to Paper 5. It does not make later dealings mutual automatically, nor does it let one party afterward demand mutuality of the other: she cannot take that laugh on the platform and use it to require that every letter of his from then on be like that.
The difference between mutual chiseling and 16DD is also made clear here. The General Methodology writes "mutually chisel" into the definition of 16DD; the converse does not follow. There are two steps here, and neither follows: entering the same process does not yield mutual chiseling; entering the same process is a precondition of mutual chiseling, not the whole of it (Paper 1, H6); nor does mutual chiseling yield the moment of 16DD: the definition in the General Methodology §1.7 is three things together, "Two subjects mutually acknowledge each other as ends in themselves, mutually chisel, mutually do not doubt"; what the definition gives is that where there is 16DD there is mutual chiseling, and it does not give the converse; this sentence says only that it does not follow. On the side of evidence there is a further layer: seeing from outside only the signs of mutual chiseling is not enough to certify that moment either.
Counterexamples to the converse exist, and they are very common: conflict between 14DDs is one. Conflict here means collision (Paper 1, H5 and H6); whether it has passed the two gates of the Conflict Treatise is a separate question. Two people each stake their own cannot-not, enter the same process over the same matter, and actually chisel each other's judgments open: in this matter there is mutual chiseling. F5 §5.1, cited in Paper 1, H5, points the same way: individual cannot-nots collide, and precisely because they are incommensurable, mutual chiseling is "needed to handle conflict." Recognizing the other as an end in itself, according to the abstract of Terrible Telos, emerges out of the collision of 14DDs: "when two 14DDs collide, acknowledging the other's telos as the other's own, this acknowledgment emerges from 14DD remainder"; "The form of 15DD is 'the subject cannot not acknowledge the other as an end'"; so it need not already be present in the collision, and mutual non dubito still less need be. Nor need the two parties to a collision be at the same layer in that operation; levels, per Rules of the House, Eleven, cited under H39, are recorded by moment and by domain, not by person. Parties colliding at their various levels: this is mixed reality; the Kingdom of Ends is a direction. Moral Law P6 §1.4 writes of the dyad layer: "interaction between two individuals may be 15DD mutual chiseling, 14DD adversarial, 12DD transactional, cultivation"; §I: "mixed reality is the normal state, pure 15DD community is only an ideal type"; what §1.3 speaks of is the community's aggregate over long scales: "mixing develops in the 15DD direction at long scales"; §3.1 writes the Kingdom of Ends as the "15DD framework aggregated at the communal layer." Direction here means which way mixed reality goes over long scales, not the two directions of Paper 1, H8, cultivation and colonization; nor is it a state a relation is meant to reach, the same in form as what H38 says of mutuality, and it does not let one party make demands of the other either. Moral Law P5 §4.2 writes that a party in mutual chiseling who seeks only to win "is not doing 15DD mutual chiseling" but is "doing 14DD adversarial competition"; P6 §1.4, cited above, also sets the two side by side. Mutual chiseling in this paper is judged by process, per Paper 1, H6, and is broader than the 15DD mutual chiseling spoken of in Moral Law P5: what it looks at is whether the two sides' judgments have actually been chiseled open, not which layer the parties are at. If a party who seeks only to overpower the other does not let his own judgment be chiseled open, then on that occasion there is no chiseling open on both sides, only collision. Reading these places together is this series' own reading.
The two branches of "we" each connect at one place here. The branch of doing things together connects to Moral Law P1 §1.2; the branch of mutual recognition connects to the General Methodology §1.7 and to Aesthetics Ray 13 (Paper 1, H3).
§6 Boundaries
Several cases are read by this paper:
One party takes a one-sided understanding as the matter settled (Conflict Treatise §22): that is one avenue by which expectation arises, not the other party's avowal.
An expectation with a qualifying condition attached: it slides in the direction of colonization; only when it settles into a position is there a value-layer signature of introjection (H37); the third person speaks only of direction, position and signature.
In a one-way relation with no response, where does expectation fall: on the side of the one who expects, and it is a construct all the same; it does not cease to exist because there is no response, nor, because there is no response, does it demand anything of the other party.
Once an expectation has become accountability: this series acknowledges only the fact that it has become accountability, and does not judge that accountability (H36).
He writes that he is being transferred to a forest station farther away, and that there will be fewer letters. The expectation that grew in her over seven years is not gone because of this one letter; that expectation is with her, and how it is rewritten from now on is a matter on her side. The letters he leaves unwritten are not an item on the books: expectation does not turn into a duty (Paper 1, H10). What these seven years have left between them, and what remains after exit and change, belongs to Paper 6.
§7 Drawing Together and Downstream
This paper has set out nine propositions (H33 to H41). Taken together, they say: response is material, not a settling of the account; expectation grows out of dealings and rewrites later conditions, yet does not certify that the other party has avowed anything; expectation is for now classed neither as duty nor as accountability, and from expectation alone neither can be inferred; saying an expectation out loud is questioning, attaching a qualifying condition slides in the direction of colonization, whether that takes hold depends on the other party, only when it settles into a position is there a value-layer signature of introjection, and the third person speaks only of direction, position and signature; not colonizing is hard; mutuality is two one-way recognitions meeting, not exchange, not a goal; 16DD is something that happens on an occasion, and this series takes up its moment; an outward laugh obtained by demand or by prior agreement alone cannot constitute that moment and cannot certify it, and what can hold only by treating a third person as material is not it either; from outside only clues can be seen; chiseling each other without recognizing each other as ends, and without each not doubting the other, is common.
This paper does not prove that expectation produces duty or accountability; does not prove that the person of whom it is expected has thereby avowed anything; does not prove that expectation never passes into duty or accountability; does not prove that mutuality is a state a relation is meant to reach.
Downstream. How the growth and rewriting of expectation sediment, and what the moment of 16DD sediments into in the dealings afterward, belong to Paper 5. The distinction between commitment and expectation goes back to Paper 3. What continues after an expectation is disappointed, and after one party leaves, belongs 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 3: Commitment [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545023
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 7: Why Still Relate [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545097
Qin, H. (2026). How Is the Inter-Ontological Possible: The Subjective Conditions and Emergent Structure of Freedom (SAE Foundational Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19297847
Qin, H. (2026). Not Legislating for Others (SAE Action Theory, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970777
Qin, H. (2026). The Place of Judgment (SAE Action Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22974154
Qin, H. (2026). Finding One Another (SAE Action Theory, Paper 8) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970783
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 Half That Is Not Mine to Settle (SAE Meaning Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22731235
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). On Value and the Other (SAE Value Theory, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22191071
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). The Beauty of Non Dubito (SAE Aesthetics, Ray 12) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22992615
Qin, H. (2026). The Beauty of Mutual Non Dubito (SAE Aesthetics, Ray 13) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23000910
Qin, H. (2026). General Methodology: The Chisel-Construct Cycle (SAE Methodology) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18842449
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Psychoanalysis (IV): Cert and Unification — The Self Beyond Doubt and the Four-Layer Framework [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19321534
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Laughter · Overview: Judgment and Laughter [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23286244
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Laughter · IV: The Laughter of Despair and the Knowing Smile [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23287669
Qin, H. (2026). Four Foundational Theorems of the Moral Law · Dao (SAE Moral Law, Paper 1) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20011018
Qin, H. (2026). Positive-Sum — The Ontological Ground of 15DD Mutual Chiseling (SAE Moral Law, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20081078
Qin, H. (2026). Mixed Reality — The Intermediate State of 14DD Growing toward 15DD (SAE Moral Law, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20108658
Qin, H. (2026). What Terrible Telos Actually Is: The Structural Genesis of Non Dubito [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19248039
Qin, H. (2026). SAE: The Second Critique [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23250387
Qin, H. (2026). Between One Another (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23271072
II · Background works in the system
Qin, H. (2026). The Institutional Architecture of Mixed Reality: The Phase-Transition Evolution of Cultivation and Colonization (SAE Moral Law, Paper 9) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20262737
Interfaces
- Main upstream: F6 (§3.1(f): a relational expectation is for now classed neither as duty nor as accountability); Value Theory P3 (V32, V35); Laughter IV (§7.1, §7.2).
- Also used: Action Theory Paper 0 (§6.2), Paper 6, Paper 8; Conflict Treatise (§7, §22); Value Theory P4 (V46), P6 (V74, V78); Meaning Theory P3 (Y25); F5 (§4.3, §5.1); Laughter Overview (§7.2, §7.3); General Methodology (§1.7); Psychoanalysis IV; Aesthetics Rays 12 and 13; Moral Law P1 (§1.2), P5 (§4.2), P6 (§I, §1.3, §1.4, §3.1), P9 (§6.1); Second Critique, Rules of the House, Eleven; Institution Theory Paper 5; abstract of Terrible Telos.
- This series: Paper 1 (H8, H10); Paper 3 takes up the distinction between commitment and expectation; Paper 5 takes up the sedimentation of expectation and of what follows the moment of 16DD; Paper 6, H57, uses the same line as this paper's H37.