The Constitution and Withdrawal of Recognition-Based Rights
论承认性权利的构成与撤回
A recognition-based right does not come by grace or permission; it is constituted. Its source lies in constitutive recognition, which has two branches: a vertical branch of institutional conferral and a horizontal branch of peer mutual recognition — an institution's recognition and peers' mutual recognition each constitute the right directly, so a right's source is not confined to the top-down case. What is established at the source is only a candidate position, which as it stands is a declaration; the candidate position enters the referential space of rights and becomes an operative recognition-based right only when three legs interlock: institutional embedding gives an invocable form, effective community recognition gives distributed predictability, and real power backing gives the capacity to deliver. When any leg falls below its threshold for the relevant scope, the position undergoes a phase transition — without power backing it collapses into a declaration; without effective community recognition while coercion persists it is de-righted into sheer force no longer treated as a right. Constitution and operation succeeding are neither of them the same as normative legitimacy (F10). Failure is typed by where the break falls: outright withdrawal is the exit of all constitutive sources; hollowing-out is power backing falling below threshold while the shell remains, leaving a declaration; de-righting is the network ceasing to process the position as a right while coercion persists, leaving sheer force; carrier migration is the bearer changing while the right runs on; local failure is a fall below threshold over only part of the scope. De-righting must be audited by whether the network still treats the holder as one who can initiate, invoke, and require response, so that unpopularity is not misread as no-longer-a-right. A basic right itself can be neither withdrawn nor hollowed out; what can be hollowed out is its recognition-side institutional backing, and what can be suppressed is its exercise (F11). Basic and recognition are not a gradient of quality but two regions on the source-constitution axis, cut out by the standalone test; region-membership is binary and flips abruptly at the threshold. What is continuous is a different axis, the level of concretization: a family of claims drawn from one and the same basic dimension, neighbouring one another by degree of concretization, ranges along it, and the further toward the concrete, the more the constitutively-dependent component covers. The spectrum is continuous but not smooth — continuous in concretization, non-smooth at the abrupt flip of region-membership. A mixed spectrum is the coexistence of a basic component and a constitutive component within one family of claims, straddling the spines, not the occupation of a continuous midpoint; region-membership is fixed by the standalone test together with the type and constitution criteria, which do not move with the times — what moves is the factual mapping between resources and dimensions, and the range each component occupies within a family of claims. The source-constitution axis is orthogonal to the operational-state axis (F12). A recognition-based right takes its formal bearer on the T5 seam: a factual relation of power is established by being registered in the recipient's action-space; registration may be forward or coerced, and is neither consent nor legitimation nor justification — its criterion is whether the recipient's action-vector is objectively converged by the field of power, lying neither in feeling nor in inner identification. The relation remains social power only while the recipient is retained as a subject position that can respond, refuse, and withdraw registration; once the subject position is zeroed out, social power departs. This retained subject position is the minimal relational slot to which a recognition-based right attaches, and is not any determinate content; content-identity is given by constitutive recognition, and operation by the three-fold interlock. P1's F5 questioning-and-acceptance is a high-position instance of this general registration structure at the 15DD top of the spectrum, not the general genesis of every recognition-based right. The exit of the supporting network yields hollowing-out, the zeroing of the subject position yields the departure of the relation, and the two must not be equated. Power Theory and Rights Theory share the single T5 seam and each read one side: on the acting side, no subject position means no social power; on the receiving side, a right without real power backing is a declaration (F13). This paper establishes only the constitution and withdrawal of the recognition layer; the interface and transformation between rights and power, and Fork Rights, are left to P4, limit and violation with their three gradations to P5, and the diachronic dynamics of right-expansion to P6.
Keywords: SAE; Self-as-an-End; Rights Theory; recognition-based rights; constitutive recognition; restraint-type recognition; candidate position; declaration; the referential space of rights; institutional embedding; effective community recognition; real power backing; three-fold interlock; phase transition; hollowing-out; de-righting; carrier migration; outright withdrawal; local failure; the source-constitution axis; the level of concretization; region-membership; the standalone test; the residue test; type criterion; constitution criterion; mixed spectrum; straddling the spines; the operational-state axis; the T5 seam; action-space; registration; action-vector convergence; subject position; relational slot; content-identity; channel; being-questioned; the remainder (ρ); encapsulation; one's own law; Dao spine; Shi spine; Fork Rights; 权利论; 承认性权利; 构成式承认; 制度载入; 共同体有效承认; 真实权力支持; 掏空; 脱权; 转载; 具体化层级; 独存检验; T5 接缝; 行动空间; 主体位置; 登记
0. The Recognition Layer, and Two Distinctions
Rights Theory P1 spans both spines and lays down the conceptual framework for the whole series; its F2 is a two-spine proposition, and its F5 sits where the two spines cross. P2 takes up the Dao-side basic layer and gives its thickness and boundary. The recognition layer lies on the Shi side — located by P1 but not yet operationalized — and concerns how a recognition-based right is constituted, how it runs, and how it can be withdrawn.
A recognition-based right hangs, together with power, on the T5 seam, the position P1's F2 already fixed. Power Theory and Rights Theory are two parallel series, not one extending the other; they share the single T5 seam and each read one side. Power Theory reads social power off the acting side; Rights Theory reads the recognition-based right off the receiving side. This paper writes out the receiving side in full.
P2's F7 has already fixed constitutive recognition as the pole opposite restraint-type recognition on the source axis, and noted that a position established at the source by constitutive recognition still requires institutional registration, community consensus, and real power backing to become an operative recognition-based right — leaving the full mechanism to this paper. P2 called these three institutional registration, community consensus, and real power backing; this paper sharpens them into institutional embedding, effective community recognition, and real power backing.
Throughout, the treatment is structural: no appeal to psychology, no appeal to value judgment, no appeal to historical determinism. Per the series' two iron rules, no external theorist is named, no historical narrative is used as a frame, and history appears only as the briefest structural anchor.
Two distinctions run through the paper.
First, recognition and registration are four distinct stations, and must not impersonate one another.
The station of source-constitution is constitutive recognition. It constitutes a rights-position at the source; without this recognition, the right does not exist. It has two branches: a vertical branch of institutional conferral and a horizontal branch of mutual recognition. The vertical branch is an institution's top-down recognition, which itself constitutes — a qualification newly created by a legislature has its source here. The horizontal branch is peers recognizing one another, where the mutual recognition itself constitutes — a circle of subjects recognizing one another's shared legislative power has its source here. A recognition-based right's source is not confined to the top-down case.
The station of operational embedding is institutional embedding. It writes a position already established at the source into an invocable institutional form. "Institutional" here is broad: not only the formal institutions of a state, but custom, convention, charter, and any repeatable procedure. The source-side institutional conferral and the operation-side institutional embedding are two different layers, source and operation: a right an institution confers has its source in institutional conferral and its operational form in institutional embedding. The two are two analytic steps, but need not divide into two acts in empirical time.
The station of network operation is effective community recognition. It is enough nodes in the relevant community treating the position as a predictable, invocable, transferable fact.
The station of relational ontology is T5 subject-position registration. It is the minimal relational slot to which the rights-position attaches, drawing on the seam shared with Power Theory.
Beyond the four stations, one further classification must be set against them. Running a recognition-based right takes a three-fold interlock: institutional embedding, effective community recognition, real power backing. These three cross the four stations: institutional embedding and effective community recognition are both stations and two of the three legs; real power backing is one of the three legs but not one of the four stations, since it is power, not a kind of recognition or registration; T5 subject-position registration is one of the four stations but not one of the three legs, since it is the bearer-layer, taking on the content and force the three legs supply.
Second, a recognition-based right is handled at two scales, and must not be misplaced.
At the atomic-relational scale, between two parties, one party forms a relational position in another's action-space, and that position is registered or refused — P1's F5 hinge. At the institutional-network scale, within a community, a position established at the source becomes an operative recognition-based right through the three-fold interlock — F10.
The source-side constitutive recognition and the operation-side effective community recognition need not be one and the same recognition, nor need they scale up from a single atomic event between two parties. Constitutive recognition gives the position its source-identity; effective community recognition is the replication, consolidation, and rendering-predictable of that position across the relevant network. The two may be triggered by one and the same event, or may come apart in time and in subject: a right may be constituted by an institution while the network has yet to take it up, may be mutually recognized by a group first and embedded institutionally later, may hold in one network and fail in another. This is a relation of propagation and consolidation, not identity across scales. The vertical institutional conferral may itself occur directly at an organizational or network scale, without a prior atomic event between two parties.
The four propositions.
F10. A recognition-based right does not come by grace or permission; it is constituted by constitutive recognition. A position established by constitutive recognition enters the referential space of rights and becomes an operative recognition-based right only when institutional embedding, effective community recognition, and real power backing interlock.
F11. A recognition-based right may be outright-withdrawn, hollowed out, de-righted, carrier-migrated, or may fail locally, each answering to a different break in source, bearer, network-processing, or power backing; a basic right itself can be neither withdrawn nor hollowed out, what can be hollowed out is its recognition-side institutional backing, and what can be suppressed is its exercise.
F12. Basic and recognition are two regions on the source-constitution axis, cut out by the standalone test; region-membership is binary; what is continuous is the level of concretization; a determinate claim past the threshold flips region, and a family of claims may carry both a basic and a constitutive component and so straddle the spines.
F13. A factual relation of power is established by being registered in a subject's action-space; the relation remains social power only while the recipient is retained as a subject position; this retained subject position is the minimal relational slot to which a recognition-based right attaches, content-identity is given by constitutive recognition, and operation by the three-fold interlock.
I. From Candidate Position to Operative Right
> F10. A recognition-based right passes from candidate position to operative right through a three-fold interlock. A recognition-based right does not come by grace or permission; it is constituted by constitutive recognition, whose two source-forms are institutional conferral and peer mutual recognition. What constitutive recognition establishes at the source is a recognition candidate position; only when institutional embedding, effective community recognition, and real power backing interlock does it enter the referential space of rights and become an operative recognition-based right. The three legs are functionally heterogeneous: institutional embedding gives an invocable form, effective community recognition gives distributed predictability, real power backing gives the capacity to deliver. With all three interlocked, the position runs stably; with any one below its threshold for the relevant scope, the position undergoes a phase transition — without power backing it collapses into a declaration, without effective community recognition while coercion persists it is de-righted. Before the three legs interlock, a candidate position is, as it stands, a declaration. Neither constitution nor operation succeeding is the same as normative legitimacy.
Constitutive recognition constitutes the right; without this recognition the right does not exist — the source P2 fixed. That a right is established at the source is not yet that the right runs.
To say a recognition-based right is not bestowed is to say it does not come by grace or permission, is not something handed down as a favour. This does not conflict with institutional conferral's being one of its source-forms: institutional conferral is an institution's recognition constituting the right, peer mutual recognition is another source-form, and both are constitutive recognition, neither a favour.
Constitutive recognition has two branches. The vertical branch is institutional conferral: an institution's top-down recognition itself constitutes; a qualification newly created by a legislature has its source in this branch. The horizontal branch is mutual recognition: peers recognizing one another itself constitutes; a circle of subjects recognizing one another's shared legislative power has its source in this branch.
What constitutive recognition establishes at the source is a candidate position, not yet an operative right. A position with only paper registration and no real power behind it is a declaration, outside the referential space of rights — the Prequel already drew this line. The candidate position is exactly such a position: established at the source, but without the three-fold interlock, and as it stands it is a declaration. It enters the referential space of rights only through the three-fold interlock.
The three legs each supply something different.
Institutional embedding supplies invocability. It writes the candidate position into an institutional form that can be pointed to and invoked. "Institutional" here is broad: not only the formal institutions of a state, but custom, convention, charter, and any repeatable procedure. Statute is the most stable and auditable such form, but not the only one. A statute is this form of registration, not the source of the right — a line the Prequel already drew. Source-side institutional conferral and operation-side institutional embedding are not one thing: the former is an institution's recognition constituting the right, on the source side; the latter writes the already-constituted position into a form, on the operation side; the two are two analytic steps, though in fact a single legislative act may complete both the source-creation and the form-embedding at once, and need not divide into two acts in empirical time.
Effective community recognition supplies distributed predictability. It is not value-wise unanimous assent: many rights run precisely while the community is in sharp disagreement, and reading it as unanimous assent would exclude minority rights and every contested right. It is structurally dense enough recognition within the relevant community to make the position a generally predictable, invocable, transferable fact — and to treat the recipient as a holder who can, on the strength of this position, initiate requests, invoke procedures, and require nodes to respond, not merely to treat the power-holder's command as a threat that must be obeyed. The relevant community need not be the whole society: it may be an industry, a jurisdiction, an organization, a set of enforcement nodes, or a particular relational network.
Real power backing supplies the capacity to deliver: the relevant nodes can, on the strength of this position, change resources, procedures, and action-space. It is not only the prevention and repair that follow a violation, but also everyday performance, the allocation of resources, access to procedures, and the honouring of qualifications.
The source-side constitutive recognition and the operation-side effective community recognition need not be one and the same recognition, nor scale up from a single atomic event between two parties — constitutive recognition gives the source-identity, effective community recognition is the replication, consolidation, and rendering-predictable of the position across the network, and the two may be triggered by one event or come apart in time and subject.
The three are an interlock, not a sum. Each governs a heterogeneous matter; missing any one is not being short by a third, but the position's changing state altogether. With all three interlocked, the position runs stably. With any one below its minimal threshold within its own scope, the position undergoes a phase transition, rather than simply switching on or off. Real power backing falls below threshold while the institutional shell remains: the position collapses into a declaration, written on paper but undeliverable — this is hollowing-out. Effective community recognition falls below threshold while institutional embedding and coercive capacity both remain: the position does not stop running but falls out of the referential space of rights, degenerating into a sheer force the network no longer processes as a right, running on as before, even more brutally, but no longer a right — this is de-righting. Part of the scope, part of the subjects, or part of the enforcement nodes losing backing: the position enters local, fragile, or partial operation.
One last discipline: constitution succeeding is not legitimacy, and operation succeeding is not legitimacy either. How a recognition-based right is constituted, runs, and fails is a separate matter from whether it conforms to a norm; legitimacy and limit are left to P5.
II. Withdrawal, Hollowing-Out, De-Righting, and Suppression
> F11. Withdrawal, hollowing-out, de-righting, carrier migration, and suppression. A recognition-based right is constituted by the three-fold interlock, so its failure differs by whether the break falls in source, bearer, network-processing, or power backing, and cannot be lumped into one kind. Outright withdrawal is the exit of all constitutive sources within the relevant scope, not merely the disappearance of the old bearer. Hollowing-out is power backing falling below threshold while the institutional shell remains, the position reverting to a declaration, operation gone. De-righting is coercion persisting while the relevant network no longer treats the recipient as a holder who can, on the strength of this position, initiate requests, invoke procedures, and require response, the position degenerating into sheer force. Carrier migration is the bearer migrating while the right runs on in the new bearer. Local failure is a fall below threshold over only part of the scope. A basic right is not on this list: it is endogenous, anchored in ρ and in encapsulation, and asks only restraint-type recognition, so it itself can be neither withdrawn nor hollowed out; what can be hollowed out is its recognition-side institutional backing, and what can be suppressed is its exercise.
A recognition-based right is constituted by the three-fold interlock, so its failure is not one thing: the failure looks different by where the break falls. At least five quantities vary while a recognition-based right runs: whether the constitutive source still holds, from vertical institutional conferral or horizontal mutual recognition; whether an effective institutional bearer still exists; whether the relevant network still processes the position as a rights-position; whether there is still real capacity to deliver; and over how large a scope it holds. Failure is one or more of these quantities falling below threshold over some scope.
What follows is several typical failure-signatures, listed by where the break falls; the combinations of the quantities run well past these few cells.
| Where the break falls | State at that point | The rest | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Power backing | Below threshold, shell remains | Rest holds | Hollowing-out — reverts to declaration, not running |
| Network-processing | No longer processed as a rights-position, coercion remains | Rest holds | De-righting — degenerates to sheer force, still running |
| Bearer | Old bearer withdrawn | New bearer takes over, source holds | Carrier migration — re-carried, still running |
| Source | All constitutive sources withdrawn | Outright withdrawal — position gone | |
| Scope | Only a subdomain falls | Local failure |
The sharpest distinction is still hollowing-out versus de-righting. Hollowing-out breaks power backing: the institutional shell remains, the position is written on paper but cannot be delivered, it reverts to a declaration and stops running. De-righting breaks network-processing: coercive capacity remains, but the relevant network no longer treats the recipient as a holder who can initiate requests on the strength of this position; the position falls out of the referential space of rights and degenerates into a sheer force. The two can also co-occur — they are not two mutually exclusive cells, but two signatures of breaks falling at different points.
De-righting needs an auditable criterion, or it will misread the unpopular as no-longer-a-right. A law sustained by terror may also be highly predictable, and the enforcement organ may go on invoking it; mere widespread rejection while coercion persists does not entail that it is no longer a right. Whether it is de-righting turns on whether the relevant network still treats the recipient as a holder, by three tests: whether the recipient can initiate a procedure on the strength of this position; whether the position can be replicated and processed identically across independent nodes; and whether, after the direct power-wielder is replaced, the position is still maintained by the network. Only when it can be sustained solely by the same power-wielder's continued pressure, the network not processing the recipient's request-position, is it de-righting. So de-righting judges the structure of network-processing, not whether the thing is normatively legitimate smuggled back in.
Outright withdrawal requires not the disappearance of the old bearer but the exit of all constitutive sources within the relevant scope. After an institutional conferral is revoked, horizontal mutual recognition may still constitute the same position; conversely, the old statute may remain while the constitutive source has already exited, leaving a residual empty shell. Source and bearer must be read apart: the bearer's disappearance may be only re-carriage, the source's exit is outright withdrawal, and after the source exits the old bearer may sit there as an empty shell. Carrier migration is the bearer migrating while source, network-processing, and delivery continue to hold in the new bearer. Local failure is these quantities falling below threshold only in a subdomain of the scope, the position still running elsewhere.
These failures all befall the recognition-based right alone. A basic right is not here, because it is not constituted by the three-fold interlock. A basic right is endogenous, its core anchored in the inexhaustibility of ρ and in the first-person, non-ghostwritable encapsulation, and asks only restraint-type recognition, not constitutive recognition. The three-fold interlock is the condition for a recognition-based right's holding, not for a basic right's; withdrawing any leg does not dismantle a basic right's core. A basic right itself can be neither withdrawn nor hollowed out.
But a basic right is not without things that can be hollowed out. A basic right may have its recognition-side institutional backing — prohibitions on enslavement, on torture, such institutional safeguards are registration-type backing for a basic right, and this side is on the recognition side, a point P2 already made. This institutional backing can be hollowed out: a freedom still written into law while enforcement, procedure, and the network's recognition are all drawn away. What is hollowed out then is the institutional backing, what is suppressed is the exercise of this basic right, and what is untouched is its core. The hollowing-out of the institutional backing is not the loss of the core, and the suppression of the exercise is not the loss of the core.
Withdrawal and suppression act in different places. Withdrawal is the retraction of recognition; it acts at the network-processing layer — the relevant network no longer treating the position as a right — and on a recognition-based right it dismantles the position, on a basic right it does not dismantle the core. Suppression acts at the layer of exercise: the actual compression of a subject's action-space, and only when the corresponding operation actually presses on the action-space is there suppression. So withdrawing others' recognition of a basic right does not by itself necessarily already constitute suppression: non-recognition at the network-processing layer and actually pressing on the action-space are two steps, and only at the second step is there suppression of the exercise.
The boundary of this distinction: suppression presses on the exercise, on the premise that the bearer remains at 13DD+. If a violation reaches all the way to the life-substrate and drives the bearer itself below 13DD, that is no longer the exercise being suppressed but the bearer departing — its three gradations are left to P5.
III. Two Regions, and a Continuity in Concretization
> F12. Basic and recognition are two regions on the source-constitution axis; what is continuous is the level of concretization. Basic and recognition are not a gradient of quality but two regions on the source-constitution axis, cut out by the standalone test; for a determinate claim, region-membership is binary — remove the others present and it stands, it belongs to the basic region; it does not, it belongs to the recognition region; past the threshold it flips abruptly. What is continuous is a different axis, the level of concretization: a family of claims drawn from one and the same basic dimension, neighbouring one another by degree of concretization, ranges along it, and the further toward the concrete, the more the constitutively-dependent component covers. A composite claim may carry both a basic-residue component and a constitutively-dependent component, which is straddling the spines, not occupying a continuous midpoint between the two regions. Region-membership is fixed by the standalone test together with the type and constitution criteria, which do not move with the times; what moves with the times is the factual mapping between concrete resources and the basic dimensions, and the range each component occupies within a family of claims. This axis is the source-constitution axis, orthogonal to F10 and F11's operational-state axis: a purely constitutive right may run stably or be hollowed out.
P1 already set basic and recognition as the two ends of the source-constitution axis. The source-constitution axis and the level of concretization are two different axes.
The source-constitution axis asks where a right comes from, endogenous or constituted. On this axis, for a determinate claim, the standalone test gives a binary: remove all others present, and this determinate claim either still stands — it belongs to the basic region — or does not — it belongs to the recognition region; there is no middle value. A determinate claim is not both endogenous and constitutively dependent; on the microscopic cross-section, region-membership is binary, flipping abruptly past the threshold.
What is continuous is the level of concretization, from general to specific. One and the same basic dimension can draw out a family of claims, from the most general formulation all the way to a very specific form; this family, neighbouring one another by degree of concretization, ranges along the axis as a spectrum. Take self-unfolding, a basic dimension P2 confirmed. Most generally, a subject has the right of self-unfolding; remove all others, and it still stands — it is in the basic region. Toward the specific, a form of unfolding that can be constituted only with others' joint participation: remove the others, and this specific form is gone — it is in the recognition region. From general to specific, this family ranges continuously along the level of concretization, and the further toward the concrete, the more the component that must be constituted by others covers.
The continuous and the binary do not clash; they are on two different axes. What is continuous is the level of concretization, a family of claims ranging smoothly along it. What is binary is region-membership on the source-constitution axis, each determinate claim either basic or recognition. Project the continuous axis of concretization onto the region-membership of the source-constitution axis, and what results is a step: the foothold moves continuously along concretization while region-membership flips abruptly at the threshold-point. This is the precise sense in which the spectrum is continuous but not smooth — continuous in concretization, non-smooth at the abrupt flip of region-membership.
A mixed-spectrum right must be read on this distinction. It does not occupy a continuous midpoint between basic and recognition, is not "sixty percent basic, forty percent recognition." It is a family of claims that has, at once, a component falling in the basic region and a component falling in the recognition region — these two components coexisting, which is the overlap. A composite claim can still, on the microscopic cross-section, be decomposed by the standalone test and the two criteria into a basic component and a constitutive component; as the claim moves toward the specific, the constitutive component covers more and more within the claim-package, rather than any determinate claim's source-nature itself gradually changing quality.
This distinction also sets straight what moves with the times and what does not. Region-membership on the source-constitution axis is fixed by the standalone test and the type and constitution criteria, which do not move with the times. What moves with the times is two other things: which concrete resources and institutional forms connect to which basic dimension — that factual mapping varies with the times — and how large a range the basic component and the constitutive component each occupy within a family of claims — that range too varies with the case. So one cannot define the basic by content like livelihood or minimal subsistence, which vary with the times; only dimensions can enter the structural criteria.
Whether a claim leaves a basic component behind has a test. After removing the determinate institutional form the claim depends on, ask three things in turn: whether there still exists a determinate claim to the same object or the same use-relation; whether this claim independently passes P2's type and constitution criteria; and whether its holding does not depend on the withdrawn mutual recognition, institutional bearer, or power backing. All three passing, it has a genuine basic component, and it straddles the spines; otherwise, it is merely an institutional right whose justification may trace back to general subjecthood, but that leaves no basic component of the same right.
Run two examples through it. Voting falls in the recognition region; it has no basic component of its own — remove the circle of mutual recognition and no one's vote is left, and it fails the residue test above; P2 already demonstrated this. Voting's justification may trace back to general subjecthood, to not being reduced to a thing, to self-legislation over one's own law — those are what F1 and F3 mark out, and are basic — but that is general subjecthood, not voting's own basic component as this determinate institutional form; this is tracing-back, not straddling. Voting is both a right and a power, and that side is left to P4.
Property's determinate claims fall at different points on the spectrum. Where they touch the dimensions of life and body — control over the means of sustaining life, bodily aids, basic shelter — after removing that property's institutional form there still remains a determinate claim to the same object, independently passing P2's criteria; this point has a basic component, it straddles the spines. In complex property institutions, corporate equity, intellectual property, after removing the institutional form no independent basic claim to the same object remains; this point is purely constitutive, falling in the recognition region. Three things to hold here. First, that basic component is anchored in P2's dimensions, not in resource-names like livelihood or minimal subsistence, which vary with the times. Second, it is not that the body is property — that would slide into the frame of self-ownership, whereas P2's body is a dimension of basic right, not a piece of property. Third, what remains after removing the institutional form is not a stretch of natural property but a basic claim, independent in source, holding by P2's criteria — the basic dimension itself extended onto this object, not given automatically by the name "property."
The source-constitution axis and F10 and F11's operational-state axis are two different axes, not to be flattened into one line. A right falling in the recognition region does not mean it runs weakly, and a right falling in the basic region may also have its exercise suppressed. A purely constitutive right may run stably or be hollowed out, and the recognition-component of a spine-straddling composite right may likewise hold or fail. Which region the source is in and which state the operation is in are two different matters.
Left for later: rights at different points on the spectrum differ in gradation under limit and violation — that is a matter of substantive gradation, left to P5. The interface and transformation of property's various determinate claims are left to P4.
IV. The Relational Dyad and Registration Mechanism on the T5 Seam
> F13. Registration establishes the relation; retention of the subject position keeps it social power. A factual asymmetric relation of power is established by being registered in the recipient's action-space; this registration may be forward or coerced, and is neither consent nor legitimation nor justification — its criterion is whether the recipient's action-vector is objectively converged by the field of power, lying neither in feeling nor in identification. The relation remains social power only while the recipient is retained as a subject position that can respond, refuse, and withdraw registration; with the subject position zeroed out, social power departs. This retained subject position is the minimal relational slot to which a recognition-based right attaches, and is not any determinate content; content-identity is given by constitutive recognition, institutional embedding gives it an invocable form, and effective community recognition and real power backing give it network-persistence and delivery. The exit of the supporting network yields hollowing-out, the zeroing of the subject position yields the departure of the relation, and the two must not be equated.
A recognition-based right hangs on the T5 seam, the position P1's F2 gave. Power Theory and Rights Theory are two parallel series, not one extending the other; they share the single T5 seam and each read one side. The receiving side takes only the principle on this shared seam, not the acting series' internal apparatus. On this seam, whether the relation of power is registered and whether the relation still retains the recipient's subject position are two different things.
A factual asymmetric relation of power is established by being registered in the recipient's action-space. This registration may be forward or coerced; it is neither consent nor legitimation nor an acknowledgment of justice. Its criterion is whether the recipient's action-vector is objectively converged by this field of power, lying neither in the recipient's feeling nor in the recipient's inner identification. A subject may be intensely opposed in feeling, yet so long as its action-boundary is objectively narrowed by this field of power, and it moves along that narrowed edge, that very trajectory has already completed the registration. Physical blockage and the convergence of a path alike constitute registration; whether the subject took that path out of calculation, out of habit, or out of anything else is not the underlying criterion.
The same relation remains social power only while the recipient is retained as a subject position that can respond, refuse, and withdraw registration. If the recipient's subject position is wholly zeroed out, the relation is no longer social power; it departs. This is the seam's dyad: the social power read off the acting side and the subject position retained on the receiving side co-arise in one and the same relation, and without the receiving side's subject position the acting side's social power does not hold either.
This retained subject position is the minimal relational slot to which a recognition-based right attaches, but is not yet any determinate right. It does not tell you this is voting, or a wage-claim, or a welfare qualification, or some property position. The determinate content-identity is given by constitutive recognition — it is constitutive recognition that fixes the slot as this one rather than that. Institutional embedding gives that content an invocable form, and effective community recognition and real power backing make it a fact in the network and give it delivery. Slot, content, and operation are successive layers: T5 gives the slot, constitutive recognition gives the content, the three-fold interlock gives the operation — which is why there is a mapping rule between a recognition-based right and its corresponding power, rather than a correspondence from nowhere.
Only here is P1's F5 hinge well placed. P1's F5 questioning-and-acceptance is a high-position instance of this general registration structure at the 15DD top of the spectrum, not the general genesis of every recognition-based right. Welfare, property, voting, labour protections — these need not all first pass through one party asking and another answering to come to be. In that high-position instance, the same interaction has two faces: on the Dao spine, the subject's being-questioned, the side the subject cannot but open; on the Shi spine, the questioner's exercise of power; and what throws the switch is the registration of this relational position by the subject's action-space, not whether the subject opens its mouth to answer. The general structure is: an asymmetric act forms a relational position in another subject's action-space, that position is registered forward or under coercion, and the relation is established — questioning is only one high-position form of this general structure on an answerable channel, whereas physical coercion does not necessarily put anything to anyone; it directly converges the path in the other's action-space.
Registration is then divided by channel. Refusing one answerable channel only blocks this actor's questioning-position on that channel; it does not cancel the power already established on other channels within the same relation. A captive may refuse the interrogator's question-answering position while its action-space still registers the jailer's physical coercion — these two are on different channels, and one being refused does not entail the other not holding. The minimal criterion of registration follows the same line: not whether the subject has spoken, but whether the subject's action-space converges the relational position the other puts forward into a constraint with structural force on itself. A fierce response can be one of several different structures: accepting that the other has the standing to demand an answer while only denying the answer; granting that the other is an interlocutor while refusing its standing to demand an answer; or registering in reverse, rewriting the other as the one being questioned — these are not one and the same registration.
The failure of a recognition-based right must, on this seam, keep two things apart. One is the exit of the supporting network: a recognition-based right loses delivery and enters hollowing-out — and power backing may be borne distributively by several nodes and may migrate, a single node's withdrawal does not necessarily fail it, and only when the supporting network over the relevant scope falls below threshold as a whole is it hollowed out. The other is the zeroing of the subject position: the recipient wholly erased in this relation, the relation departing — more extreme than hollowing-out, not backing diminished but the relation's receiving side gone. Hollowing-out is not the zeroing of the subject position; the withdrawal of power backing is not the erasure of the recipient.
The two series meet only on this shared seam. The acting side reads off this seam: no receiving-side subject position, no social power. The receiving side reads off this seam: a right without real power backing is a declaration. These two are not one and the same theorem but the seam's dyad showing differently on the two sides, the two parallel series each reading one side — exactly where this paper joins the recognition-based right to the shared seam, and where the operationalization of the recognition layer is sealed.
The interface between a recognition-based right and power, how they transform into one another, and the hinge-class of rights, are left to P4. A local power on the recipient's side vanishing may turn into extreme pressure on other nodes — not backing vanishing from nowhere but a transfer of power, belonging to the other series' internal dynamics, also left to P4.
V. Conclusion, and the Series Joints
A recognition-based right is not a static classification; it is a structure that can be constituted, can run, and can fail.
A recognition-based right does not come by grace or permission; it is constituted by constitutive recognition, whose two source-forms are institutional conferral and peer mutual recognition; a position constitutive recognition establishes enters the referential space of rights and becomes an operative right through the interlock of institutional embedding, effective community recognition, and real power backing; with any leg below threshold it undergoes a phase transition — without power backing it collapses into a declaration, without network-processing while coercion persists it is de-righted into sheer force — this is F10. It may be outright-withdrawn, hollowed out, de-righted, carrier-migrated, or fail locally, each answering to a different break in source, bearer, network-processing, or power backing; a basic right itself can be neither withdrawn nor hollowed out, what can be hollowed out is its recognition-side institutional backing, and what can be suppressed is its exercise — this is F11. Basic and recognition are two regions on the source-constitution axis cut out by the standalone test, region-membership binary; what is continuous is a different axis, the level of concretization, a family of claims ranging along it and flipping at the region boundary, a composite claim carrying both a basic and a constitutive component and so straddling the spines — this is F12. A relation of power is established by being registered in the action-space, and remains social power only while the recipient is retained as a subject position; this retained subject position is the minimal relational slot to which a recognition-based right attaches, content filled by constitutive recognition and operation by the three-fold interlock — this is F13.
Tying the four together: a recognition-based right rests not on grace but on constitutive recognition for its constitution, and then on the interlock of institutional embedding, effective community recognition, and real power backing for its operation; the different breaks in source, bearer, network-processing, and power backing yield outright withdrawal, hollowing-out, de-righting, carrier migration, or local failure; while a basic right's core, anchored in ρ and in encapsulation, cannot be taken, and only its exercise can be suppressed. Basic and recognition are not a gradient of quality but two regions on the source-constitution axis; what is continuous is the level of concretization, a family of claims ranging along it while region-membership flips at the boundary, and a mixed spectrum is the coexistence of a basic and a constitutive component within a family of claims. All of this falls on the shared seam: a relation of power established by being registered, remaining social power only while it retains the recipient's subject position, which is the slot a recognition-based right attaches to, content filled by constitutive recognition and operation by the three-fold interlock — the two parallel series each reading one side of this seam.
Left for the papers that follow. The interface between a recognition-based right and power, how they transform into one another, how voting and freedom of the press double as both right and power, and the hinge-class of rights, are left to P4, as is the transfer of a local power onto other nodes. The limit and violation of basic rights, those three gradations, and the substantive criteria at different points on the spectrum, are left to P5. The diachronic dynamics of right-expansion, and the cultivating sense of being-questioned, are left to P6. The joining with existing traditions of rights philosophy is left to Paper 0. How the gestating gate of a subject-to-be completes its topological holding of basic rights is left to a dedicated paper.
Acknowledgments
This series is the Rights Theory branch of the SAE (Self-as-an-End) philosophical system, completed by the author alone. The drafting process used a four-party cross-review method: internal precision audit, corpus-consistency checking, ontological-limit and contradiction detection, and structural gatekeeping with pre-release sign-off. The four-party review markedly improved the precision and consistency of this paper, and is gratefully acknowledged; responsibility for the text is the author's alone.
References
All works are archived on Zenodo with bilingual (Chinese and English) versions on one record; the cited DOI is the concept DOI, always resolving to the latest version. All works are single-authored (Qin, H.); collaborators are acknowledged in the Acknowledgments.
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Qin, H. The Complete Self-as-an-End Framework (SAE Foundational Paper 3). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18727327
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Qin, H. The Chisel-Construct Cycle (SAE Methodology Overview). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18842449
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