Reference terms
AIDE Lexicon
A guide to the distinctions that make complex situations easier to examine together.
Terms are listed alphabetically. Each definition explains how AIDE uses the term; it does not settle every wider debate about the word.
Why the words matter
Some differences are too important to leave implicit.
Complex inquiry becomes confused when a theory, a method, a system, a decision, and the evidence for a claim are treated as if they were the same kind of thing. The differences disappear, along with the questions those differences make possible.
The Lexicon gives those differences names. It helps a visitor distinguish a field from an interpretation, a structural implication from a prediction, agency from output quality, and a proposed framework from established evidence.
- AIDE
- Institution
AIDE Enterprises: the institution maintaining AIDE Research, Governed Cognition, systems, and knowledge practices.
- AIDE Research
- Research portfolio
The institutional portfolio through which AIDE maintains distinct active research programs, frameworks, methods, implementations, and evaluation work. Its members do not share the same type or evidence status.
- AIDE Systems
- Active implementations
AIDE’s active systems and development environments for inquiry, analysis, cognitive support, and knowledge stewardship. Their operational use can inform refinement and evaluation; it does not by itself validate the theories or frameworks they may draw on.
- Agency
- CSO dimension
In Cognitive Systems Observability, the retained ability of a system to decide and act effectively toward its authorized goals as conditions change.
- Cognitive AIDEs
- System class
Role-specific cognitive support systems for reasoning, research, analytics, and writing. They are designed to aid human work without replacing accountable judgment.
- Cognitive Systems Observability (CSO)
- Active research line
A proposed standards architecture within AIDE Research for determining whether adaptive cognitive systems retain the conditions they need to decide and act effectively toward their authorized goals over time.
- Evidence Integration
- Analytical practice
Bringing relevant sources and evidence into a structural analysis while keeping evidence distinct from interpretation and leaving genuine uncertainty visible.
- Governed Cognition
- Integrating practice
AIDE’s approach to accountable human–AI inquiry: keep purpose, authority, evidence, constraints, and revision explicit enough for human judgment and responsible action.
- Human–AI Compact
- Normative foundation
AIDE’s ten principles for responsible and accountable human–AI collaboration. It establishes the authority, evidence, ambiguity, proportion, traceability, and contestability conditions that govern the work.
- Human authority
- Operating principle
The principle that people retain explicit and final authority over purpose, interpretation, judgment, approval, and consequential decisions.
- Knowledge stewardship
- Infrastructure and practice
Maintaining a body of knowledge as it evolves: keeping artifacts, decisions, sources, and changes connected and available for review.
- Structural Analysis
- Method
An AIDE method for representing a complex situation as a Structural Cognitive Field and interpreting its constraints, tensions, forces, dynamics, and possible branches before a decision is made.
- Structural Cognitive Field (SCF)
- Analytical model
The structured representation used in Structural Analysis and a shared grammar for collaborative reasoning. In its core form, it includes elements, relations, constraints, tensions, ambiguities, and implications.
- Structural Cognition Theory (SCT)
- Positioned theory
A proposed theory that cognitive situations can be represented and interpreted as structured fields. It informs Structural Analysis and parts of AIDE’s cognitive architecture; its broader value remains under examination.
- Structural implications
- Interpretive output
What may follow from the way a field is represented. They are not predictions, proof of causation, or decisions.
- Structured Reasoning
- Active research program
A research program within AIDE Research. It asks whether a well-structured representation can produce more reliable, durable, and actionable understanding through shared inquiry, Structural Cognition Theory, Structural Cognitive Fields, Structural Analysis, and associated systems.
Orientation
Use the map to see how the terms relate.
The lexicon defines terms individually. The Architecture map shows how they relate without collapsing their roles, evidence status, or human-authority boundaries.