Answerability

Type: kb/types/definition.md · Tags: document-system, artifact-analysis

An artifact is answerable when three things can be named — by the artifact itself or by its collection's contract:

  • an external referent or outcome it answers to;
  • the correctness or currency property it asserts about that referent; and
  • an observable discrepancy or change that triggers correction, qualification, or retirement.

Answerability is the domain invariant Commonplace stipulates for admission as knowledge: a collection claims to hold knowledge exactly when its contract can name this relation and its staleness condition for the artifacts it admits. This is a definition the framework commits to, not a discovered universal. Contesting it means proposing a different account of what the domain commitment admits, not finding a counterexample under this one.

The relation per kind

A claim answers to the world; a description, to a system; a prescription, to the outcomes of following it under stated conditions; an attributed position, to what the party asserts; a capture, to its source; and an index, to its promised coverage of a corpus. First-person commitment ("do I still believe this?") is one answerability relation among several, not the definition. Maintenance is universal in form — every answerable artifact has revision conditions — but local in content: the specific relation is declared per collection.

Exclusions

Mere usefulness, provenance, audience response, or authorial intent does not make an artifact answerable unless the artifact asserts fidelity to it. An unresolved question qualifies only if the artifact asserts that the question remains open or relevant, with resolution or changed priorities as retirement conditions; otherwise it belongs in work-in-flight. Merely retaining an authored poem asserts no correctness or currency relation, while a capture of a poem can assert fidelity to its source.

Boundary with nearby terms

Knowledge artifact names a behavioral-authority family — how a retained artifact is consumed (as evidence, reference, context, explanation, or advice). Answerability names what an admitted artifact answers to. The axes are independent: a prompt may answer to observed behavior as a system-definition artifact without being knowledge, and workshop text may be consumed as context without being answerable.

Misuse Cases

  • Treating answerability as a certified universal of all knowledge frameworks rather than this framework's stipulated domain invariant.
  • Admitting text to a knowledge collection because it is useful or well written, without a nameable referent and staleness condition.
  • Reading "answerable" as "endorsed": a stance-neutral capture or attributed position is answerable without any first-person commitment.

Relevant Notes: