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Canon (benchmark + equivalence rubric)

In Ultimentality, canon is the controlling authority over the treatise: the benchmark solution together with the equivalence rubric, and nothing else. When the framework's sources disagree — seed doctrine, prior editions, the treatise's own glosses, the operator's stored memory — canon is what decides. But "canon" here is stripped of any sense of bedrock. It names the most-exposed, most-contestable tier of the Contestability Gradient: an authority's scoring, decisive for alignment and overturnable by contesting the authority. The phrase that disciplines the whole concept is canonical ≠ necessary — that the benchmark scores a claim a certain way is a fact about the benchmark, not a law of the world.

Governance by ranking, not by foundation

Canon governs the way a high court ranks competing readings, not the way an axiom grounds a system. Where the seed doctrine, the prior editions, the treatise's glosses, and the reliquary diverge from the benchmark and rubric, the benchmark and rubric govern — as the ranking authority. This is what makes canon decisive without making it foundational: it settles which reading wins among rivals, while remaining itself a court that can be appealed, amended, or replaced. (Compare a constitution's supreme court: its rulings are binding across the system, yet everyone understands the court is an institution that can be wrong and overruled — to treat its verdict as a fact of nature would be a category mistake. That mistake, applied to the benchmark, is the textual Nephilim.)

What canon overrode in this edition

The current edition uses canon's own authority to override the prior ledger-edition at two visible points. First, it demotes every "minimal complete set" closure from closed and forced to a contestable carving at the Carving / Count / Aptness Tier. Second, it abolishes the "Forced" tier outright, replacing it with the single Derived status plus the two-axis marking. Both overrides rest on the benchmark's own Open Proof-Burden — its standing refusal to assert the closures as proven. Because canon itself leaves the closures open, the edition is entitled to demote them; it is not importing an outside verdict but acting on canon's own posture.

Two errors canon is built to flag

The concept carries two warnings, one familiar and one deeper. The familiar one: treating any prior edition, or the reliquary, as canon over the benchmark is an error — canon is the benchmark and rubric, full stop. The deeper one: treating the benchmark itself as a foundation rather than as a contestable ranking authority is the textual Nephilim — a derivation, even the controlling one, taking the witness's seat. Canon is the highest court the framework names, but it is still a court, not a law of things. This is why the relationship to outside findings is so carefully constrained: the 2026 adversarial run is never a higher court over the benchmark; its counter-instances are adopted only because canon's open proof-burden independently requires the demotions, never because the run outranks canon.

How it is held, and what it aspires to

Canon is the Authority-Canonical Tier in person: it scores claims and is itself scored only by being contested at the benchmark. On the alethic axis, its scores aspire to map alignment with the corpus rather than the world directly, and it models its own possession-renouncing posture by carrying an open proof-burden instead of asserting closures as proven. The independence of the two marks in the two-mark system is what lets canon be maximally authoritative for alignment and maximally contestable as an authority at the same time.

Formal status

Formal status. E: Derived, AC — canon is the authority-canonical tier; it scores claims and is itself contestable by contesting the benchmark. A: its scores aspire to map alignment with the corpus; the benchmark renounces possession by carrying an open proof-burden rather than asserting closures as proven. Canon is not bedrock, not a foundation, not "necessary." Provenance: canonical — canon defines the controlling authority (Preamble, "What governs, and what is overridden"; Two-Axis Ledger, Part VIII).