Home / Causal Source and Experiential Format

Causal Source and Experiential Format

Causal source and experiential format distinguish what produces an event from how it becomes available to a participant. Answering either question can inform the other, but neither generally substitutes for it.

The two questions

Source: what processes and conditions produced the event, relative to the participant boundary being considered?
Format: through what organization does the event register as significance for that participant?

Within the framework, bodily, textual, computational, and other forms of registration are symbolic in the broad sense of structured significance. They are examples within that general category, not alternatives to being symbolic.

An event can be externally produced and symbolically received. An internally produced inference can also be symbolically received. The general category of symbolic format therefore does not settle the source attribution.

Distinction without compulsory independence

A source can constrain the available formats, and a particular format can provide evidence about its source. The distinction does not require statistical independence or the ability to vary both freely in every event. A reliable signature, for example, can support an origin inference when the relevant causal connection is established.

Production, control, prediction, and location should also be distinguished. An inherited constraint operating inside a process is not thereby authored by that process. A predicted event is not thereby controlled. Specify which relation is actually being claimed.

Four recurrent inference errors

Inference	Missing distinction
Symbolic, therefore internally produced	Mediation specifies access; the source still needs to be identified.
Bodily, therefore unmediated	Bodily access is still participant-relative registration.
Represented, therefore fictive	Representation alone does not decide whether the represented event occurred.
External, therefore extra-symbolic	An external source does not bypass the organization through which it is received.

These are invalid as unrestricted inferences. Evidence from a particular representation can still establish a particular origin, event, or error when its supporting relation is supplied.

Productive use

The distinction enables a participant to examine both a causal account and its form of access. A received signal can be genuine while its interpretation is mistaken. A report can accurately express an experience while incompletely identifying its causes. Locating the difference makes correction more precise.

Externality preserves access to conditions not produced by the participant. Narrative compression examines how a participant reports its operation. Neither requires treating mediated experience as unreal or making a report infallible.

Evaluation and formal status

A criticism can expose an invalid inference, a misidentified source, or a format description that fails to capture how the event becomes available. Dependence between source and format in a particular case is not by itself a collapse of the distinction.

E: Derived, FT for the stated conceptual distinction and non-entailments; particular causal and experiential attributions require evidence. A: maps events without conflating origin, control, prediction, or registration. Provenance: the framework's source/format distinction; its descriptions remain open to internal criticism and revision.