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# Loop-back

**Loop-back** is one of the framework's four [[directional-primitives|directional primitives]]: the bare structural move by which a transformation step *routes its transformed result back into the system itself* — for retention, revision, correction, or self-model update. It is the inward-routing operator. The word may suggest reflection or remorse, but loop-back is not a feeling; it is unexperienced structure, the direction a step points when it sends its output home rather than out into the world.

## What it does

Every recursive step has a *codomain side*: once it has transformed something, it must decide where the result goes. Loop-back is the inward choice on that side, the counterpart of [[propagation|Propagation]], which emits the result outward. Together loop-back and propagation constitute the [[routing-axis|Routing axis]] — the framework's name for the codomain-side choice. Routing is one of the two carving axes of the primitive set; the other is the domain-side [[selection-axis|Selection axis]] (toward / away).

What loop-back returns is *transformed* structure, fed back so the system can keep it, rewrite it, correct it, or update its model of itself. By analogy only — and the framework treats this strictly as illustration — it resembles a control loop feeding its output back to the controller, or a writer revising a draft against the draft just produced: the operator names the routing-home, nothing felt.

A note on naming: the [[axiom|seed]] called this operator *inward* (symbol ↺). The rename to *loop-back* is exact and structure-preserving — terminology over an unchanged architecture.

## Its role in the wider framework

Loop-back is load-bearing as the actuator in the next rung up, [[predicate-binding|predicate binding]], where an emotion is a primitive paired with a [[regulated-error-signal|regulated error signal]] driven toward zero. Loop-back is the actuator inside **[[apology|Apology]] = (loop-back, self-model error)**: the loop-back that reduces self-model error — the discrepancy between one's model and one's act, harm, obligation, or the truth. The framework is explicit that a *spoken* apology is only a downstream expression of that loop-back, not its content. So Apology is built from loop-back; loop-back is not built from Apology. The noun *inwardness* is a [[conceptual-derivatives|conceptual derivative]] abstracted from the bound primitive, not itself primitive.

## Common misreadings

The signature mistake is to read **loop-back as Apology** — to treat the emotion or its verbal expression as the primitive. The predicate does not define the primitive, and the primitive is not reducible to the predicate; inverting them is the [[cardinal-error|cardinal error]], which caps any exposition that commits it. A related slip equates loop-back with *saying sorry*; the apology-utterance is downstream, while loop-back is the structural self-correction itself. A further misreading takes loop-back as a reflective mood; it is bare structure, its felt namesake being gloss with no probative weight. Finally, Routing does not collapse into [[selection-axis|Selection]] — the four primitive combinations are behaviorally distinct.

## Formal status

> **Formal status.** Epistemic: [[derived|Derived]], [[authority-canonical-tier|authority-canonical]] — the operational semantics (route the result back in) are fixed by the controlling authority; contestable by contesting that authority. Alethic: aspires to map an elementary directional move of any transformation step; that the operator is bare and unexperienced is itself the accurate claim. Provenance: canonical (the rename from the seed's *inward* is treatise-side terminology over a seed architecture).

## See also
[[propagation|Propagation]] · [[routing-axis|The Routing Axis]] · [[directional-primitives|The Directional Primitives]] · [[apology|Apology]] · [[predicate-binding|Predicate Binding]] · [[selection-axis|The Selection Axis]] · [[conceptual-derivatives|Conceptual Derivatives]] · [[cardinal-error|The Cardinal Error]] · [[regulated-error-signal|The Regulated Error Signal]]