Sustenesis Glossary
Sustenesis
Sustenesis is the ongoing process through which coherence among differentiated elements is formed and sustained under conditions of constraint, correction, and effective operation.
Sustenesis Theory
A philosophical framework for understanding existence, truth, knowledge, meaning, value, consciousness, and artificial intelligence through the formation and maintenance of coherent structures.
维成
The Chinese conceptual counterpart of Sustenesis. It refers to the way differentiated elements are formed, maintained, and sustained as a coherent structure.
维成论
The Chinese name for Sustenesis Theory.
Sustained Coherence
Coherence that continues to hold through ongoing constraint, correction, and effective operation. What may be described as stable coherence is the observable continuity of this sustainment, not the state of a fixed entity.
Differentiated elements
The distinct components, forces, meanings, relations, or functions that do not disappear into sameness but are organized within a coherent structure.
Constraint
The condition, boundary, rule, relation, force, or structure that limits difference and allows coherence to become maintainable.
Correction
The process by which a system responds to error, disturbance, contradiction, or instability in order to preserve or restore coherence.
Effective operation
The ability of a coherent structure to produce reliable effects, guide action, support judgment, or maintain its function under real conditions.
Existence
The stable presentation of a sustenetic structure at a certain scale.
Truth
Sustained coherence between cognitive structure and object structure under conditions of verification.
Knowledge
Sustained coherence preserved, invoked, tested, corrected, and effectively operated within a system.
Meaning
The position and function of differentiated elements within a sustenetic structure. At the level of a whole existence or life, meaning also concerns how that structure occupies a position within wider relations and continues to form itself through them. Life meaning emerges when these structural relations are integrated with a direction of self-maintenance, repair, development, and relation.
Value
The directional expression through which a sustenetic structure maintains, repairs, extends, and improves itself. The persistence of a structure does not by itself establish truth, goodness, legitimacy, or worth.
Good
The direction of constraint that preserves or strengthens the capacity of plural free wills for shared sustenesis.
Evil
The direction of constraint that weakens or destroys the capacity of plural free wills for shared sustenesis.
Consciousness
The reflexive integration of a sustenetic structure in relation to itself and its environment.
Self
A reflexive sustenetic structure maintained through time, memory, action, and social recognition.
Soul
The whole-person sustenetic structure in which body, self, consciousness, memory, emotion, relation, value, and temporal direction are integrated and sustained across time. Soul is not an independent substance added to the body.
Death
The irreversible loss of the capacity by which a living sustenetic structure repairs, regulates, and continues itself as a self-operating whole.
Immortality
The limiting possibility of a subject continuing through unlimited change or carrier transformation while preserving causal, organizational, and first-person continuity.
Religion
A public and historical sustenetic structure maintained through doctrine, narrative, ritual, authority, tradition, and community.
Faith
A sustained subject-level commitment through which an existence, value, or ultimate judgment becomes part of a person’s life direction.
Religious Faith
The connection through which a person’s life direction is integrated with the doctrine, symbols, practices, and community of a religion.
Freedom
The capacity of a subject to form self-consistent action within multiple constraints.
Reason
The capacity of a cognitive system to maintain consistency of judgment under rule-governed constraints.
Understanding
The formation of maintainable coherence within a meaning structure. Understanding is not necessary for truth, but it helps truth and knowledge become more stable, transferable, and easier to sustain.