Four frameworks for human capability.

Epistemic Agency

Epistemic agency is a person’s standing as the author of their own understanding: the ability to weigh evidence, to locate a claim’s source and interest, and to hold a belief for reasons they can state and would revise.

Governing question

Who decides what is true for you, and by what method?

Components

1.1Source discernment

Identifying where a claim comes from, who benefits from its being believed, and what it would take to check it.

1.2Reasoned dissent

Disagreeing with authority, consensus or tradition on stated grounds, in a form others can examine.

1.3Revision under evidence

Changing one’s mind when the evidence changes, and being able to say what would cause it to change.

1.4Intellectual self-trust

Enough confidence in one’s own reasoning to use it in public, without mistaking confidence for proof.

Presupposed by MG/FW-02 Intellectual Infrastructure

Intellectual Infrastructure

Intellectual infrastructure is the set of institutions and shared resources through which a community records what it knows, argues about it, and passes it on, so that thought accumulates instead of restarting with each generation.

Governing question

What must exist for ideas to outlive the people who had them?

Components

2.1Archives and records

Durable, accessible memory: the documents, oral histories and data a community can return to and contest.

2.2Shared vocabularies

Concepts precise enough to argue with, including concepts drawn from a community’s own languages and traditions.

2.3Venues of argument

Journals, seminars, clubs and public forums where claims are put forward, criticised and refined.

2.4Transmission

Teaching, mentorship and editorial practice that carry methods, not only conclusions, to the next cohort of thinkers.

Presupposed by MG/FW-03 Applied Human Capability

Applied Human Capability

Applied human capability is what a person can actually do, repeatedly and well, in the settings where it matters: knowledge that has been turned by practice and habit into dependable performance and sound judgement.

Governing question

Can it be done, again and again, where it counts?

Components

3.1Deliberate practice

Structured repetition aimed at the edge of present ability, with a clear standard of what better looks like.

3.2Feedback

Honest, timely information about results, from people and from the work itself, used to correct course.

3.3Habit and discipline

The routines that make good performance the default rather than the exception.

3.4Judgement in context

Knowing which rule applies, when none does, and how to act well when the situation is new.

Presupposed by MG/FW-04 Generative Capacity

Generative Capacity

Generative capacity is the ability of a person, institution or society to bring into being knowledge, forms and organisations that did not exist before, grounded in what it has inherited and answerable to its own needs.

Governing question

What can this society make that did not exist before?

Components

4.1Grounded originality

New work that knows its inheritance: building from a tradition rather than in ignorance of one.

4.2Synthesis

Combining ideas from different fields, languages and histories into something usable and new.

4.3Institution-building

Turning a good idea into an organisation, a method or a body of work that can run without its founder.

4.4Stewardship

Maintaining, correcting and handing on what has been made, so that each generation starts further along.