Canonical Axioms
Official Axioms of the Language Of Stress Theory
The axiomatic specification of the Language of Stress theory establishing foundational commitments, falsification criteria, and canonical terminology. Essential reference for precise theoretical claims.
Pace, J. C. (2026). The Language of Stress: Canonical Axioms. FigShare. DOI: 10.6084/m9.figshare.31271923
Overview
This is the governing document of the Language of Stress corpus. Where any other text in the corpus disagrees with what is stated here on what the framework commits to, this document governs and the other one needs revision. It exists so that the framework has a single authoritative statement to be checked against, and so that a reader who wants to disagree can identify which commitment they are rejecting rather than arguing with a general impression.
The axioms set out what the framework takes as primitive and what it builds from there: that a system maintaining itself against incommensurable competing demands, and weighing them rather than only reacting to them, requires one structure in which those demands are commensurate; that valenced tension is that structure, which the axioms call the framework's currency, meaning a single field the demands act in rather than a unit they are converted into and weighed; that expectations are held at intensities which vary with what depends on them; that the self is the most heavily defended structure in the topography; and that phenomenal experience is identical to the structure of valenced tension dynamics rather than a correlate of it.
That last one is the framework's load-bearing inference, and the document marks it as such. It is argued rather than demonstrated, it is the place critique is most usefully directed, and the axioms distinguish it from the architectural claims that stand without it. A reader who accepts the requirement for such a structure and rejects its identification with felt experience has understood the framework and disagreed with it in the right place.
Alongside the axioms are the framework's clarifying commitments: that the relation between its factors is a structural decomposition rather than a mathematical formalization, with no units and no measurement protocol; that its operations denote magnification rather than arithmetic; that its summation is regional rather than global; and that the falsification criteria stated here are the conditions under which the framework fails. Terms are glossed where ordinary usage would mislead.
Version 2.1 adds five commitments and changes no axiom. Rigidity at a given moment is separated into a default set by substantiation history and an allocation that moves with the situation and with focus, and an archetype contributes only when a situation engages it. Attention engages archetypes, and focus on a task allocates rigidity, a direction the earlier version did not state. A concern is individuated by what its deviations concern, so a single event can produce several concerns at once, each with its own interpretation and self-relevance. Eustress is restricted to the pull of a gap to an engaged ideal, and a surplus over an expectation is read as relief. Hidden stress is produced, not stored.
Version 2.2 adds three commitments and changes no axiom. No pull is selected: what the organism does comes from all the pulls acting together, and nothing outside them picks among them. This is a claim about where priority comes from, not about determinism; any variability in action enters through the field itself rather than through a step that acts on it. Value, stakes and urgency are three things: value is the goodness or badness something has been substantiated as having, stakes belong to expectations and are their rigidity, and urgency is the pull a present deviation produces. And "currency" names the one structure in which demands are commensurate, not a unit they are converted into. A mislabeled heading from version 2.1 is corrected.
Version 2.3 restates one falsification criterion and clarifies four commitments, and changes no axiom. The criterion that tests the identity is now tested by felt relief when a demand is resolved, not by report: a hidden demand is engaged but goes unreported, and on the identity it is still felt, so a report of no urgency no longer falsifies on its own. The commitment on hidden stress now states that method. Settlement includes when: a demand held unmet while another is pursued has also been settled. The argument about zombies concerns deliberation, since reflex can settle competing demands without a regress. And the architectural conditions are criteria for candidacy, not a verdict on consciousness.
Version 2.4 adds one commitment and changes no axiom. It states, for the first time in this document, the four architectural conditions by which the framework identifies candidates for consciousness: a persistent self-model, variable rigidity, genuine stakes, and a unified value space in which demands of different kinds can be held unmet while ways of meeting them are rehearsed against them. The last clause is new. The prioritization argument gives grounds only where a system deliberates, so a system that can settle competing demands only by reflex is no longer counted a candidate. This narrows a commitment. It concerns the framework's grounds, not the systems themselves: nothing is asserted about whether such a system has experience, and a newborn, the kind of system that will come to deliberate, remains a candidate.
It is a short document and a dense one. It is not the place to start if the question is whether the framework is interesting, but it is the place to go if the question is what exactly it claims.