answerability

Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion

Editorial synthesis · provisional

Definition

Answerability names responsibility for actions and worlds one helps enact, and also the exposure of knowledge or representation to correction by a resistant world. Ethical duties vary with knowledge, role and effective control, rather than causal involvement alone. Epistemic corrigibility and embodied stakes are related uses, not evidence that every responsive system bears moral responsibility or that responsibility ends with assigning blame.

Explanation

AB links responsibility to reasons-guided acts and to the worlds participants help sustain. Its native note identifies concentrated answerability as the author's addition to Stengers's distributed-agency account. PB assigns duties by knowledge, role and leverage, while separately requiring metaphysical claims to answer to science. RB1 develops scientific answerability without making Science sovereign. RB2 joins embodied objectivity with responsibility for forms sustained or foreclosed, without making freedom absolute.

RB3 distinguishes individual, role, institutional and systemic responsibilities, and separates past fault from present repair capacity. Its AI discussion distinguishes representing suffering, undergoing it and answering for decisions involving it. Institutionally mediated correction does not give a model its own vulnerability. First-person suffering is not required for understanding; the stronger thesis about embodied stakes remains explicitly contested.

Scope and attribution

All five books have direct local support. Causal efficacy and embodiment alone confer neither moral authorship nor care.

AB — The Actual Book

Develops responsibility for reasons-guided acts and unequal duties for enacted worlds. Abstractions also answer to consequences. A causally consequential model does not thereby become a moral author.

Occurrence locators: 7, 36, 69, 71, 88, 90, 91, 102, 103, 113, 115, 124, 137, 139, 149, 151, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 176, 186, 187, 188, 192, 196, 197, 198, 199, 208, 209; Glossary: 225; Thinker register: 230; Notes: 246, 247, 248, 249; Reading recommendations: 253; Authorship account: 274, 275, 276; Appendix: 278, 280, 282, 286, 287, 289.

PB — The Possible Book

Allocates ethical answerability by knowledge, role and leverage; separately requires metaphysics to answer to the best available sciences.

Occurrence locators: 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 63, 64, 65, 96, 104, 105, 106, 107, 127, 156; Reproduced AI exchange: 18; Reproduced historical essay: 201.

RB1 — The Real Book, Volume I: The Possible Is Real

Scientific achievements constrain metaphysics through exposure to a world capable of refusal, without installing Science as an ontological sovereign.

Occurrence locators: 3, 4, 139, 251.

RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being

Embodied perspectives answer to one world. The ethical conclusion concerns forms sustained or foreclosed, without treating freedom as escape from law or history.

Occurrence locators: 111, 118, 126, 163, 166, 175, 191, 211, 225, 226, 292, 294, 295, 296.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

Separates layered responsibilities and fault from repair capacity. AI governance distinguishes distributed agency from unequal answerability; institutionally mediated correction is not a model's own vulnerability.

Occurrence locators: 1, 101, 115, 118, 128, 137, 148, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 166, 168, 170, 173, 174, 177, 180, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193, 195, 197, 198, 200, 201, 205, 207, 209, 210, 211, 212, 215, 220, 221, 222, 227, 230, 231, 234, 241, 242, 244, 246, 247, 252, 255, 259, 260, 263, 265, 266, 267, 270, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 284, 285, 287, 290, 292, 294, 295, 297, 299, 300, 302, 303, 304, 305, 308, 309, 310, 312, 313, 314, 318, 320, 321, 322, 324, 342, 343; Reproduced AI exchange: 401; Authorship account: 403, 405, 406; Case Regimes table: 323.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Domain-specific mechanisms and wider analogies remain distinguished. Original definitions retain their scope; local cross-references do not rewrite them. Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.