capture of the conditions of judgment

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

Capture of the conditions of judgment occurs when a regime controls or degrades the evidence, measures, expertise and avenues of appeal through which its own effects could count against it. Contrary evidence may be filtered out, recoded or prevented from producing correction. The harm is second-order: damage to the conditions for recognizing and repairing wrongs, without requiring every observer to be deceived or every judgment to disappear.

Explanation

AB locates capture in the arrangements that make a regime answerable, not merely in a mistaken belief or an isolated bad decision. Its reported Horizon example illustrates the institutional authority that technical records can acquire when people’s challenges cannot effectively revise the official account.

RB3 develops the distinction through informational environments and Floridi’s infraethical vocabulary, while explicitly separating this derivative informational sense from ontological in-formation. Evidence and appeal must remain sufficiently independent to permit a regime’s consequences to count against it. Visibility of harm alone is not enough.

PB states capture as a red line and gives a separate formal treatment of rigidity and missing corrective exits. The source marks that mathematical construction as limited, not an empirical diagnosis or proof of ethical obligation. Reflexive revision must also preserve correction rather than authorize unilateral removal of it.

Scope and attribution

Preserve the source’s specific second-order concept, without expanding it to all institutional influence on judgment.

AB — The Actual Book

Control of evidence and appeal can prevent a regime’s effects from correcting it.

Occurrence locators: 153, 154, 163, 166, 168, 172, 183, 191, 192, 193, 198; Glossary: 225; Notes: 249; Appendix: 280, 281, 284.

PB — The Possible Book

The substantive prohibition and the bounded formal model retain separate authority.

Occurrence locators: 38, 64, 65, 105, 106, 143, 155, 156, 175, 178, 179, 180, 181.

RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations

Second-order harm concerns the ecology of correction, with Floridi’s informational register explicitly qualified.

Occurrence locators: 174, 178, 179, 182, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 199, 223, 230, 235, 241, 242, 248, 249, 250, 259, 260, 261, 262, 266, 267, 272, 275, 279, 280, 281, 286, 287, 293, 294, 297, 298, 299, 309, 311, 313, 318.

Background used in the editorial explanation

Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.