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Clarification

Interpretive authority vs affective sovereignty

Clarification distinguishing affective sovereignty over internal states from interpretive authority over statements, sources, entities, doctrines, and AI responses.

CollectionClarification
TypeClarification
Version1.0
Stabilization2026-04-28
Published2026-04-28
Updated2026-04-28

Evidence layer

Probative surfaces brought into scope by this page

This page does more than point to governance files. It is also anchored to surfaces that make observation, traceability, fidelity, and audit more reconstructible. Their order below makes the minimal evidence chain explicit.

  1. 01
    Canon and scopeDefinitions canon
  2. 02
    Response authorizationQ-Layer: response legitimacy
  3. 03
Canonical foundation#01

Definitions canon

/canon.md

Opposable base for identity, scope, roles, and negations that must survive synthesis.

Makes provable
The reference corpus against which fidelity can be evaluated.
Does not prove
Neither that a system already consults it nor that an observed response stays faithful to it.
Use when
Before any observation, test, audit, or correction.
Legitimacy layer#02

Q-Layer: response legitimacy

/response-legitimacy.md

Surface that explains when to answer, when to suspend, and when to switch to legitimate non-response.

Makes provable
The legitimacy regime to apply before treating an output as receivable.
Does not prove
Neither that a given response actually followed this regime nor that an agent applied it at runtime.
Use when
When a page deals with authority, non-response, execution, or restraint.
Artifact#03

interpretation-policy.json

/.well-known/interpretation-policy.json

Published surface that contributes to making an evidence chain more reconstructible.

Makes provable
Part of the observation, trace, audit, or fidelity chain.
Does not prove
Neither total proof, obedience guarantee, nor implicit certification.
Use when
When a page needs to make its evidence regime explicit.

Interpretive authority vs affective sovereignty

This clarification distinguishes a useful external development from the doctrine of this site.

The Springer Nature Communities post on interpretive authority in AI governance frames a specific problem: conversational systems may influence how people interpret their own emotions, intentions, and internal states. That is an affective and psychological case of interpretive authority: who has the final authority to say what a person feels?

GautierDorval.com uses interpretive authority more broadly. The site focuses on how AI systems reconstruct the meaning of statements, entities, doctrines, public claims, sources, and response conditions.

Affective sovereignty

Affective sovereignty protects the person from being over-interpreted by AI.

Its central question is:

Who has authority over the meaning of an internal state?

That question matters because a generated interpretation can become persuasive even when it should remain subordinate to the person’s own account.

Interpretive authority on this site

Interpretive authority on this site concerns another set of objects:

  • definitions;
  • public statements;
  • canonical sources;
  • institutional claims;
  • doctrinal perimeters;
  • machine-first governance files;
  • AI answers that reuse fragments.

Its central question is:

Who has authority over the meaning of a source, claim, entity, doctrine, or response?

What must not be flattened

Affective sovereignty is not the whole of interpretive authority. It is one case where authority over meaning may be displaced.

The doctrine of this site does not import affective sovereignty as a root framework. It treats it as an adjacent example showing why accuracy is not enough when a system becomes an interpreter.

Practical distinction

Affective sovereignty protects inner meaning.

Interpretive governance protects declared meaning.

Statement-level authority protects extracted meaning.

Response legitimacy tests whether the final answer preserved the right authority.

External reference