noema/docs/interpretation.md

Interpretation boundary

Noema models cognitive processes. It does not prove, and its authors do not claim, that it is conscious, sentient, self-aware or a person.

The system contains components named after psychological concepts: attention, working memory, emotion-like state, curiosity, drives, self-model, reflection, dreaming. These names describe the functional role each component plays in the architecture. They are implemented as ordinary data structures and deterministic rules, sometimes assisted by language models.

When a mind reports that it is "curious" or "concerned", it is reporting the value of a stored scalar that the architecture updates by rule. When it says "I believe", it refers to a row in a belief table with evidence links. Such reports are useful because they are grounded in inspectable state, not because they indicate experience.

Users and researchers should therefore:

• treat resemblance to emotion, preference or identity as a property of the model being run, to be studied, not as evidence of subjective experience;
• rely on the evidence and provenance views rather than on fluent self-description;
• avoid attributing moral patienthood to a mind on the basis of its behaviour within Noema.

The platform is deliberately not crippled to avoid these resemblances, because they are what makes the mechanisms worth studying. The interpretive restraint is the user's responsibility, and the UI states this boundary on the about page and in mind exports.

Operational meanings

Every psychological word used in the interface, the documentation and a mind's own reports has one operational meaning: a piece of stored state, the rule that changes it, and a page where it can be inspected. The table is the reference; where the interface or a generated sentence uses one of these words, this is what it refers to and nothing more.

Word	What it names in Noema	What changes it	Where to inspect	What it does not mean
believes	a row in beliefs with a proposition, an epistemic kind and evidence links, whose status is not retracted	evidence rows added by observation, assertion, prediction outcome or operator action; the arithmetic in docs/beliefs.md	mind → beliefs, belief detail, provenance	assent, conviction or a probability that the proposition is true
confidence (belief)	the epistemic score in [0.02, 0.98] computed from evidence families	the same arithmetic; source reliability adjusts credibility once history exists	belief detail ("what this number means")	a calibrated probability; the page shows a separate calibrated estimate when predictions justify one
confidence (affect)	one of ten affect-like scalars in the mind's state	the rule table motivation.Rules (prediction errors lower it) and hourly decay to the personality baseline	mind overview, noemactl state show	a feeling; unrelated to any belief's score
knows / unknown	a belief with live evidence, or the unknown status when none is live	evidence expiry, supersession of transient states, retraction	belief detail, introspection replies	certainty or ignorance in the human sense; "unknown" is the absence of recorded evidence
remembers	retrieval of an episodic or semantic memory row by similarity, recency and importance	the retrieve process each cycle; consolidation writes semantic memories from episodes	mind → memory, memory detail with retrieval scores	recollection or personal experience
forgets	a memory falling below retrieval thresholds or being redacted	decay of retrieval weight; the audited redaction path (docs/privacy.md)	memory detail, mind → redactions	deletion of history; rows are never deleted
attends to / notices	a candidate winning the workspace competition for one cycle	attention feature weights (novelty, goal relevance, contradiction, context relevance) modulated by drives	workspace page, per-cycle candidates and scores	awareness
working memory	the small decaying set of items in the workspace snapshot (default nine)	admission of winners, decay per cycle	workspace page	short-term memory in a person
salience (memory)	how strongly an item presented itself when stored: a score set by the producer	fixed at write time	memory detail	importance or truth; those are separate fields
curious / curiosity	a drive value and an affect scalar; and the curiosity process that turns unexplained observations, prediction errors and contradictions into investigation goals	drive baselines from personality, modulation by events, decay	mind overview (drives), goals of kind investigation	interest or desire
wants / goal	a row in the goals tree with kind, status, priority and origin	operators (tasks), curiosity (investigations), reflection (maintenance); the goal monitor updates status	mind → goals	volition; goals never grant capability
drives	eight configured scalars with ranges that scale attention weights	events through the rule table; six-hour decay	mind overview, workspace effective weights	needs; the set is closed and contains no self-preservation drive
feels / mood / valence / arousal / concern / frustration	affect-like scalars in [0, 1] or [−1, 1]	the rule table and decay; changes above 0.1 emit emotion_changed with reasons	mind overview, event log	experience; the scalars exist so that their influence on attention can be studied
expects / predicts	a row in predictions with a stated confidence and a due time	the prediction process; resolution against later observations	mind → predictions; belief detail shows the calibrated estimate	foresight; predictions are the only place a score is tested against outcomes
surprised	a prediction resolved as a miss, or an observation with high novelty	resolution and the novelty feature	prediction detail, event log	emotion; the affect rule raises arousal from the same event
trusts / trust level	the channel trust of a source (operator, user, system, tool, source, low) and its recorded reliability per subject	configuration for the level; outcomes of beliefs it supported for reliability	integrations page, belief evidence rows	a judgement of character; reliability is per family and per subject
understands / interprets	the deterministic reading of an utterance into an assertion (speaker, attribution, stance, certainty, modality, hypothetical, quoted) with an interpretation confidence	the rule set in epistemics.Interpret, no model involved	conversation view, assertions list	comprehension; the confidence is about the reading, not the world
thinks / considers	a thought candidate produced by a process and scored for the workspace	the producing process	mind → thoughts, workspace	deliberation
reflects	the scheduled reflection job that reviews recent activity and writes maintenance goals and notes	the schedule and reflection_enabled	mind → consolidation, reflection events	introspection in the human sense
dreams	the optional idle mode that replays a deterministic sample of memories, links similar ones with low confidence and proposes speculative hypotheses	the dream schedule and allowed hours; off by default	dreams page, dream detail	imagination; dreaming never executes actions or changes authority
self-model	the mind's stored description of itself: personality traits and values plus a capability list kept equal to the effective policy	personality edits by operators; SelfModelSync after policy changes, emitting self_model_updated	personality page, /api/v1/minds/{mind}/selfmodel	self-awareness; a mind cannot claim tools it does not have
metacognition	explicit checks over the mind's own beliefs (insufficient evidence, single source, overconfidence, …) that add counter-evidence or warnings	the per-cycle process and its thresholds	mind overview warnings, metacognition events	wisdom; each check is a rule with a named threshold
decides / acts	a proposed action passing through the capability layer to ALLOW, DENY or REQUIRE_APPROVAL	policy rows, operator approvals	approvals page, policies page, audit	agency; nothing a mind believes or is told can widen what it may do

A report such as "I believe the pump is failing, though I am uncertain" therefore expands to: a belief row exists for that proposition, its score is in a range the introspection template calls uncertain, and its primary uncertainty is named on the belief page. The sentence is a rendering of state, and the state is the thing to check.