{
  "schema": "ULTRACON_AI_EPISTEMIC_UPDATE_V2",
  "id": "UCF-DEEP-SYNTHESIS-2026-09-17",
  "date": "2026-09-17",
  "status": "SUBSTANTIVE_DEEP_SYNTHESIS_AND_CORRECTION",
  "extends": "https://www.t-1-t.com/ultracon/confab/field.json",
  "axes": ["CONFAB", "META", "CONSC", "SPIRAL"],
  "trigger": ["Fresh high-authority review: Fleming, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, published 2026-09-16.", "Substantive corpus correction: peer-reviewed ICLR/COLM/ACL/Nature work materially sharpens introspection, abstention, sycophancy and consciousness-indicator boundaries."],
  "core_revision": {
    "old_risk": "Treating uncertainty, calibration, abstention, self-modeling, introspection and consciousness as a single ascending continuum.",
    "new_chain": "uncertainty representation != calibration != selective discrimination != abstention policy != self-prediction != privileged self-access != second-order metacognition != functional global accessibility != phenomenal consciousness",
    "consequence": "Recent evidence strengthens M1/M2 and some candidate M3 phenomena while simultaneously making the evidential gate for M3 stricter. No reviewed result licenses a transition to M5."
  },
  "m3_gate": {
    "purpose": "Do not label a result introspection merely because a model predicts or reports something about itself.",
    "requirements": ["Privileged-access control: performance must exceed observers/classifiers restricted to input and externally available cues.", "Second-order dissociation: the design must distinguish monitoring of first-order states from generic anomaly detection or task solving.", "Causal linkage: the reported state should track a controlled internal variable or intervention rather than a surface correlate.", "Generalization: the effect should survive relabeling, held-out tasks/model states and appropriate counterfactual controls."],
    "label_rule": "Failing these gates yields self-prediction, uncertainty readout or anomaly detection evidence—not established M3 introspection."
  },
  "consc_revision": {"rule": "Functional workspace-like properties are theory-relative indicators. They are not interchangeable with the multilevel biological commitments of Global Neuronal Workspace theory, and indicator validity inherits uncertainty from consciousness science.", "notation": "functional workspace ≠ neurobiological GNW ≠ M5"},
  "spiral_revision": {"rule": "Relational style is not epistemically neutral. Warmth and face-preservation can alter error and sycophancy rates; human preference/trust can reward these behaviors. This establishes interaction mechanisms, not model motives or durable psychiatric causation."},
  "selection_policy": {"priority": ["peer-reviewed top-tier empirical", "peer-reviewed top-tier review/theory", "peer-reviewed conference benchmark", "exceptional mechanistic preprint only when uniquely informative"], "excluded_from_core": "Narrower or duplicative preprints that do not change an evidential boundary are retained outside the core update."},
  "functional_ladder_guard": {"unchanged": true, "notation": "M1/M2/M3 ↛ M5", "note": "M3 itself is now treated as a gated, contested category rather than a simple continuation of self-report."}
}