Formalises the limit imposed by an observation interface: downstream conceptual change, computation or adaptive inquiry cannot recover distinctions the interface does not transmit. Develops discrimination profiles and approximate-closure bounds, extends the analysis to quantum channels, and examines implications for quantum error correction, post-selection and proposals…
Peter Kahl · Lex et Ratio
Publications
Research in quantum information, philosophy of physics, epistemology and scientific representation, with related work on technological capability and innovation governance.
2026
-
What Conceptual Change Cannot Recover: Interface Closure, Epistemic Recoupling and Representational Sealing -
The Inside of Generatedness: A Theory of Representational Sealing Develops Representational Sealing Theory (ReST) by distinguishing reference to a target, representation of that target and certification of representational adequacy. Where a target is identified by a role rather than individuated under the governing representational law, adequacy may obtain without being certifiable from within that…
-
Blind by Design: Quantum Error Correction, Functional Incompatibility and the Value of Evidence Distinguishes evidence overlooked by a model, evidence obtainable through a different measurement, and evidence inaccessible to any inquiry that preserves a protected quantum function. Uses quantum error correction, coherent-noise sign blindness and decoder misspecification to examine when missing information is a correctable limitation and when…
-
Research Security Begins Upstream: Capability retention, research policy and national security Argues that research security must consider not only hostile access to existing knowledge but also the domestic capacity to reproduce strategically important expertise. Proposes a threshold based on functional significance and the time needed to regenerate lost capability relative to warning time, with implications for…
-
The Other Control Dilemma: Recognition Lag and the Answerable Governance of Capability in Layered Technological Systems Examines recognition lag in layered technological systems: the period during which a binding technological constraint has moved but institutional evaluation and resource allocation have not caught up. Distinguishes constraint migration, perception, confirmability and allocative response, drawing on semiconductors, AI compute and quantum computing.
-
China, Europe and The Frontier's Paradox: Why Institutionalising the Recognition of Capability Can Become an Epistemic Trap Develops a comparative account of how institutions charged with recognising capability can shape the very capabilities they later evaluate. Drawing on Chinese and European historical and contemporary cases, argues that recognition systems risk self-validation unless their standards remain open to correction by evidence they initially…
-
The History of a Change of Mind: Why Thinking It Through Does Not Establish Authorship Argues that a reasoned change of mind does not, by itself, establish authorship of the revision. Whether a revision is answerably one's own also depends on the history of authority over the operative frame within which alternatives were identified and assessed. Connects epistemic agency with…
-
Who Governs the Exchange Rate? Recognition, Conversion, and a Constitutional Question Nobody Has Asked Investigates how recognition granted by one institution is converted into advantage in another. Identifies admissibility and conversion rules as sites of evaluative power, and examines how concentration of that power can distort the recognition of new capability and constrain institutional correction.
-
Standards That Can Lose: An Epistemic-Fiduciary Constitution for the University Proposes a governance model under which academic recognition standards remain open to defeat by later evidence through an independent route. Connects the credibility of research evaluation to the ability to identify and correct errors in the standards by which expertise and capability are judged.
-
Sealed Recognition in Innovation Governance: Avowability and the Structural Asymmetry of Standard-Reopening Examines institutional recognition systems that can repeatedly revise their criteria without acknowledging why earlier criteria failed. Develops the concept of sealed recognition and the asymmetry between revising a standard and making its errors avowable, using innovation-governance cases from Britain and China.
-
Answerable Generativity in Innovation Governance: The Constitutional Grammar of Lawful Standard-Reopening Asks how public institutions can revise the standards used to recognise emerging capability without abandoning legal accountability. Specifies conditions for bounded, reviewable standard-reopening and connects institutional adaptability with the need to reconstruct who authorised evaluative change and on what grounds.
-
Recognising New Capability in Innovation Governance: Evaluative-Layer Generativity and the Answerability Trade-off — Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Britain Compares how institutions in Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Britain recognise technological capability that does not yet fit established standards of expertise, risk or public value. Develops evaluative-layer generativity as the capacity to revise recognition criteria while retaining answerability for the resulting decisions.
-
How Continuity Distinguishes Autonomy from Agency in Agentic AI Distinguishes operational autonomy from agency in artificial systems, arguing that competent, adaptive behaviour is insufficient for responsibility-relevant agency without the appropriate form of continuity. The peer-reviewed article develops a structural account of how agency attribution differs from task performance and system autonomy.
-
Evaluative Sovereignty: Reviewability and the Constitutional Limits of a Digital Sovereignty Strategy Argues that digital sovereignty requires more than control of infrastructure or data: public authorities must retain the ability to examine and challenge the standards through which consequential decisions are evaluated. Develops reviewability as a constraint on claims of sovereign technological capability.
-
The Recognition Game: Metric Governance and the Stabilisation of Epistemic Clientelism Analyses how metric-based research evaluation can turn recognition into a positional competition and reward conformity to existing criteria. Explains why institutional measures of scientific performance may reproduce the recognition structures that impede novel work.
-
Answerable Knowledge: Procedural and Epistemic Authority in the Research Organisation Distinguishes an organisation's legitimate authority to coordinate research from claims of final epistemic authority over its findings. Argues that research institutions must preserve routes for criticism, revision and independent judgement even where operational decisions require centralised control.
-
Objective-Layer AI: A Structural Definition of Endogenous Evaluation in Artificial Systems Defines a structural distinction between systems that optimise under an externally fixed objective and systems able to operate on the evaluative structure itself. Provides a conceptual basis for distinguishing adaptation within a given representation or objective space from revision of the space that makes evaluation…
-
Epistemic Generativity: A Structural Definition Proposes a structural account of epistemic generativity, distinguishing the production of new evaluative possibilities from optimisation within an already specified evaluative space. Establishes a conceptual precursor to later work on the limits of conceptual change, representation and access to evidence.
2025
-
The Third Enclosure Movement: Rethinking AI Regulation through a Taxonomy of Restricted Knowledge Develops a taxonomy of legal, technical, epistemic and state-imposed restrictions on access to knowledge in AI systems. Examines how such enclosures shape the ability to inspect, contest and build upon technical knowledge, connecting legal questions of access with later research on representational and observational limits.