Six-Stage Pipeline

Summary

The six-stage pipeline is the proposed operational architecture of Standing and Answerability Ethics. It moves from a roster of directed claims to their content, maps the available options, compares those options, classifies every claim left unsatisfied, and determines what remains owed. Each stage receives its normative inputs from earlier stages, so a desired verdict cannot enter as a description of the facts or as an unstated comparison rule.

The pipeline does not make the operational system derived. It locates where its defended, proposed, and open rules do their work. Where comparison fails to rank, the pipeline returns an unresolved comparison rather than manufacturing completion downstream.

Theory position: operational system · proposed · completion.

The sequence

Stage 1: identification

From the facts and Claim Grounds, construct the claim roster: who holds what claim against whom, and on which ground. Standing identifies possible holders; it does not itself populate the roster. A conflict omitted here cannot be repaired by quietly adding its interests during comparison.

Stage 2: content

For each identified claim, specify what full satisfaction would require from its ground, the holder's good, and the situation. The claim is also typed as burden-type, which can in principle be left unsatisfied under an adequate justification, or constraint-type, which invokes the party-preserving limit at Possession.

This stage fixes content before options are ranked. It prevents the apparent strength of an option from shrinking the claims it would fail.

Stage 3: mapping

For every feasible option, describe which claims it satisfies and leaves unsatisfied, in what degree, and with which gravity factors. Mapping is descriptive. It includes delay and continuation where they are available, because either can impose irreversible costs, but it expresses no verdict about which profile should prevail.

Stage 4: comparison

The possession constraint removes ineligible options. Comparison Discipline then ranks, ties, or fails to rank the remaining claim profiles. Its output is a selection, a tie, an unresolved comparison, or a forced set where every surviving course wrongs someone.

The comparative condition in Adequate Justification is this stage. Adequacy does not first select an option for comparison to ratify, and comparison does not rely on a prior adequacy verdict.

Stage 5: classification

For the act taken, classify every claim it leaves unsatisfied:

a justified override where adequate justification is available to the holder;
a necessity-justified wronging where a forced set exists and the act is properly selected within it;
an unjustified wronging where neither condition holds.

Where no claim is left unsatisfied, the act is clean. These four statuses answer different questions and are not points on a single scale of permissibility.

Stage 6: residue

From the classifications and the agents' fault, determine the secondary claims specified by Residue. Justification can change the kind of residue. It cannot make an unsatisfied claim disappear from the record.

Stage discipline

The sequence blocks four recurrent shortcuts:

a social benefit cannot enter Stage 1 without a holder and ground;
an option cannot determine the content of the claims against it;
a factual map cannot conceal a comparison rule in its descriptions;
an all-things-considered necessity verdict cannot double as an adequate answer to the person wronged.

An institutional process may distribute the stages among different actors. It remains answerable for preserving the sequence, the evidence, and the points at which judgment entered.

Limits

The pipeline is architecture, not an algorithm. It does not supply the facts, gravity judgments, comparison rules, or institutional competence needed to run it.
Every downstream result inherits the limits of the comparison discipline.
Feasibility can itself be contested. Excluding an option as unavailable is part of mapping and must not serve as an unreviewable verdict.
Refusing the pipeline restores an operational gap; it does not weaken the same classifications into informal equivalents.

Standing and Answerability Ethics · Claim Grounds · The Holder's Good · Adequate Justification · Possession · Comparison Discipline · Necessity · Residue