A.6.A:1 - Problem frame

FPF repeatedly encounters a predictable precision failure mode around affordance-like and action-first language.

Authors say:

• “this handle affords pulling”
• “the interface invites confirmation”
• “the alarm calls for rollback”
• “this discrepancy suggests probing deeper”
• “the draft is ready for formalization”
• “the model wants to brake”
• “the situation is actionable”

…but the intended meaning is actually one of several different action-oriented families, for example:

1. Physical affordance — a physical or environmental configuration offers a bodily action to an embodied agent.
2. Interface affordance — an operator-interface element, operator panel, alarm, or publication face presents an operator move.
3. Social affordance — another agent or interactional setting invites a response or coordination move.
4. Epistemic probe move — a problem situation invites asking, comparing, measuring, testing, or instrumenting.
5. Closure-advance move — a situation invites naming, rescoping, proxy declaration, or formalization.
6. Latent policy cue — a learned or distributed state carries an action-oriented tendency not yet locally articulated.
7. Control opportunity — a closed-loop state invites braking, rollback, replan, isolate, escalate, or override.

The recurrent failure modes are:

• Site confusion. The invitation-bearing site is unclear: physical entity, scene, interface entity, description episteme, carrier, policy state, or problem episode.
• Enactor confusion. It is unclear which U.System, collective system, or role assignment whose holder is a U.System is invited to act: human operator, robot controller, research team, review service, or named automation system.
• Action confusion. The candidate action is hidden behind vague language like actionable, calls for, ready for, natural next step.
• Invitation vs obligation collapse. A situation that merely invites an action is rewritten as if it already created a duty.
• Invitation vs capability collapse. A local, situated action opportunity is rewritten as if it were a general capability claim.
• Invitation vs work collapse. Offered action is narrated as if it had already been executed.
• Substrate confusion. Ecological, embodied, latent-distributed, and symbolic-local action cues are silently collapsed.
• Bridge illusion. Similar language across traditions is mistaken for sameness.
• Premature closure. An early cue is published as if it were already a committed method, gate, or policy.