PSD.3:4 - Solution
Generate a bounded set of problem formulations whose differences are visible in their downstream consequences. Bind every formulation to the same receiving inquiry unless an identity change is explicitly returned to PSD.1. Preserve sources, assumptions, uncertainty, and conflicts; then hand the set to boundary, modeling, alternative, and inquiry patterns without declaring a chosen problem.
PSD.3:4.1 - Fix the receiving inquiry, not the problem answer
State the subject, recipient, receiving decision or Work, horizon, and retained choice owner from PSD.1. Import only those PSD.2 participants, affected Systems, concerns, duties, interests, and dissent that can change this inquiry. If the subject or receiving use differs, create or recover the other engagement rather than merging formulations across identities.
Write the current formulation in one sentence. Mark its source, factual support, assumptions, and important exclusions. This makes the default frame inspectable rather than privileged.
PSD.3:4.2 - Generate structural contrasts
Seek contrasts along the smallest productive set of questions:
- What condition or relation is treated as problematic, for whom or what?
- Which bearer, place, configuration, horizon, or consequence is central?
- Which value, duty, interest, or risk makes intervention worth considering?
- Which mechanism or dependency is hypothesized, and what evidence could challenge it?
- Which action families become plausible, and which disappear?
- Who can prepare, receive, authorize, or implement a response?
Do not require one formulation per question. Combine contrasts into coherent candidate formulations. If two formulations imply the same boundary, evidence, action family, and receiving-use consequence, merge them or state that their difference is rhetorical.
PSD.3:4.3 - Give every formulation a usable face
For each retained formulation, record:
| Position | Required content |
|---|---|
| formulation | One ordinary-language account of what warrants inquiry or intervention. |
| subject and bearers | Exact subject, affected participants or Systems, configuration, place, and horizon needed by the claim. |
| boundary and exclusions | What the formulation includes, what it suppresses or defers, and why. |
| value tension | Attributed concern, duty, interest, risk, or desired change that makes the formulation material. |
| evidence need | Current support, uncertainty, contrary evidence, and the smallest question that could reverse or narrow it. |
| intervention logic | Action, inquiry, adaptation, or restraint families made plausible, without claiming effectiveness. |
| receiving-use consequence | Which model, alternative, comparison, scope, recommendation, or decision-support return would change. |
Where a durable formulation is used as a claim-bearing episteme, preserve its source and identity through the direct episteme pattern. Ordinary working sentences need no new root kind.
PSD.3:4.4 - Test material plurality without ranking
Compare each pair only far enough to ask whether the difference changes a downstream move. Preserve incompatibility when one formulation requires evidence, values, boundaries, or interventions that another excludes. Record overlap when formulations can be investigated together.
Do not score, rank, vote, synthesize, or select unless another pattern and authority govern that result. C.17 may characterize novelty, diversity, or use of an already-generated formulation set when that characterization is material. C.18 applies only when the project must govern generation records, descriptors, archives, fronts, telemetry, or retained exploration value. Neither pattern supplies the PSM-specific construction of problem formulations.
PSD.3:4.5 - Stop and return the plural formulation set
Stop when every retained formulation changes at least one named downstream move and another credible formulation would not change the current receiving use enough to justify its cost. There is no universal target count. A claim of plurality requires at least two materially different formulations; a case with only one adequate formulation should not manufacture a set.
Return the formulations, their contrasts, shared and disputed premises, evidence gaps, dependent next results, and reopen conditions. If a missing participant, concern, fact, source, or authority relation prevents a responsible formulation, return the exact gap, narrow the claim, request the bounded result, or abstain.
PSD.3:4.6 - Pass plurality forward without creating a workflow
Pass the set to PSD.4 when included and excluded scope must be chosen, to PSD.5 when different models are needed, to PSD.8 when formulations imply different alternative families, and to PSD.16 when engagement activities obstruct a material formulation contribution. These branches may be concurrent. Pattern numbering is not a compulsory stage sequence.
Reopen locally when a new participant, concern, affected System, evidence result, value tension, intervention family, horizon, receiving use, or authority fact creates a materially different formulation or defeats one already retained.
PSD.3:4.7 - What changes in practice
The practitioner stops asking participants to agree on one problem sentence before useful work begins. They can show a small set of genuinely different formulations, the evidence and actions each foregrounds, and the exact next result that plurality changes.