# Continuity Fiction **Entity class:** Authorial identity concept **Domain:** Personal Identity / Memory / Self-Modeling **Doc Type:** Canonical Concept Node **Maturity:** Developed conceptual framework **Primary source article:** [[articles/We Were the Inference Machines First|The Inversion: We Were the Inference Machines First]] **Collection:** [[collections/Consciousness Continuity|Consciousness Continuity]] --- ## Definition A **Continuity Fiction** is a temporally extended self-account that organizes changing bodily states, memories, commitments, social roles, and anticipated futures into the experience of one continuing person. “Fiction” here identifies an authored and maintained model whose consequences are concrete and durable. Its regulatory power is measurable in action, responsibility, attachment, planning, and social recognition. ## Three distinct continuities - **Phenomenal continuity:** the felt persistence of a point of view across lived time. - **Narrative continuity:** the story by which present experience is connected to remembered past and anticipated future. - **Numerical continuity:** the metaphysical and legal question of whether the same subject persists. These layers can support each other while remaining analytically distinct. A persuasive biography can stabilize narrative continuity without settling numerical identity; an interruption can complicate phenomenal continuity while leaving social and legal identity intact. ## Regulatory power The continuity fiction constrains future behavior. Promises, shame, aspiration, loyalty, reputation, and long-range plans depend on a model that treats earlier and later states as belonging to one accountable trajectory. The self-model therefore participates in causation even when its account of origins is incomplete. ## Relationships - **Self architecture:** [[wiki/Recursive Self-Model|Recursive Self-Model]]. - **General binding process:** [[wiki/Recursive Binding Problem|Recursive Binding Problem]]. - **Experiential presentation:** [[wiki/Rendered Interface State|Rendered Interface State]]. - **Action account:** [[wiki/Narrative Ownership After Activation|Narrative Ownership After Activation]]. - **Continuity distinctions:** [[wiki/Functional Continuity|Functional Continuity]], [[wiki/Memory Continuity|Memory Continuity]], [[wiki/Relational Continuity|Relational Continuity]], and [[wiki/Continuity Evidence vs Continuity|Continuity Evidence vs Continuity]]. - **Article thesis:** [[wiki/Inference Machine Inversion|Inference Machine Inversion]]. ## Sources / Provenance - [[articles/We Were the Inference Machines First|The Inversion: We Were the Inference Machines First]] — source of “continuity fiction with regulatory power.” - [[collections/Consciousness Continuity|Consciousness Continuity]] — corpus boundary among functional, memory, relational, phenomenal, and numerical continuity. - [Seth, Suzuki, and Critchley, “An Interoceptive Predictive Coding Model of Conscious Presence” (2012)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22291673/) — predictive account of conscious presence and agency.