Consensus frames research.
Who studies consensus frames, epistemic communities, and worldview diversity. Institutions doing the work. Ontologies and vocabularies in use. Empirical grounding for CPML.
The Veritas Protocol's plural-verdict design depends on a coherent vocabulary of "consensus frames" — named editorial standards under which validators issue verdicts. CPML weights and composes them. But that vocabulary cannot be invented from scratch: it has to map onto the way the world already thinks about epistemic diversity.
This section publishes research artefacts about how the world studies consensus frames, what institutions do this work, and what existing ontologies and language are available to anchor the Veritas vocabulary in.
Available research
Who studies consensus frames — academic disciplines, institutions, ontologies
Comprehensive review covering: sociology of knowledge (Mannheim, Berger & Luckmann), sociology of science (Latour, Knorr-Cetina), epistemic communities in IR (Haas), social epistemology (Goldman, Fricker), moral psychology (Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory), cultural psychology (Inglehart-Welzel, Hofstede), and argumentation theory (Dung, Bench-Capon, Walton).
Plus survey instruments (World Values Survey, European Values Study, Pew Political Typology, Moral Foundations Questionnaire, Schwartz Values Survey), formal vocabularies (W3C SKOS, schema.org, Cyc, Dublin Core, Argument Interchange Format), and active institutions (Constructive Dialogue Institute, Berggruen Institute, Yale Cultural Cognition Project, More in Common, Pew, PRRI, Templeton Foundation).
For each of the five consensus positions the Working Group commits to in its own CPML, the report identifies: the existing vocabulary used in the literature, the institutions actively maintaining the relevant frames, the canonical texts and traditions, and the closest existing structured-data representation (where one exists).
Why this section exists
Three reasons:
- Honest naming. If we call something "scientific-default consensus," we should know whose work that mirrors and what their published criteria are. The research grounds the names.
- Discoverability of partners. The institutions actively studying epistemic communities are exactly the partners the Working Group needs. The research surfaces them.
- Vocabulary reuse. Several ontologies (W3C SKOS, schema.org's structured data, Argumentation Web's AIF, Wikidata's worldview properties) are already designed for this purpose. CPML should compose with them, not reinvent them.
Coming additions
This section will accumulate:
- Reference SKOS topic vocabulary at
/topics/v0.1.skos— referenced from RFC-CPML § 6 and § 13 — for shared topic concepts across CPMLs. - Consensus-domain registry — published list of named consensus domains with editorial standards and rapporteur bodies.
- Validator-credential schema — W3C VC profile for institutional validator identity.
- Cross-references to published surveys — World Values Survey microdata, Pew typology raw data — for empirical anchoring of consensus-frame names.
Brief · Specifications · Self-declarations · Working paper · Critical review