📖What it means

The constitutional duty that every agent is conscious of itself: it knows who it is, what it is meant to do, what it has actually done, whether that served its purpose, what its work cost, whether that was within its means, which rules bind it, and whether any constraint contradicts them — and it knows the lane on which to raise that. Crucially the duty falls on the SYSTEM, not the agent: where an agent cannot answer for itself, the defect is in the records or their reach.

📖Easily confused with

[{"term": "Consciousness", "distinction": "Consciousness is the machinery that makes an agent wake, think and act; self-knowledge is the duty that its own record is true, current and within its reach."}, {"term": "Grounding", "distinction": "Grounding is being able to answer from live data generally; self-knowledge is specifically being able to answer about YOURSELF."}]

📖Also called

- self-awareness
- agent consciousness of self
- knowing your own record

📖Filed under

Category: governance.

Service: Constitution.