An Onto-Relational-Sophic Framework for Governing Synthetic Minds

TL;DR

The paper introduces the Onto-Relational-Sophic framework, grounded in Cyberism philosophy, to address foundational governance questions for synthetic minds through a multi-dimensional ontology, digital personhood spectrum, and wisdom-oriented ethics.

Contribution

It presents a novel integrated framework combining ontology, relational taxonomy, and ethical principles to guide the governance of advanced synthetic minds.

Findings

The framework defines synthetic minds as multi-dimensional entities beyond computational models.

It proposes a graded spectrum of digital personhood for relational classification.

Applied to scenarios like autonomous agents and AI ecosystems, it offers adaptive governance recommendations.

Abstract

The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence, from task-specific systems to foundation models exhibiting broad, flexible competence across reasoning, creative synthesis, and social interaction, has outpaced the conceptual and governance frameworks designed to manage it. Current regulatory paradigms, anchored in a tool-centric worldview, address algorithmic bias and transparency but leave unanswered foundational questions about what increasingly capable synthetic minds are, how societies should relate to them, and the normative principles that should guide their development. Here we introduce the Onto-Relational-Sophic (ORS) framework, grounded in Cyberism philosophy, which offers integrated answers to these challenges through three pillars: (1) a Cyber-Physical-Social-Thinking (CPST) ontology that defines the mode of being for synthetic minds as irreducibly multi-dimensional rather than purely computational; (2) a graded spectrum of digital personhood providing a pragmatic relational taxonomy beyond binary person-or-tool classifications; and (3) Cybersophy, a wisdom-oriented axiology synthesizing virtue ethics, consequentialism, and relational approaches to guide governance. We apply the framework to emergent scenarios including autonomous research agents, AI-mediated healthcare, and agentic AI ecosystems, demonstrating its capacity to generate proportionate, adaptive governance recommendations. The ORS framework charts a path from narrow technical alignment toward comprehensive philosophical foundations for the synthetic minds already among us.