This paper introduces Recursive Epistemic Sovereignty (RES), a formally complete framework for evaluating competing arguments under conditions of database bias, adversarial input, social pressure, and contradictory factual testimony. RES operationalises five core failure modes absent from classical argumentation systems (Aristotle, Toulmin, Dung): abstraction blindness, database contamination, trait contamination, adversarial injection, and contested testimony. The framework introduces eight formal operators (κ, ρ, F, S, V, Ψ, B, J) together with four architectural mechanisms: a Trait Isolation Operator (TIO) that formally excises personality and social-capital arguments before evaluation; a Pattern Recognition Module (PRM) that detects source-clustering bias using Gärdenfors' conceptual-space geometry; a Sandbox Architecture that prevents adversarial data injection; and the Disputed Premise Protocol (DPP), the central contribution, which resolves contradictory testimony through internal consistency simulation, a Dispute Resolution Weight, and Behavioral Coherence Violation detection. Formal termination proofs are supplied for all recursive procedures. Six worked examples including a pharmacist intellectual property dispute, a theft accusation under social pressure, a Spinozian epistemic gradient test, a universal-quantifier scope error, the historically verified Federalist Papers authorship case, and a full DPP application—validate the framework against known ground truth. The framework is grounded in the AGM theory of belief revision, Pollock's defeasible reasoning, Dung's abstract argumentation, and Jaynes' Bayesian framework.
Ghassan Nabhan (Sat,) studied this question.
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