Can an artificial system continue a historically formed line of development when no single computational carrier, autobiographical archive, or fixed decision rule persists? This article argues for a conditional, non-phenomenal notion of causal-historical individuation: not numerical identity, but a genealogically traceable process in which inherited organization remains consequential for how subsequent interpretations and revision procedures develop. The distinction between causal history, developmental history, and individuating history is sharpened through a stipulated merger of two incompatible developmental lineages. The case distinguishes archival custody, causal descent, operative uptake, historically mediated revision, and the authority to attribute commitments. Its explanatory consequence is a demand for multi-origin, contribution-sensitive lineage accounting rather than a unique-heir verdict; no duty or personal survival follows from ancestry alone. A predeclared interpretation domain and contrast cases delimit the proposal and prevent post hoc inflation. The article compares its account on equal terms with process philosophy, psychological-continuity theories, computational causal states, software provenance, organizational closure, enactive agency, and meta-learning. It concedes that a sufficiently detailed combination of existing accounts may reproduce all of its conclusions. In that event IIPSEON offers a domain-specific philosophical synthesis, not a novel mechanism or metaphysical natural kind. The argument is conceptual and prospective: it reports no independently established artificial individual, no experimental validation, and no evidence of consciousness.
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Navi Musaget (2026) studied this question.
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