Adaptive Epistemological Regulation in Non-Stationary Environments: From Single-Agent Architecture to Decentralized Correction Protocol (AER-P)

Classical models of intelligence, in both cognitive science and artificial intelligence architecture, implicitly equate increasing internal coherence with increasing intelligence. This paper introduces the Adaptive Epistemological Regulation framework (AER), which challenges this paradigm and advances the following hypothesis: maximal internal coherence in complex, open systems can generate and stabilize maximal systemic error. AER defines intelligence not as the elimination of contradiction, but as the dynamic capacity to maintain operational coherence while consciously managing epistemological fragility (Fe). We introduce the mechanism of Controlled Epistemological Decoherence (KED) — a regulatory process by which a system temporarily and structurally destabilizes its dominant models in order to preserve long-term adaptivity. We further demonstrate that the problem of self-measurement renders single-agent KED architecturally insufficient, necessitating a decentralized correction protocol (AER-P) in which valid decoherence signals can only emerge from divergence between genuinely heterogeneous systems. The paper's central conclusion: intelligence is not a property of an isolated system, but of a dynamic network of mutually corrective systems.