Clarifying DRC Claims: Anti-Anthropomorphic Language Policy, Scope Boundaries, and Empirical Commitments

This note clarifies the scope, language policy, and falsifiability conditions of Distributed Relational Cognition (DRC). Its purpose is to reduce category-slip risk: metaphorical or phenomenological descriptions of sustained human–model interaction should not be misread as ontological claims about model inner states (e.g., beliefs, intentions, consciousness, or persistent memory). The document establishes: Scope boundaries (what DRC does not claim), a language policy requiring translation of anthropomorphic shorthand into technical framings (behavioral, optimization, representational, mechanistic), the positive claims DRC makes about interaction-level regularities under sustained coupling conditions, and explicit revision triggers (null effects, artifact-only explanations, non-reproducibility, or dominant confounds). This clarification does not add new experimental results. It is intended as a companion reference for readers discussing DRC in research, product design, and policy contexts.