Relocation of Orientation: Human Orientation under Emergent Agency

This working paper develops the concept of Relocation of Orientation for increasingly agentic human–AI configurations. It argues that the central problem is not simply how much cognitive or operational work is delegated, but whether orientation-relevant functions — including relevance formation, problem framing, possibility-space construction, evaluative ordering, counter-signal accessibility, and revision conditions — become redistributed across humans, artificial agents, institutions, and higher-order configurations in ways that alter what can become actionable, relevant, or open to revision. The paper distinguishes Retention, Relocation, and Orientation Loss, introduces a Materiality Test, and develops Revision Readiness and Relevance Freedom as orientation-specific dimensions of continued orientability. Twelve cases from the earlier version are retained as conceptual boundary tests. A worked comparison with Distributed Epistemic Displacement clarifies the specific analytical contribution of the framework. Version 2.0 substantially revises and extends Orientation under Emergent Agency: Human Orientation, Meta-Agents, and Twelve Boundary Scenarios for Agentic Systems (Version 1.0, 16 August 2026; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21966768). The literature review reflects sources identified and verified up to 21 September 2026.