Presumptions, Presuppositions, and the Conditions of Action

The paper advances a contestable and case-assessable claim: reliance across an institutional transition is not transferred automatically, but is preserved to the extent that recognition criteria, operational capacities, and credible continuity guarantees survive the transition. It distinguishes local presumptions, institutional reliance, and the minimum conditions of causal verifiability, indexing dependencies also to the agent’s source of reasons—direct observation, testimony, or expertise. Its defeasible criterion has explicit priorities: unresolved relevant defeaters block ordinary reliance; stakes and reversibility determine the support required; and the default planning horizon is limited by the available track record, unless independent structural guarantees justify extension. The transition to the euro illustrates how continuity can be preserved without assuming absolute institutional identity. The claim is contestable: if criteria, capacities, and guarantees are preserved, formal discontinuity alone does not defeat warrant; if they fail, the successor authority’s decision alone cannot sustain it.