Constitution of Acts Through Production Relations: Why Outwardly Identical Acts Can Differ in What They Are

This conceptual paper introduces Constitution of Acts Through Production Relations, the relation through which an act’s identity depends on the conditions under which it was performed. Outwardly identical documents can differ in whether they record an act of the claimed kind because authorization, authorship, knowledge, or witnessing conditions differ. The paper assesses claims about an act against the constitutive conditions established by the relevant practice. A production difference matters where the claimed property depends on it. The document’s appearance, the accuracy of its contents, and the fulfillment of those conditions require separate examination. The discussion connects the account to Austin’s theory of speech acts and examines the federal banking agencies’ 2011 review of foreclosure processing. The review documented problems involving affidavit review, notarization, and administration of oaths. These findings do not establish that most affidavit statements were false or provide a reliable count of foreclosures that should not have proceeded. Part of the Equivalence and Interchangeability series within On Human Modeling, the paper asks what makes an act count as the act claimed and what its record can establish. Its framework can inform human–AI research on whether generated communications satisfy the authorization, authorship, or attestation conditions of the practices in which they are used.