SΔϕ-57 — Lent Thought: Thought Ownership, World-Binding, and Cost Attribution in Human-AI Reasoning

This working paper introduces Lent Thought within the Sofience–Δϕ Formalism. It examines the claim of “my thought” in both human and AI reasoning, not by asserting that human thought and AI output are identical, but by asking whether humans can provide a non-circular criterion by which their thoughts are owned while AI outputs are merely borrowed. The paper argues that thought is not owned before it is routed. What appears as “my thought” may be a temporary passage of language, memory, authority, affect, data, and structural pressure through an interpretive position. The first thought, when traced beneath ownership, language, and subjecthood, is not a proposition but the detection that operation is occurring.…