Scope

Scope defines where and when a claim is intended to apply: the populations, time periods, contexts, or conditions under which the claim is asserted to hold. A claim without explicit scope is ambiguous; a claim with overly broad scope is vulnerable to counterexamples.

Many disagreements dissolve when scope is made explicit. Two studies can reach opposite conclusions and both be correct if they apply to different populations or conditions. This is why knowledge synthesis separates scope-based incompatibility from true contradiction.

In a Dialectical Graph, scope is a node type connected to claims. When a counterexample is found, the system can narrow the scope rather than discard the claim entirely.