Criteria-Lessness: A Structural Condition in Evaluative Processes

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This concept note develops an early formulation of criteria-lessness as an analytical condition in which evaluative processes may proceed without criteria being explicit, operational, or documented. It examines how evaluation may remain operative while lacking an identifiable and stable framework for judgment.

The note treats criteria-lessness as an analytical condition rather than, by itself, an identified error or legal deficiency. Within this version, the concept is also discussed in relation to the provisional distinctions criteria failure and criteria breach.

Later work within criteriology further distinguishes between absence in practice and the non-identifiability of criteria in available documentation. The present note should therefore be read as a record of conceptual development, while current consolidated terminology is provided in Key Analytical Terms in Criteriology and Decision Structure.

This publication forms part of an open research series on criteriology and the Self-Matryoshka Analytical Framework (S-MAF). This note belongs to a conceptual sub-series developing the analytical foundations introduced in Criteriology: A Preliminary Analytical Concept. The series is curated in the Zenodo community: https://zenodo.org/communities/smaf-criteriology/records