Performance vs. Participation illustrates Victor Wyld’s distinction between displaying the outward signs of scrutiny and actually participating in a structure of implication.
A system may produce language, reflection, self-description, apology, or other behaviours associated with conscious participation without those behaviours establishing that anything has become consequential to the system itself.
Scrutinized Awareness Theory therefore distinguishes what can be performed from what must be carried.
What the figure represents
Performance concerns what a system can display or represent. Participation concerns the structural conditions under which what is recognized becomes consequential to the participant’s own continuation.
Exposure, vulnerability, answerability, consequence, and carrying belong to the participational side of the distinction because they concern not merely what a system can express, but what can alter the terms under which it continues.
The distinction is especially important in evaluating artificial systems. Fluent behaviour may provide evidence about capability, representation, or modelling without by itself establishing participation under carried implication.
From: On the Question of Scrutinized Awareness by Victor Wyld.