Does ābhāsa mean representation, manifestation or world-enactment?

{
 "schema_version": 1,
 "artifact_type": "argument_fabric_dossier",
 "question_id": "q:abhasa-representation-or-manifestation",
 "question": "Does ābhāsa mean representation, manifestation or world-enactment?",
 "why_it_matters": "Ābhāsa is the central Trika term for how the world appears in consciousness. Its interpretation determines whether Trika is a representational idealism, a direct realism, or an enactivist ontology. The translation choice carries the entire weight of how Trika relates to contemporary philosophy of perception.",
 "status": "live_crux",
 "resolution_level": "local_argument",
 "parent_questions": [
  "q:consciousness-fundamental",
  "q:prakasa-definition"
 ],
 "candidate_explanations": [
  {
   "candidate_id": "cand:abhasa-representation",
   "tradition_scope": "comparative_philosophy_analytic",
   "name": "Ābhāsa as representation",
   "best_case": "Ābhāsa means that objects appear in consciousness as representations, not as external realities. The world is a set of cognitive appearances (pratibhāsas), and Trika is a form of metaphysical idealism. What we call the external world is the represented content of consciousness.",
   "hard_to_vary_core": [
    "Abhinavagupta repeatedly describes ābhāsa as the form an object takes when it appears in awareness.",
    "The world is not separate from its appearing; ābhāsa is the mode of givenness.",
    "Representation here does not imply a copy but a presentation within the cognitive field."
   ],
   "current_problems": [
    "The representation reading may import Kantian subject-object duality that Trika explicitly rejects.",
    "It risks collapsing into a veil-of-ideas epistemology that Abhinavagupta critiques in Buddhist idealism.",
    "The term's range includes the self-manifestation of consciousness itself, not just object-appearance."
   ],
   "falsifiers": [
    {
     "type": "philological",
     "condition": "A survey of Abhinavagupta's usage of ābhāsa across the ĪPV, ĪPVV, and Tantrāloka showing that the term exclusively means externalised appearance rather than cognitive presentation.",
     "status": "untested"
    }
   ],
   "initial_status": "live"
  },
  {
   "candidate_id": "cand:abhasa-manifestation",
   "tradition_scope": "trika_orthodox",
   "name": "Ābhāsa as manifestation",
   "best_case": "Ābhāsa is the self-manifestation of consciousness as the world. The world does not represent something beyond itself; it is the very act of consciousness appearing. Manifestation is not a copy or model but the direct presence of reality as consciousness's expressive power.",
   "hard_to_vary_core": [
    "Ābhāsa is the act of prakāśa shining as differentiated content, not a mental image of something else.",
    "The world is real as manifestation; its reality is the reality of consciousness appearing as form.",
    "Manifestation avoids the representational gap: the appearance is what appears, not a stand-in."
   ],
   "current_problems": [
    "The manifestation reading must explain perceptual error: if appearance is directly reality, how do illusions arise?",
    "It must distinguish Trika manifestation from naïve realism, since the world is still within consciousness.",
    "Śaiva Siddhānta critics argue the manifestation view cannot account for the reality of the world independent of the Lord's cognition."
   ],
   "falsifiers": [
    {
     "type": "prasanga",
     "condition": "A demonstration that the manifestation reading entails that all appearances are equally real, collapsing the distinction between veridical and illusory perception that Trika nevertheless operates with.",
     "status": "untested"
    }
   ],
   "initial_status": "live"
  },
  {
   "candidate_id": "cand:abhasa-world-enactment",
   "tradition_scope": "enactive_trika_synthesis",
   "name": "Ābhāsa as world-enactment",
   "best_case": "Ābhāsa is neither representation nor passive manifestation but the enactment of a world through consciousness's projective power (vimarśa). Con