The Ontological Neutrality Theorem: Why Neutral Ontological Substrates Must Be Pre-Causal and Pre-Normative
This work addresses the challenge of creating shared data systems for accountability in contexts of persistent disagreement, though it is incremental as it focuses on theoretical constraints rather than new methods or applications.
The paper tackles the problem of designing ontologies that remain neutral across conflicting interpretive frameworks, establishing that neutrality is impossible if foundational layers include causal or normative commitments, thus requiring neutral substrates to be pre-causal and pre-normative.
Modern data systems must support accountability across persistent legal, political, and analytic disagreement. This requirement imposes strict constraints on the design of any ontology intended to function as a shared substrate. We establish an impossibility result for ontological neutrality: neutrality, understood as interpretive non-commitment and stability under incompatible extensions, is incompatible with the inclusion of causal or normative commitments at the foundational layer. Any ontology that asserts causal or deontic conclusions as ontological facts cannot serve as a neutral substrate across divergent frameworks without revision or contradiction. It follows that neutral ontological substrates must be pre-causal and pre-normative, representing entities, together with identity and persistence conditions, while externalizing interpretation, evaluation, and explanation. This paper does not propose a specific ontology or protocol; rather, it establishes the necessary design constraints for any system intended to maintain a shared, stable representation of reality across conflicting interpretive frameworks.