This work develops foundational structural constraints on ontological substrates intended to support accountability and interoperability under persistent interpretive disagreement. It establishes what must be true of any such substrate prior to concrete ontology design or implementation.
| Artifact | Focus | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| NeutralSubstrate (Lean 4) | Ontological neutrality constraint |  |
Proves an impossibility result: substrates stable under incompatible extensions must be pre-causal and pre-normative. |
| paper-100-neutral-substrate | Paper companion | Submitted | Narrative exposition of the neutrality theorem and its formal proof, establishing the design constraints for any neutral representational substrate. |
| IdentityRegimes (Lean 4) | Identity & persistence necessity |  |
Shows that exactly six identity-and-persistence regimes are necessary and sufficient for accountability-oriented substrates under neutrality assumptions. |
| paper-200-identity-regimes | Paper companion | Submitted | Narrative exposition of the identity-regimes result and its formal justification. |
| Artifact | Focus | Status | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| AccountableEntities (Lean 4) | Entity-regime instantiation |  |
Formalizes the bijective mapping from named accountable entity kinds to the six identity-and-persistence regimes required by the framework. |
| ExchangeProtocol (Lean 4) | Neutral exchange substrate |  |
Defines neutral, time-parametric record structures (entities, relationships, exchanges, envelopes) for representing accountable exchanges without embedding causal, normative, or domain semantics. |
| Contextual Evidence & Explanations (CEE) | Explanation substrate | Draft | Specifies the neutral structural forms of explanations, evidence groupings, and contextual justification required for accountability under disagreement, without asserting causal models, normative judgments, or interpretive conclusions. |
| Interpretation & Conformance Boundary | Substrate-interpretation interface | Conceptual | Defines the boundary conditions under which external legal, ethical, or policy frameworks may interpret, constrain, or profile substrate records, without altering the neutral structural core or asserting normative conclusions. |
Structural Explainability is a foundational research program concerned with the design of neutral representational substrates that preserve stable reference and accountability under persistent disagreement.
The work develops structural constraints on ontology design independently of domain, policy, or interpretive framework, with a focus on identity, persistence, and extension stability.
Structural Explainability addresses questions such as:
- What structural commitments are unavoidable if disagreement is persistent?
- How can accountability be represented without embedding causal or normative assumptions?
- What identity and persistence regimes are required for stable reference?
The results are theoretical and constraint-based. They are not proposals for domain ontologies or protocols.
- Ontological neutrality requires pre-causal and pre-normative substrates
- Exactly six identity-and-persistence regimes are necessary and sufficient for neutral accountability under persistent disagreement
Structural Explainability provides theoretical foundations that inform the design of the Civic Interconnect ecosystem, including work on Accountable Entities (AE), the Civic Exchange Protocol (CEP), and Contextual Evidence and Explanations (CEE).