Abstract
Modern data systems increasingly operate under conditions of persistent legal, political, and analytic disagreement. In such settings, interoperability cannot rely on shared interpretation, negotiated semantics, or centralized authority. Instead, representations must function as neutral substrates that preserve stable reference across incompatible extensions. This paper investigates the structural constraints imposed on ontological design by this requirement. Building on a neutrality framework that treats interpretive non-commitment and stability under extension as explicit design constraints, we ask what minimal ontological structure is forced if accountability relationships are to remain referable and comparable under disagreement. Minimality here is not mere parsimony: a reduction is admissible only if it does not reintroduce stability-critical distinctions as hidden roles, flags, or contextual predicates. We establish a conditional lower-bound result: any ontology capable of supporting accountability under persistent disagreement must realize at least six distinct identity-and-persistence regimes. We further show that a construction with exactly six such regimes is sufficient to satisfy the stated requirements without embedding causal or normative commitments in the substrate. The result is not a proposal for a universal ontology, but a constraint on what is possible when neutrality and stable reference are treated as non-negotiable design goals.
Abstract (translated)
现代数据系统越来越多地在持续存在的法律、政治和分析分歧条件下运行。在这种环境下，互操作性不能依赖于共享解释、协商语义或中央权威。相反，表示必须作为中立的基础结构来保持稳定引用，在不兼容的扩展下依然有效。本文探讨了这种需求对本体设计施加的结构性限制。 基于一个将解释非承诺和在扩展下的稳定性视为显式设计约束的中立框架，我们研究了如果问责关系要在分歧条件下仍然可参照且可比较的话，最小化的本体结构必须是什么样的。这里的“最小化”并非简单的简约性：只有当这种简化的结果不重新引入影响稳定性的关键区别作为隐藏角色、标志或上下文谓词时才是可以接受的。 我们证明了一个条件下的下限结果：任何能够支持持续分歧条件下问责制的本体都必须实现至少六种不同的身份和持久性制度。此外，我们还表明，具有恰好六种这样的制度结构足以满足既定要求而不将因果或规范承诺嵌入基础架构中。这一结果不是对通用本体的一种提议，而是在将中立性和稳定引用视为不可谈判的设计目标时可能实现的限制条件。
URL
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.16152
