The Ontological Neutrality Theorem: Why Neutral Ontological Substrates Must Be Pre-Causal and Pre-Normative
Denise M. Case
TL;DR
The paper addresses the problem of maintaining a shared ontological substrate across divergent legal, political, and analytic frameworks while preserving accountability. It formalizes neutrality via two requirements—interpretive non-commitment and extension stability—using Floridi's Levels of Abstraction to show that embedding causal or deontic conclusions at the substrate level inherently breaks neutrality. The Ontological Neutrality Theorem states that a neutral substrate exists if and only if its foundational Level of Abstraction excludes causal and normative primitives, necessitating externalization of interpretation to higher organizational layers. The work provides design constraints for neutral substrates, outlining what must be excluded and what should be invariantly provided, thereby enabling stable cross-framework representation without privileging any single interpretation. This meta-theoretical result has practical significance for ontology design in accountability contexts, guiding the separation of representation (entities and identity) from interpretation, evaluation, and explanation across conflicting frameworks, and suggesting a boundary mechanism via reification to manage discourse without compromising neutrality.
Abstract
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.