The Ontological Neutrality Theorem: Why Neutral Ontological Substrates Must Be Pre-Causal and Pre-Normative
arXiv:2601.14271v1 Announce Type: new 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 […]