Chapter 78: Ontic Identity Invariance

The previous chapter diagnosed the disease: diagonal resonance (the relevant definition, I.D89) — a three-component splice of free contraction, equality-as-congruence, and primitive self-products — produces identity slippage (the relevant definition, I.D90), a partial decoherence of ontic self-identity that infects every orthodox foundation admitting the full diagonal. Shadow identities (the relevant definition, I.D91) proliferate wherever the three components reinforce one another. This chapter proves the resolution. τ’s coherence kernel (K0–K6) blocks each component of diagonal resonance individually: K5 blocks free contraction (L), NF-Confluence blocks equality ambiguity (E), and the star-autonomous structure blocks primitive self-products (P). The Ontic Identity Invariance Theorem (the relevant theorem, I.T46) establishes that every admissible construction preserves ontic identity: normalization to canonical form is unique and path-independent, and no construction can introduce shadow identities. The No Identity Decoherence corollary (Corollary [cor:no-identity-decoherence], I.C03) states that diagonal resonance cannot occur at the ontic level in τ. The Conditional Theorem (the relevant theorem, I.T47) draws the consequence: any foundation that permits identity slippage at the substrate level cannot internalize a unique, absolute infinity ω.