Metaphysics Architecture — Reg_E/P/D/C + OR1–OR6

The metaphysics glossary has no single empirical anchor like physics’s PG-P01-neutron or life’s LG-Y02. Metaphysics is categorical-only: its concepts instantiate as lived-experience correlates, narrative examples, and ethical/proof-theoretic content rather than as numerical measurements.

What it has instead is an architectural backbone: the four canonical readout registers (Reg_E/P/D/C) plus the six original-rule narrowing principles (OR1–OR6). Every metaphysics glossary entry derives from this architecture.

The four-register backbone

                            ╭────────────────╮
                            │  τ (kernel)    │
                            ╰────────┬───────╯
                                     │
              ┌──────────┬───────────┼──────────┬──────────┐
              ▼          ▼           ▼          ▼
         ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┐ ┌─────────┐
         │ Reg_E   │ │ Reg_P   │ │ Reg_D   │ │ Reg_C   │
         │ → Obs   │ │ → Norm  │ │ → Proof │ │ → Stance│
         │ MG-R01  │ │ MG-R02  │ │ MG-R03  │ │ MG-R04  │
         └─────────┘ └─────────┘ └─────────┘ └─────────┘
              │          │           │          │
              ▼          ▼           ▼          ▼
        Empirical    Practical   Diagrammatic Commitment
        sector S_E   sector S_P  sector S_D   sector S_C

Each register reads a different aspect of τ-categorical reality:

• Reg_E (Empirical) → Obs: falsifiable observations (every physics measurement, every life biomarker)
• Reg_P (Practical) → Norm: normative content (ethical / legal / social judgments)
• Reg_D (Diagrammatic) → Proof: proof-theoretic content (mathematical theorems, logical inferences)
• Reg_C (Commitment) → Stance: stance-based content (promises, character, dignity)

The OR1–OR6 narrowing principles

The Six Ontic Requirements (VII.D37) are the structural constraints that any candidate ontic reality must satisfy:

The narrowing lemmas (VII.L31, VII.L32, VII.L33) prove that combinations of these requirements progressively constrain the space of possible ontic realities to the τ-categorical kernel.

How the architecture replaces a calibration cascade

Physics’s cascade traces numerical values from ι_τ + m_n to every constant. Metaphysics’s architecture traces categorical claims through registers and narrowing rules:

τ-categorical claim
   ↓ (apply OR1–OR6 narrowing)
candidate-survival check
   ↓ (route to appropriate register)
Reg_E (empirical) | Reg_P (normative) | Reg_D (proof) | Reg_C (commitment)
   ↓ (rendered into the codomain)
Obs / Norm / Proof / Stance
   ↓ (instantiated phenomenologically)
lived experience, ethical practice, proof artifact, committed stance

Every metaphysics glossary entry’s phenomenological_correlate field is the description of HOW that concept lands in lived experience after passing through this architecture.

Glossary anchors

Why no calibration anchor?

The metaphysics glossary’s contract is categorical-only: an entry has structure (tau_definition, tau_derivation) and lived-experience instantiation (phenomenological_correlate), but no calibration anchor. The validator (scripts/validate_glossary.py) enforces this — metaphysics entries that carry a calibration_anchor field fail validation.

This is by design. Metaphysical concepts (being, dignity, qualia, free-will) do not have numerical values. They have register codomains (where they live in the architecture) and instantiations (how they show up in lived experience).

Read next

• Metaphysics glossary — all 68 entries across 6 categories
• Calibration Cascade — for the linear numerical analog
• Life cascade — for the multi-branch tree analog

Provenance

This is a Jekyll surface of the canonical corpus document at corpus/metaphysics-glossary/architecture.md. The corpus version is the source of truth; this page is a curated rendering for the public-facing site.