From Generative Ontology to Bounded Architecture: The PSRT v2.1 Framework for Emergent Intelligence

This paper presents PSRT v2.1 (Process–Structure–Recursion Theory), a bounded architectural framework for intelligence that consolidates and stabilizes the generative ontology first articulated in PSRT v2.0 and extending the earlier Phase Transition of Intelligence (PTI v1.1) framework. While PTI described intelligence as a sequence of discontinuous phase transitions—semantic, cognitive, and socio-technical—PSRT v2.0 demonstrated that such transitions arise from a deeper tri-axial structure expressed by the identity PSRT = PSTR(UTI, PTI, HPE). PSRT v2.1 retains this generative identity as a recognized structural principle while explicitly constraining its operational application. In this formulation, UTI (Universal Topological Invariance) identifies horizontal structural invariants recurring across cognitive, cultural, and systemic scales; PTI (Platonic Thought Infrastructure) models vertical transformations of intelligence through discontinuous reorganizations of abstraction and coherence; and HPE (Hybrid Process Ecology) captures the multi-agent, multi-scale ecological dynamics through which human minds, artificial systems, and institutions co-evolve. These axes remain conceptually unified by PSTR (Process → Structure → Recursion), which is acknowledged but intentionally disabled as an active generative engine in PSRT v2.1. By embedding phase transitions within an explicitly bounded ontological architecture governed by failure domains and stop conditions, PSRT v2.1 provides a unified yet falsifiable account of emergent intelligence, structural stability, and responsible meaning formation. The framework yields philosophical and practical implications for AI alignment, collective intelligence, epistemic governance, and the ontology of self-modifying agents, while explicitly defining the limits under which biological, artificial, and civilizational intelligences may coherently evolve together.