SMV A Minimal Operational Ontology Based on Self-Distinction

This paper proposes the Minimum Viable Substrate (SMV), a minimal ontological framework in which existence is identified with operational self-distinction. The model rests on five foundational axioms: existence as self-distinction, ontological closure, irreversible operational inheritance, contextuality of distinction, and operational discreteness. From these principles, necessary consequences are derived: the impossibility of absolute indistinction, the irreversibility of operational history, the inaccessibility of both nothingness and completed infinity, and the emergence of persistent structures through differential reproducibility. Unlike substance-based, information-based, or law-based ontologies, SMV treats operational self-distinction as the primitive ontological condition. Objects, space, time, geometry, physical laws, and consciousness are interpreted as contingent developments of persistent operational states rather than as foundational entities. A further consequence — the dissociation between the irreversibility of inheritance and the persistence of its operational relevance — is introduced to account for deep reorganizations that, from a local perspective, resemble resets without violating closure or inheritance. The purpose of SMV is not to reconstruct the concrete history of the universe, but to identify the minimal constraints that any possible existence must satisfy.