The Passage Problem and Genuine Settlement in Pre-Physical Generative Theory

Three conditions on any viable pre-physical generative theory have now been established across the present series. The first paper established the necessary entry conditions: structural existence must be genuinely attained within process rather than tacitly secured, and a minimal generative vocabulary of rhythm, phase, and direction was introduced as a unified conceptual structure together with the threshold-freezing-settlement family as one local realization of the required internal threshold structure. The second paper established the necessary architectural conditions: the three burdens of ontology, generation, and readout must remain functionally non-collapsed. The present paper identifies a third condition that is independent of the first two yet cumulative with them: even where the minimal conditions are satisfied and the three layers are non-collapsed, a further question remains of how what is attained in generation becomes available for later readout consequence without that later readout helping to constitute it retroactively. This paper calls that question the passage problem. It argues that the passage problem is not adequately addressed unless the framework provides, within its own generative organization, a genuine settlement predicate: an internally grounded condition that marks a principled difference between what is merely pending and what is settled, statable in terms of the generative layer's own quantities, non-circular with respect to later readout, substantively non-trivial in the difference it marks, and structurally grounded in the framework's own generative rules. Without such a predicate, later talk of inheritance, readout, propagation, or duration remains architecturally unsecured, however sophisticated the surrounding vocabulary may be. The paper identifies two characteristic distortions that arise when the passage problem is left unaddressed. Constitution-reversal occurs when later readout, explicitly or implicitly, is made to determine which prior status counts as attained, so that readout no longer operates on a settled predecessor but helps institute the very status it is supposed only to disclose. Sealed interiority occurs when settlement is asserted as purely internal but no account is given of how settled status bears on anything beyond its own interior occurrence. A genuine settlement predicate is the condition that avoids both distortions: it yields a settled predecessor that stands prior to readout without being constituted by it, and that remains available for downstream consequence without being sealed within generation. The paper then develops the threshold-freezing-settlement family as one explicit local realization of the bridge burden, connecting it to the two-level structure of the framework of Author and coauthor (2026a). Threshold corresponds to the closure condition: phase differences among participating events converging within the tolerance ε determined by the minimum generative rhythm f₀. Freezing corresponds to the stabilization of directional organization across logical steps after threshold-crossing, marking the transition from a closed state that might revert to one whose continuation-space has been reorganized such that the antecedent alternative-space is no longer live. Settlement names the resulting status once both conditions are satisfied. This sequence is shown to pass all seven predicate-and-consequence diagnostic tests introduced in Section 8: non-circularity, substantive difference, structural grounding, settled predecessor, avoiding constitution-reversal, avoiding sealed interiority, and non-accidental downstream bearing. Once a genuine settlement predicate is available, three downstream notions can be approached in a more grounded and less arbitrary form rather than entering merely as imported presuppositions. In the restricted sense defended here, propagation boundary can be treated as a non-arbitrary limit on onward beari