Traditional ontology asks “what exists”; however, this formulation presupposes theory-specific criteria of existence and thereby makes structural comparison across theories generally difficult. This paper reformulates the problem at the level of “which ontological descriptions are well-defined” and proposes a minimal framework that enables the comparability of such descriptions. The framework represents an ontological description as a five-tuple M = (X, H, Φ, V, U), where X is a set of states, H is a transition relation, Φ is a constraint operation, V is a comparative structure over branching paths, and U is a structural transformation. These components correspond to the functions required for ontological description—identity, change, possibility, comparison, and structural difference (these functions are not constructively derived in this paper). Furthermore, translation between theories is defined as a correspondence that preserves these functional distinctions. Under this definition, different ontologies can be expressed in a common form, and their differences are made explicit as differences in structural components. The framework does not advance a substantive ontological claim; rather, it is positioned as a set of descriptive conditions that enable comparability across theories. The scope of this paper is limited to the presentation of the framework. Proofs of minimality, irreducibility, and uniqueness are not provided and are deferred to future work. ( direct link )
