The Displacement Framework: Horizon-Bounded Accounting in a Timeless 4D Manifold

This preprint presents The Displacement Framework, a conceptual bookkeeping structure for cosmological accounting under horizon‑bounded observational access. Working within a timeless four‑dimensional manifold description, the framework distinguishes the global spacetime arena M from an observer‑relative accounting domain B, and partitions B into observable, inferred, and inventory‑inaccessible sectors according to the recoverability of interior state information. The framework’s central claim is methodological rather than dynamical: complete cosmological bookkeeping closure is not automatically entitled when observers possess only bounded causal access to the manifold. To make this explicit, the manuscript introduces a bookkeeping admissibility condition stating that no interior‑only accounting procedure may claim guaranteed global closure whenever a non‑empty inventory‑inaccessible sector is present. The paper develops formal sector definitions, a minimal bookkeeping expression, a schematic accounting partition, a bookkeeping non‑closure principle, explicit inadmissible accounting configurations, an illustrative toy example, and a discriminator matrix contrasting the framework with neighboring approaches such as block‑universe descriptions, operationalism, horizon thermodynamics, and holographic accounting. The framework does not propose a new cosmological model or modify standard relativistic dynamics. Its purpose is narrower and structural: to clarify the limits of admissible cosmological bookkeeping when direct interior inventory is constrained by causal and horizon‑bounded observational structure. Version 2.0 strengthens the framework through explicit admissibility conditions, refined sector definitions, clarified inadmissible accounting configurations, and an expanded discriminator matrix distinguishing the framework from neighboring approaches. The manuscript also includes substantial organizational, definitional, and presentation improvements. No new physical dynamics are introduced.