HDD-BIO - Discriminating Forms of Biological History Dependence

HDD-BIO proposes a reporting and experimental framework for separating five causally distinct forms of biological history dependence — predictive (C-I), causal trajectory (C-II), feedback-mediated (C-III), self-referential (C-IV), and self-modeling (C-V) — plus an applicability-bounded organizational criterion (CO). Its central rule is the Inferential Prohibition: evidence for one construct does not, by itself, authorize inference to another. What is new. Each construct is stated not as a verbal definition but as a concrete, prespecified estimand with a stated positive result, a stated confound, and a stated inferential bound. This appears to be the first framework to combine four elements: operational estimands for predictive versus causal trajectory dependence; mandatory residual-latent sensitivity for causal claims; three-condition operationalizations of self-reference (IV-1 ∧ IV-2 ∧ IV-3) and self-modeling (V1 ∧ V2 ∧ V3) with a self-vs-world control; and an executable eight-step protocol for organizational coherence that separates organizational necessity from global damage. Results are reported as (construct, status) pairs — e.g., "C-II, underdetermined" — qualified by an explicit identifiability rating independent of data sufficiency. Why the unification matters. These constructs are studied in separate literatures — predictive processing, forward-model theory, causal inference on perturbation screens, autopoiesis — often without stating which inferential step a result licenses. HDD-BIO makes those steps pairwise non-implicative and checkable, so that a positive result in one program cannot be silently absorbed as evidence for a stronger claim in another. Status. A proposed methodology, not a body of results. Exercised on the author's own synthetic systems and on one retrospective mapping of a published planarian study (§6.2); independent application and inter-observer replication not yet attempted. Provenance addressed in §19.1. Value depends on whether independent researchers find the distinctions useful when applied to real data — a question posed formally in §15, not settled by this document about itself. Intended use. Layer the checklist onto an existing or planned biological experiment to state plainly which form of history dependence the data support and which they do not. Apply §5.1 to a C-I claim already in hand, or §10.1 to a system where organizational closure is arguable. The framework is ontologically agnostic: the checklist can be applied whether or not one accepts the philosophical interpretation offered in HDO, or any particular account of biological selfhood.