Before Continuity: Relatum Admissibility and the Comparative Foundations of Diachronic Persiste

To evaluate competing theories of diachronic persistence, comparative adjudication requires a formally coherent evaluation space. This paper advances a methodological thesis regarding the formal architecture of cross-theoretical model evaluation, rather than a direct metaphysical thesis about what entities fundamentally persist. We establish that relatum admissibility cannot be derived internally from candidate continuity relations in explanatory evaluation. We argue that the logical space of justificatory dependencies admits a trichotomous classification that is exhaustive for the specific purposes of comparative adjudication. Furthermore, we develop the demonstration that comparative models cannot secure relatum admissibility solely through isolated strategies such as internal derivation, unindexed ontological grounding, or ungrounded stipulation. Consequently, a target-constrained relatum admissibility condition is shown to be an indispensable methodological requirement for ensuring the comparative evaluability of rival persistence theories.