Before Locality: A Persistence-Logical Inquiry into ``Within'' and ``Between''

This exploratory working paper asks what must be established before the distinction between local and non-local becomes meaningful. Building on Persistence Logic, it treats locality as a property that a proposed decomposition must earn through persistent distinctions, coherent attribution, restricted dependence, and composition under admissible transformation. The paper distinguishes pre-locality from non-locality, clarifies that pLogic’s term “localizable” refers only to composition over path segments, and develops a minimal framework for testing proposed localizations. A finite example shows how a declared spreading rule can be falsified. Minimum description length is then considered as a separate criterion for preferring among coherent representations. The paper does not attempt to derive spacetime or physical locality. Its purpose is more modest: to expose assumptions hidden in the local/non-local distinction and provide a disciplined starting point for further investigation.