The Structural Determinant Hypothesis (SDH) formulates an ontological position: only that exists which sustains itself as structural equilibrium. Configurations that do not satisfy the condition of structural self-consistency do not exist — neither in the sense of observational inaccessibility nor in any other sense. Reality is not a catalog of mathematically possible structures (as M. Tegmark's Mathematical Universe Hypothesis claims), is not the result of a physical mechanism generating multiple worlds (as the standard Multiverse claims), is not the product of evolutionary selection (as L. Smolin's cosmological natural selection claims). Reality is structural equilibrium — a configuration (or configurations) that sustains itself as a self-consistent whole. The difference between SDH and catalog ontologies is not a difference in a broader or narrower class of realized structures, but a difference in the type of ontological claim about existence. Catalog ontologies certify existence by an external criterion (mathematical consistency, physical realization in an ensemble, evolutionary history); SDH asserts that existence is a mode of structural self-maintenance, not a place in a list of possibilities. Methodologically, SDH operates by the principle of asymmetric acceptance: any empirically compatible consequences of competing theories are accepted (a plurality of universes, geometric connections between regions of reality, the coexistence of mathematical structures), while causal postulates without observational support are rejected (inflationary generation of universes, Darwinian selection of worlds, a Platonist certifier of existence). SDH relies on infra-induction — the extension of the observed pattern of equilibrium and self-maintenance to the fundamental level. This methodological position is close to Hume's empiricism, Mach's phenomenological reductionism, Quine's naturalized metaphysics, and the contemporary critique of speculative cosmology (Hossenfelder 2018, Ellis the constraint concerns only the mode of realization, not its quantity or diversity. SDH does not compete with physical science: any physical theory (including a possible Theory of Everything) will be read within its framework as a formalization of Level 0 or a specification of Level 1. SDH competes with metaphysical extensions of physics that make claims about a catalog of realized configurations or a mechanism of their generation. Technically, SDH formulates Level 0 — an atemporal logical principle that realizes only those configurations which are simultaneously algorithmically compressible (in the Kolmogorov–Chaitin sense) and admit self-reference — that is, the emergence of subsystems capable of a sufficient-for-self-description formalization of their own laws. The work applies fixed-point theorems (Tarski 1955, Aczel 1988) and category-theoretic constructions (Lawvere 1969, Awodey 2010) to the concept of structural equilibrium; the technical definition of self-referentiality is given via Yanofsky's diagonal construction. The position of SDH in the contemporary grounding literature (Schaffer 2009, Bliss 2014, Fine 2012) is fixed as ground-identity — a fourth position alongside foundationalism, infinitism, and coherentism. The allied position of Hossenfelder (Hossenfelder 2018), which deconstructs the fine-tuning problem as a pseudoproblem, is integrated as a special case of SDH. The hypothesis is compared with the Multiverse theory, MUH, Smolin's CNS, and both forms of the anthropic principle. Fundamental limitations — non-falsifiability in Popper's sense and the contentual indeterminacy of the determinant — are explicitly fixed. The work is addressed to philosophers of physics and methodologists of science.
Игорь Масленников (Sun,) studied this question.