Ontological Regulation: When Continuity of Being Becomes the Protected Target

Conceptual paper proposing that some regulatory architectures operate under ontological stakes — conditions where the threat is not pain or identity disruption but disruption of the experiential sense of existing as a real, continuous self. When felt self-continuity becomes externally contingent, withdrawal of recognition may threaten not merely self-worth but the ongoing sense of being real. Formalizes three levels of regulatory stakes (affective, identity, ontological) and proposes that ontological stakes produce qualitatively different defensive compression. Part of the SRF Theory Program, Paper 6.