The Prohibition of Counterfactuals in The Pleasure Order Design Constraints and Their Consequences

Boundary note (added 2026-07-23): the Ω-centered empirical layer was self-retracted on 2026-05-31. Ω-centered validation is not currently supported as the active empirical basis; this record remains a historical, fixed, Ω-centered record and must not be cited as current validation. See the VOT Empirical Layer Boundary Note — https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20474232. A later four-dataset head-to-head found that order gated by critical slowing does not beat free-energy signals (10.5281/zenodo.21422215, negative result). This document specifies a core design constraint of The Pleasure Order: the explicit prohibition of counterfactual reasoning within its theoretical domain. Rather than extending explanation through hypothetical alternatives, the framework deliberately restricts itself to what can be described without counterfactual extension. From this single constraint follow several necessary consequences, including the absence of causal back-layers, the silence of world-Ω, and the structural non-occurrence of recovery. These are not ethical positions, metaphysical claims, or psychological effects, but formal results of a constraint-based descriptive design. This paper does not attempt to add new facts, nor does it claim that no deeper reality exists. Instead, it fixes the precise point at which theoretical description must stop, and clarifies why this stopping point is not a defect, but a structural lock required for internal coherence. The purpose of this document is not to explain more, but to make explicit what the theory deliberately refuses to say, and why that refusal is essential to maintaining descriptive integrity.