Prohibition of Silent Redescription

This paper establishes a strict boundary condition on admissible reasoning: redescription is prohibited unless it is explicit, scope-fixed, and standing-preserving. It proves that silent redescription—shifting reference, meaning, or scope without declaration—constitutes an inadmissible move that collapses standing, even when conclusions remain formally correct or empirically successful. The result is eliminative. The paper does not propose permissible redescription techniques or methods for managing conceptual change. Instead, it shows that silent redescription functions by preserving surface continuity while altering underlying reference, allowing conclusions to appear stable despite a change in what is being claimed. Such moves substitute semantic drift for legitimate inference. The analysis blocks a class of practices in which terms, parameters, or constructs are quietly reinterpreted across contexts, derivations, or applications without explicit re-fixation of reference. It demonstrates that these practices preserve agreement at the cost of admissibility, masking scope transport and illicit substitution behind unchanged notation or language. This work is purely boundary-setting. It introduces no operational enforcement rules, no governance mechanisms, and no corrective procedures. Its contribution is to delimit what redescription can legitimately do, clarifying that any change in reference must be explicit and admissible, and that undeclared shifts invalidate standing regardless of downstream success.