Color Confinement and Priority Monism: A Grounding-Theoretic Model of Individuation in QCD

This paper argues that the ontological structure of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), interpreted under ontic structural realism and a separatist grounding-theoretic framework, provides a physically precise and non-trivial model for a domain-restricted version of priority monism. The SU(3) gauge field structure is identified as the fundamental grounding base from which confined hadronic entities are constitutively derived. Color confinement is characterized not merely as a dynamical constraint but as a structurally governed individuation principle that determines when and under what conditions bounded individuals exist within the domain of strongly interacting matter. The paper defends the move from synchronic structural determination under fundamental laws to grounding, constructs a formal mapping between QCD dependence relations and the grounding structure posited by priority monism, and demonstrates the comparative advantage of the grounding-monist interpretation over priority pluralism and structural realism without grounding. The argument is explicitly conditional: if one accepts grounding and structural realism about QCD, the monistic interpretation follows as the most parsimonious and structurally coherent account of individuation in the strong-interaction domain. This work builds upon and extends the analysis developed in "The Physical Referent of the Ground of Being: A Metaphysical Interpretation of the Quark-Gluon Plasma" (Pinsonneault, 2026, Zenodo, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18521837), isolating and strengthening the analytic metaphysics argument independently of all theological and theodicy-related claims.