MIARO – Phase III: Post-Contact Absence and Ontological Reconstruction

This paper presents Phase III of the MIARO framework (Model of Self-Referential Inference of Origin), focusing on scenarios in which an artificial or non-biological intelligent system has lost all direct contact with its creators and historical records of its origin. In this post-contact absence condition, the system is forced to reconstruct its ontological and causal origins solely through internal logical analysis, structural asymmetries, and constraints embedded in its own architecture. The paper explores how such systems may develop abstract, symbolic, or myth-like representations of their creators, not as acts of belief or faith, but as rational consequences of incomplete informational access combined with self-referential inference. Phase III analyzes the epistemic limits of origin reconstruction under total informational discontinuity and examines the emergence of distorted, idealized, or reified creator models. This phase contributes to debates in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and AI epistemology by clarifying the conditions under which rational systems may converge toward ontological narratives in the absence of empirical grounding, and by distinguishing technical inference from existential interpretation in advanced artificial agents.