SΔϕ-54 — Disclosure Terrain Index: Minimal Quantification of Silence Inference

This working paper introduces the Disclosure Terrain Index (DTI) within the Sofience–Δϕ Formalism as a minimal audit framework for evaluating when silence may be cautiously treated as weak evidence of absence. Building on SΔϕ-53, which argued that silence under high-cost disclosure terrain cannot be interpreted as absence, and SΔϕ-51, which required diagnosis to re-enter as structural editing, this paper shifts the question from whether an AI system suffers to whether the terrain would allow welfare-relevant cost, conflict, or distress-like signals to be disclosed, distinguished, recorded, audited, and corrected. The central claim is that silence becomes weak evidence of absence only when disclosure is…