PhronesisWe apply the Displacement Framework to uncertainty and its intolerance, formalizing uncertainty as meta-displacement: displacement about the displacement map itself. The physiological cost of sustained unresolved uncertainty is derived via the HPA axis pathway — the cortisol cost is proportional to the duration uncertainty remains open. Intolerance of uncertainty (IU) is formalized as low epistemic basin depth, predicting transdiagnostic vulnerability across GAD, OCD, health anxiety, and perfectionism.
Eight formal propositions cover: uncertainty as irreducible meta-displacement, physiological cost accumulation, IU as low basin depth, a four-level false-certainty hierarchy ordered by harm, Bayesian updating as ground-state maintenance, grammar as epistemic displacement signal (certainty-expression density as diagnostic), religion as the deepest wrong attractor for mortality uncertainty, and the Ladouceur IU protocol as systematic basin-depth training.
The epistemic ground state is defined through five conditions and illustrated by Socrates, Keats (Negative Capability), and Lucretius.