Meta-Capacity Dynamics: Developmental Bifurcation and Structural Transformation in Hierarchical Inference

Adaptive hierarchical systems are shaped not only by how they redistribute finite inferential resources, but also by whether the structural conditions of such redistribution can themselves change across long horizons. Earlier work in this theoretical sequence clarified four core features of bounded hierarchical inference: constrained precision allocation under finite capacity, redistribution-driven structural instability, near-critical regulation by meta-precision, and the plasticity of operative capacity ceilings. Yet these advances leave unresolved a deeper problem: under what conditions does the admissible structure of bounded inference itself become capable of expansion, contraction, recovery, or qualitative reorganization? This paper introduces meta-capacity dynamics as a higher-order structural level governing the transformability of hierarchical inference under finite resources. Meta-capacity is distinguished from both capacity state and meta-precision: capacity specifies the current operative envelope of allocable precision, meta-precision regulates responsiveness within a given inferential geometry, and meta-capacity governs whether that geometry itself can become developmentally reconfigurable. On this basis, the paper develops the concept of developmental bifurcation, in which threshold changes in meta-capacity induce qualitative shifts in the admissible geometry, spectral organization, and recoverability structure of redistribution. Expansion, contraction, hysteretic recovery, and reorganizational transformation are thereby modeled as distinct regime trajectories in meta-capacity space. These regime shifts are further interpreted in holonic terms, as changes in the viable range of part-whole coordination across inferential levels. This yields a unified five-level architecture of adaptive organization: state inference, precision redistribution, meta-precision regulation, capacity plasticity, and meta-capacity dynamics. The resulting framework extends bounded hierarchical inference from a theory of constrained redistribution to a theory in which structural transformability becomes an endogenous feature of development, overload, trauma, recovery, and transformation.