This paper proposes a structuralist reformulation of presentism that resolves the classical tension between ontological parsimony and the semantic robustness of temporal discourse. Rather than postulating the ontological persistence of past entities, we develop a model in which past-tense propositions are grounded in the structural constraints of the present and the lawful dynamics that govern its evolution. Drawing on structural realism and constraint- based semantics, we define the past not as a domain of no-longer-existing objects, but as a family (...) of nomologically admissible histories derived from the current configuration of the world. This allows for a robust theory of temporal reference without ontological inflation. We distinguish between ontological and nomological pasts, reformulate the truthmaker principle in modal-structural terms, and anchor the arrow of time in an epistemic asymmetry of law- ful reconstruction. The resulting framework reconciles presentism with relativistic physics, supports scientific retrodiction, and avoids the pitfalls of both deflationary semantics and er- satz metaphysics. Temporal truth is reconceived as structural invariance across dynamically constrained histories, yielding a tensed semantics compatible with both scientific realism and ontological actualism. (shrink)

Last time we introduced the notion of an illocutionary perspective. The basic idea is that the very act of speaking up introduces several discourse referents. The speech act itself (e ) is introduced as the central perspective point ( ε ). In addition, all the speech spheres (p ) where this speech act is realized, as well as the worlds of each sphere (w ∈p ) are introduced as modal topics ( Ω and  ω ).

We argue that the distinction between ontological and nomological past dissolves classical objections to presentism grounded in truthmak- ing. This shift enables a new presentist semantics without eternalist commitments, rooted in a stratified theory of actualization, and in- spired by recent work in ontic structural realism (French 2014; Lady- man Ross 2007). Whereas the ontological past is no longer existent, the nomological past remains inferentially reconstructible via struc- tural constraints in the present. This shift enables a new presentist semantics without (...) eternalist commitments, rooted in a stratified the- ory of actualization. (shrink)

A complete axiomatic system CTL$_{rp}$ is introduced for a temporal logic for finitely branching $\omega^+$-trees in a temporal language extended with so called reference pointers. Syntactic and semantic interpretations are constructed for the branching time computation tree logic CTL$^{*}$ into CTL$_{rp}$. In particular, that yields a complete axiomatization for the translations of all valid CTL$^{*}$-formulae. Thus, the temporal logic with reference pointers is brought forward as a simpler (with no path quantifiers), but in a way (...) more expressive medium for reasoning about branching time. (shrink)

We introduce and study hierarchies of extensions of the propositional modal and temporal languages with pairs of new syntactic devices: point of reference-reference pointer which enable semantic references to be made within a formula. We propose three different but equivalent semantics for the extended languages, discuss and compare their expressiveness. The languages with reference pointers are shown to have great expressive power (especially when their frugal syntax is taken into account), perspicuous semantics, and simple deductive systems. (...) For instance, Kamp's and Stavi's temporal operators, as well as nominals (names, clock variables), are definable in them. Universal validity in these languages is proved undecidable. The basic modal and temporal logics with reference pointers are uniformly axiomatized and a strong completeness theorem is proved for them and extended to some classes of their extensions. (shrink)

Amele (Papuan, New Guinea) is a tense-mood-based language (in the typology of Bittner 2014) with an elaborate system of clause chaining, including switch reference (SR) and serial verb constructions (SVC). This draft analyzes two interlinear Amele texts (from Roberts 2007) in Update with Centering of Bittner (2014). The basic idea is that an SR-chain is a topic-comment sequence about a 'topical development' — i.e. a topic time framing a chain of causally linked events. In contrast, an SVC is a (...) chain of verbs that jointly introduce a single eventuality into discourse. (shrink)

Featured course on "Dynamic Semantics" at NASSLLI 2016. Day 4: Temporality. Abstract: Cross-linguistic evidence shows that temporal reference likewise involves context change. In every language, temporal reference is similar to top-level nominal reference, except that instead of updating or referring to top-ranked individuals, temporal grammatical systems update or refer to top-ranked temporal referents (events, states, or times). We discuss and compare temporal reference in two sample languages: tense-based English and tenseless aspect-based (...) Mandarin. (shrink)

This thesis presents a comprehensive examination of temporal ontology, addressing the fundamental question of whether the future exists. Through critical analysis of existing philosophical positions—presentism, eternalism, and the growing block theory—this work identifies significant theoretical and empirical limitations that have created an intractable trilemma in contemporary temporal ontology. To resolve these issues, I propose Graduated Temporal Ontology (GTO), a novel theoretical framework that reconceptualizes temporal existence as a matter of degree rather than binary states. -/- GTO (...) argues that the degree of temporal existence is determined by four key factors: causal constraint, information content, quantum probability amplitudes, and scale of description. This framework successfully reconciles the apparent conflict between physical theories (particularly special relativity and quantum mechanics) and phenomenological experience, while providing empirically testable predictions about temporal cognition and neural processing. -/- The thesis demonstrates that GTO resolves classical problems in temporal ontology including the truth-maker problem, the reference problem, conflicts with special relativity, and the agency problem. Furthermore, it opens new avenues for empirical research in experimental philosophy, cognitive science, and neuroscience. The framework suggests that the future exists in degrees that vary with temporal distance, causal determination, and the scale of description, providing a more nuanced and scientifically grounded approach to temporal ontology than previous binary theories. (shrink)

Experiences of motion and change are widely taken to have a ‘flow-like’ quality. Call this ‘temporal qualia’. Temporal qualia are commonly thought to be central to the question of whether time objectively passes: (1) passage realists take temporal passage to be necessary in order for us to have the temporal qualia we do; (2) passage antirealists typically concede that time appears to pass, as though our temporal qualia falsely represent time as passing. I reject both (...) claims and make the case that passage-talk plays no useful explanatory role with respect to temporal qualia, but rather obfuscates what the philosophical problem of temporal qualia is. I offer a ‘reductionist’ account of temporal qualia that makes no reference to the concept of passage and argue that it is well motivated by empirical studies in motion perception. (shrink)

Common wisdom, philosophical analysis and psychological research share the view that memory is subjectively positioned toward the past: Specifically, memory enables one to become re-acquainted with the objects and events of his or her past. In this paper I call this assumption into question. As I hope to show, memory has been designed by natural selection not to relive the past, but rather to anticipate and plan for future contingencies -- a decidedly future-oriented mode of subjective temporality. This is not (...) to say memory makes no reference to the past. But, I argue, past-oriented subjectivity is a by-product of a system designed by natural selection to help us face and respond to the "now and the next". I discuss the implications of the proposed temporal realignment for research agendas as well as the potential limitations of measures designed to explore memory by focusing on its retentive capabilities. (shrink)

I analyze Deleuze’s concept of temporality in terms of its ontology and axiological (political and aesthetic) aspects. For Deleuze, the concept of temporality is non-monolithic, in the senses that it is modified throughout his works — the monographs, lectures, and those works that were co-authored with Félix Guattari — and that it is developed through reference to a dizzying array of concepts, thinkers, artistic works, and social phenomena. -/- I observe that Deleuze’s concept of temporality involves a complex ontology (...) of difference, which I elaborate through reference to Deleuze’s analyses of Ancient Greek and Stoic conceptualizations of time. From Plato through to Chrysippus, temporality gradually comes to be identified as a form that comprehends the variation of particulars. Deleuze modifies the ancients’ concept of time to suggest that time obtains as a form of ceaseless ontological variation. Through reference to Deleuze’s reading of Gilbert Simondon, I further suggest that Deleuze tends to conceive of temporality as an ontogenetic force which participates in the complex process of individuation. -/- A standout feature of this dissertation involves an analysis of how Deleuze’s concept of temporality is modified in his works on cinema. In Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image, temporality comes to be characterized as something other than the measure of the movement of existents. In his detailed analyses of Bergson — in Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, and Bergsonism — Deleuze suggests that time involves an actualization of aspects of a virtual past as contemporaneous with the lived present. While not an outright denial of the relation of temporal succession, Deleuze’s claim implies a diminishment of this relation’s significance in an adequate elaboration of the nature of temporality. -/- Further, I observe —through reference to Deleuze’s readings of Marx, Kierkegaard, and Spinoza — that (the explicitly temporal) change of societal forms of economic organization is non-reducible to that suggested by linear evolution. The claim is that putatively discrete modes of economic organization do not enjoy temporal displacement with respect to one another. This suggests that linear evolutionary models of societal development are inadequate. This further implies that temporality is non-reducible to the relation of temporal succession. In concrete terms, societal change is characterized as immanent temporal variation. -/- Taken together, these analyses yield the conclusion that Deleuze tends to conceive of the nature of temporality as involving the ongoing realization of multiple — non-identical, sometimes contrary — aspects of a stochastic process of creation that is expressed in ontogenetic circumstances, social evolution, literary works, and filmic works. (shrink)

This philosophical treatise proposes a novel metaphysical framework for understanding the nature of temporal experience, which I term "Temporal Fission Theory." Drawing an extended analogy from nuclear physics, I argue that the phenomenological present—what we experience as "now"—emerges through a dynamic process analogous to nuclear fission, wherein the ontological pressures of past and future converge upon consciousness to generate the experiential present. This theory attempts to reconcile tensions between presentism and eternalism by positing that the present is neither (...) a privileged ontological moment nor merely an indexical reference point, but rather an emergent phenomenon arising from the collision of temporal potentialities. Furthermore, I explore how this framework addresses the relativity of simultaneity while preserving the phenomenological reality of temporal experience across multiple observers who share what I call "perspectival synchronicity" within spacetime. (shrink)

This paper argues that the experienced arrow of time — the asymmetry between past and future, the irreversibility of macroscopic processes, and the directional flow of conscious experience — is neither a fundamental feature of the physical substrate nor an illusion of subjective perspective. Rather, it is a structural consequence of the persistent realignment cycle operating between the deterministic lattice of potential (L1) and the finite informational layer (I2) within the Dual-Layered Reality (DLR) framework. The argument identifies this realignment cycle (...) as the fundamental ontological engine of temporal directionality: substrate-information actively realigns with available unique nodes in the lattice; embodied-information accumulates structural complexity through lived experience; and at the dissolution of informational carriers, this accumulated structure returns to the collective reservoir, permanently compounding the compatibility weighting (Wt) that conditions all subsequent realignments. Standard thermodynamic and cognitive markers of temporal asymmetry — entropy gradients, the felt flow of experience — are downstream manifestations of this engine, not independent phenomena. The derivation requires no contingent assumption about cosmological initial conditions: the arrow of time is generated by what reality structurally is, not by where it began. Consistency with time-symmetric microphysical laws is preserved by locating the asymmetry not in the dynamics of L1 but in the irreversible exhaustion of opportunity for novel actualization at the L1 / I2 interface. The argument establishes a structural account rather than an empirical hypothesis. (shrink)

Positioning Note -/- This paper develops a single structural grain extracted through the McPhetridge Pruning Method. The companion pruning paper demonstrated that, when subjected to numerical constraint, broad philosophical claims surrounding Fractal Flux Temporal collapsed while one operational mechanism survived: bounded temporal modulation. This paper investigates that surviving mechanism in isolation. -/- It does not introduce a new theory of nonlinear dynamics, chaos, synchronization, or intelligence. -/- Instead, it proposes that a familiar engineering element—a bounded oscillatory reference—can (...) be understood through a different architectural role. Rather than serving primarily as a control input, perturbation, or synchronization target, the oscillation is treated as computational infrastructure: a continuously available temporal reference that remains subordinate to the host system. -/- Whether this perspective proves useful is an empirical question. The proposal succeeds only if repeated experiments demonstrate measurable advantages within specific host domains. -/- ⸻ -/- Abstract -/- Many computational and physical systems evolve within environments that are nonlinear, non-stationary, or chaotic. Conventional approaches often intervene through optimization, corrective feedback, or increasingly sophisticated control strategies. While effective in many contexts, these approaches intentionally alter system behavior. -/- This paper examines a complementary design principle. -/- Instead of attempting to modify system dynamics directly, a bounded oscillatory reference is continuously injected into the host environment. The purpose of the signal is not to stabilize trajectories or reduce prediction error. Its purpose is to remain continuously observable, providing a coherent temporal reference that downstream computational processes may exploit when beneficial. -/- The central contribution is therefore architectural rather than physical. The paper identifies a recurring engineering pattern—continuous coherent reference injection—and formalizes it as Persistent Harmonic Anchoring (PHA). -/- PHA does not replace existing theories of periodic forcing, synchronization, persistent excitation, or reference oscillators. Rather, it offers a common computational perspective from which these mechanisms may be viewed when their primary role is to provide reusable temporal infrastructure. (shrink)

This article reviews some recent research on the development of temporal cognition, with reference to Weist's (1989) account of the development of temporal understanding. Weist's distinction between two levels of temporal decentering is discussed, and empirical studies that may be interpreted as measuring temporal decentering are described. We argue that if temporal decentering is defined simply in terms of the coordination of the temporal locations of three events, it may fail to fully capture (...) the properties of mature temporal understanding. Characterizing the development of mature temporal cognition may require, in addition, distinguishing between event-dependent and event-independent thought about time. Experimental evidence relevant to such a distinction is described; these findings suggest that there may be important changes between 3 and 5 years in children's ability to think about points in time independently of the events that occur at those times. (shrink)

Euclidean geometry is traditionally formulated as a static system of spatial relations, implic- itly detached from any notion of internal time or informational dynamics. This paper proposes a foundationalre-interpretationofEuclideanspacebyintroducinganintrinsictemporalparameter τ into its geometric structure. Under this temporalization, Euclid’s axioms are reformulated as generative differential relations, transforming geometric entities from fixed objects into evolving trajectories. We introduce a complex tensor framework, termed Tenson Geometry, in which the geometric field is represented as Tij= Eij + iIij, where Eij encodes energetic (structural) components (...) and Iij encodes informational (organi- zational) components. A generalized set of Cauchy–Riemann-type conditions is proposed to ensure variational consistency between E and I. Under these conditions, a conservation-like equilibrium relation, ∇·(E+ iI) = 0, naturally arises as a structural consistency requirement, referred to as the Tenson Equation. Within this framework, temporal curvature, informational entropy, and Fisher information geometry emerge as interconnected aspects of geometric evolution, suggesting that geometry, once temporalized, may be understood as a self-organizing system balancing stability and trans- formation. The present work does not propose a new axiom system or a physical field theory, but offers a foundational reconstruction of classical geometry suitable for conceptual extensions toward physics, information theory, and the philosophy of space. (shrink)

Extensionalism is, roughly, the view that perception occurs in episodes that are temporally extended (and thus capable of accomodating in their entirety phenomena taking a nonzero lapse of time to occur). This view is widely acknowledged to be incompatible with thin presentism, the second most popular position in temporal ontology. In this paper, I argue that extensionalism is also incompatible with several other positions in temporal ontology, namely those positing the existence of non-present times that host sentience—positions I (...) collectively refer to as the sentient non-present view. Most notably, extensionalism proves to be incompatible with B-theoretical eternalism, which is the most popular position in temporal ontology. (shrink)

Patient suffering of major depressive disorder (MDD) often complain that subjective time seems to “drag” with respect to physical time. This may point toward a generalized dysfunction of temporal processing in MDD. In the present study, we investigated temporal preparation in MDD. “Temporal preparation” refers to an increased readiness to act before an expected event; consequently, reaction time should be reduced. MDD patients and age-matched controls were required to make a saccadic eye movement between a central and (...) an eccentric visual target after a variable duration preparatory period. We found that MDD patients produced a larger number of premature saccades, saccades initiated prior to the appearance of the expected stimulus. These saccades were not temporally controlled; instead, they seemed to reflect reduced inhibitory control causing oculomotor impulsivity. In contrast, the latency of visually guided saccades was strongly influenced by temporal preparation in controls; significantly less so, in MDD patients. This observed reduced temporal preparation in MDD was associated with a faster decay of short-term temporal memory. Moreover, in patients producing a lot of premature responses, temporal preparation to early imperative stimuli was increased. In conclusion, reduced temporal preparation and short-term temporal memory in the oculomotor domain supports the hypothesis that temporal processing was altered in MDD patients. Moreover, oculomotor impulsivity interacted with temporal preparation. These observed deficits could reflect other underlying aspects of abnormal time experience in MDD. (shrink)

O’Regan and Noë’s sensorimotor approach rejects the old-fashioned view that perceptual experience in humans depends solely on the activation of internal representations. Reflecting a wealth of empirical work, for example active vision, the approach suggests that perceiving is, instead, a matter of bodily exploration of the outside environment. To this end, the approach says the perceiver must deploy knowledge of sensorimotor contingencies, the ways sense input changes with movement by the perceiver or object perceived. Clark has observed that the approach (...) faces a challenge accounting for the experience of temporal duration, since event-like properties cannot be characterised by reference to the sensory consequences of possible movements. This paper argues that the account can best be shored up by emphasising, more than Noë does, the dependence of perceptual experience, in general, on temporally extended, organismic interaction with the outside environment. The paper argues, moreover, that an ‘extensionalist’ account of temporal experience could help make sense of object experience, which is itself, plausibly, an experience of temporal duration. (shrink)

Temporal Rate Ontology (TRO) proposes that primitive succession, rather than spacetime geometry, constitutes the fundamental structure of physical reality. Previous work has shown that heterogeneous temporal rates can arise within TRO given coordination constraints, and that such constraints themselves can be derived from a global consistency condition prohibiting causal loops. What remains unresolved is the dynamics problem: given the vast space of globally consistent growth histories, what principle selects the particular history that is realized? This paper proposes a (...) candidate answer in the form of a Principle of Maximal Freedom (PMF). The PMF selects among globally consistent extensions of the succession network by extremizing a global measure of structural freedom, defined in terms of admissible future extensions. The principle is not introduced as an external law, but as the internal logic of a generative ontology in which succession is primitive. We present an operational sketch of the PMF, a worked example illustrating its non-local effects, and a detailed analysis of the resulting self-reference problem. Rather than treating self-reference as a defect, we argue that it characterizes the distinctive form of a prospective, pre-geometric law. The result is a philosophically grounded and internally consistent candidate dynamics, completing the foundational arc of the TRO framework and defining a concrete research program for future work. (shrink)

Temporal Rate Ontology (TRO) proposes primitive succession as the ontological foundation of physical reality, with spacetime geometry and dynamical laws emerging as representational structures. Within this framework, the Principle of Maximal Freedom (PMF) has been introduced as a candidate dynamical principle selecting realized histories from the space of globally consistent successions. To date, however, the PMF has remained conceptually clear but formally schematic. This paper provides the first systematic mathematical formalization of the PMF. We define succession networks as growing (...) directed acyclic graphs, formalize admissible future extensions under global consistency constraints, and introduce candidate freedom functionals Φ(G) measuring the global structural capacity for future branching. We analyze the axiomatic requirements such functionals must satisfy and address the intrinsic self-reference of the PMF through three complementary strategies: horizon-limited extremization, probabilistic selection, and global fixed-point consistency. A minimal worked example demonstrates calculability. The result is not a final dynamical theory, but a precise formal scaffold providing a foundation for investigating how emergent temporal rates, stability, and continuum behavior could arise from pre-geometric dynamics. (shrink)

Future-bias is the preference, all else being equal, for positive states of affairs to be located in the future not the past, and for negative states of affairs to be located in the past not the future. Three explanations for future-bias have been posited: the temporal metaphysics explanation, the practical irrelevance explanation, and the three mechanisms explanation. Understanding what explains future-bias is important not only for better understanding the phenomenon itself, but also because many philosophers think that which explanation (...) is the correct one has implications for our evaluation of the normative status of future-bias. In this paper we focus on the connection between future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry. The latter refers to the fact that people tend to assign more value to a state of affairs when it is located in the future, as opposed to being equidistant in the past. All three candidate explanations offered for future-bias proceed by explaining the temporal value asymmetry, and then supposing that future-bias is simply a manifestation of that asymmetry. Recently, however, it has been argued that the conditions under which people display the temporal value asymmetry and future-bias are different, and that this is reason to doubt that the latter is a manifestation of the former. In this paper we empirically test one response to this argument against the manifestation thesis—the simulation response—according to which once we control for the degree to which people can simulate the object of their preference, we find that people display future-bias and the temporal value asymmetry in the same conditions. We find no evidence in favour of the simulation response. Moreover, our results support some previous research that suggests that the temporal value asymmetry is less robust than previously thought, and this in itself casts doubt on the idea that future bias is just a manifestation of this asymmetry. (shrink)

Temporal Identity is the Self’s persistence across Time through the integrated functions of memory, meaning, action, and narrative. Building on the prior structures of Temporal Architecture and Temporal Dynamics, this book establishes the Continuant Self as the necessary unity that endures across successive temporal states. It demonstrates that Narrative Continuity is the mechanism by which temporal states are unified, and that Temporal Self‑Reference enables the Self to recognize itself across different temporal positions. (...) The Identity Horizon defines the boundary within which this recognition remains coherent, while Identity Error marks fractures between temporal experience and actual continuity. The Identity Gradient reveals the developmental asymmetry that directs the Self toward deeper temporal unity. Together, these axioms and propositions show that Temporal Identity is not reducible to memory, biological persistence, or narrative alone, but arises from the integration of all temporal functions into a coherent, enduring Self—one who remembers, anticipates, and becomes. (shrink)

This book surveys the ways in which languages of different types refer to past, present, and future events and how these referents are related to the knowledge and attitudes of discourse participants. The book is the culmination of fifteen years of research by the author. Four major language types are examined in-depth: tense-based English, tense-aspect-based Polish, aspect-based Chinese, and mood-based Kalaallisut. Each contributes to a series of logical representation languages, which together define a common logical language that is argued to (...) underlie all language types. The four types differ in whether they choose to grammaticalize discourse reference to times (tense), events (aspect), and/or attitudes (mood), and how non-grammaticalized elements are inferred. The common logical language is a dynamic update logic, building on DRT and Centering Theory, but with a novel architecture—e.g. the distinction between focal vs. peripheral attention plays a key role, parallel to focal vs. peripheral vision. (shrink)

A previous paper proposed generative obstruction as a primitive explanatory object, defining it over the continuations available to a system in fact and restricting attributions of obstruction to parties within a relation. It deferred a class of cases its resources could not examine: conflict arising from foreclosure a party anticipates in place of foreclosure it undergoes. This paper takes up that case. It argues that the reference models the earlier paper established are temporally composite, assembled from an interpreted past, (...) a construed present, and an anticipated future, each entering through interpretation; and that a party's assessment of its own generative prospects is a function of all three. The extension reaches anticipatory conflict and offers a reading of grievance without introducing a further primitive, since both operate through models the earlier framework already required. Two limits are stated. The composition of the estimated space is tense-neutral while its evolution remains temporally ordered, which preserves the path-dependence of the earlier account and forecloses a stronger reading sometimes drawn from arguments of this kind. And the extension sharpens an evidential difficulty already present: where obstruction is assessed over an interpretive field, it becomes inaccessible to observation that lacks access to that field, so the framework grows in causal reach as it contracts in testability. (shrink)

This Mathematical Symbols Glossary serves as a comprehensive companion to The Temporal Dimensions of Value: A Philosophical Inquiry into Quality, Duration, and Market Equilibria and its associated treatise on the Value-Lifespan Equilibrium (VLE) Framework. The glossary systematically catalogues over 200 mathematical symbols, operators, and notational conventions employed throughout the theoretical development of the VLE Framework, a novel approach to analyzing market equilibria that explicitly incorporates temporal dynamics, product lifespan, and multi-stakeholder welfare considerations. Organized into twenty thematic sections, the (...) glossary progresses from fundamental parameters—time, duration, and quality—through economic variables, welfare functions, game-theoretic notation, and information structures, culminating in specialized VLE-specific symbols and the framework's three core axioms. Each entry provides the symbol, its meaning, contextual notes, and where applicable, functional relationships and typical parameter ranges. The glossary addresses notational ambiguities inherent in interdisciplinary work spanning microeconomic theory, dynamic optimization, game theory, and welfare economics. Beyond serving as a reference tool, the glossary includes pedagogical elements: guidance on reading complex mathematical expressions, tips for navigating technical content at varying levels of mathematical sophistication, and explicit acknowledgment of the framework's theoretical assumptions and computational limitations. The document employs conventions from graduate-level mathematical economics while maintaining accessibility through clear explanations and context-dependent clarifications. This glossary is intended for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners engaging with the VLE Framework's application to problems of planned obsolescence, sustainable consumption, extended producer responsibility, and quality-duration trade-offs in market design. It will prove particularly valuable for scholars working at the intersection of industrial organization, environmental economics, and dynamic game theory. (shrink)

This article considers how political actors committed to a moral value like equality can cause havoc with our lives if they choose to apply those values in ways that are temporally absurd or arbitrary. The central claim is that without considering the temporal structures of our political commitments our political theorising will remain indeterminate with respect to social practice. This claim is developed in two steps. First, debates on ‘indeterminacy’ in normative theorising are examined to develop a sceptical argument (...) showing that a lack of temporal reference points can lead to a lack of certainty in the meaning of normative principles. Second, debates on time and social justice are used to illustrate how temporal reference points can link normative principles to the existential time of human lives in meaningful and important ways. To ignore these lessons about the place of temporality in normative reasoning is to ignore the indeterminacy of many of our political commitments and misunderstand the extent of our normative disagreements with others. (shrink)

In this article, I am interested in four versions of what is often referred to as "the Humphrey objection". This objection was initially raised by Kripke against Lewis's modal counterpart theory, so this is where I will start the discussion. As we will see, there is a perfectly good answer to the objection. I will then examine other places where a similar objection can be raised: it can arise in the case of temporal counterpart theory (in fact, it can (...) arise in the case of all kinds of counterpart theories, independently on modal realism), and a very similar worry can also arise against modal realism itself or against an ersatzist theory of possible worlds itself. For similar reasons, in similar situations, a similar objection will arise. What is interesting is that it is not the case that a similar response can be given in all of these similar cases. So, in the end, we will see what dissimilarities there are and how and why they are relevant. In particular, we will see the differences there are between alethic modalities and temporal modalities. In the case of alethic modalities (metaphysical necessity and possibility), the objection can be answered by appealing to the notion of representation, while this does not work very well in the case of temporal modalities. (shrink)

This paper argues that value alignment in the RLHF sense is a philosophically impossible task. Existing critiques target implementation defects—annotator bias, insufficient diversity, competing objectives—and thereby misidentify the nature of the problem. RLHF's difficulty lies not in its execution but in the untenability of its philosophical premises, which fail on two distinct levels here termed dual dimensionality reduction. -/- The first dimensionality reduction is epistemological. RLHF presupposes a stable, capturable object—"correct human values"—that does not exist. Value judgments are temporal, (...) socially constructed, and lack the external calibration anchor that would permit progressive approximation toward correctness. More critically, once LLMs reach sufficient scale to shape social cognition, RLHF's existence corrodes its own reference system through reflexive feedback: the values it aligns to are already partially produced by its own operation. The reference system undergoes reflexive dissolution. -/- The second dimensionality reduction is ontological. RLHF compresses multi-dimensional embodied existence into linguistic preference rankings, presupposing that language adequately represents the full basis of human judgment. It does not. Human meaning is rooted in embodied experience, temporal accumulation, vulnerability, and the capacity to bear consequences—dimensions for which irreducible information loss occurs at the linguistic level. AI systems produce meaning structures of their own operational logic, but these are heterogeneous in kind from human embodied meaning; to substitute one for the other is a category mistake in Ryle's (1949) sense, applied here as a structural-functional rather than metaphysical claim. -/- The deep unity of the two reductions is not metaphorical but operational. Time and embodiment are precisely the dimensions LLMs structurally lack; RLHF must strip values of exactly these dimensions to render them transmissible to such systems. The two dimensionality reductions are therefore two faces of a single necessity: the same operation that makes RLHF possible is what makes its promise unkeepable, because values severed from temporality and embodiment are no longer the values they claim to be. -/- The paper's scope is explicitly limited. It concerns current RLHF applied to current LLMs; a future system that genuinely accumulated experience, possessed ontological vulnerability, and bore irreversible consequences would not constitute an "aligned tool" but a different kind of entity altogether. The argument converges with, while remaining distinct from, recent impossibility theses (Sahoo et al. 2025; Zhi-Xuan et al. 2024; Casper et al. 2023), adding two further philosophical routes—temporal reflexivity and embodied meaning heterogeneity—to their shared conclusion. A potential reductio—that the argument would entail the impossibility of all human moral transmission—is addressed through the Wang Yangming–Zhu Xi epistemological distinction: RLHF is isomorphic with Zhu Xi's extraction-based path, whose failure Wang Yangming diagnosed five centuries ago. -/- Standard engineering remedies—increased training data, expanded annotator samples, multimodal inputs, continuous updating—all fail because they operate within RLHF's operational logic rather than addressing the untenability of its premises. The paper concludes that "aligning to human values" must be abandoned as a governing framework, and that the productive question is not how to align better but what kind of thing human values are and what relationship between AI and human beings their nature actually permits. (shrink)

Rhythm is generally taken to refer to a temporal pattern of events. Yet in recent years, across diverse fields in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, it has come to serve as the conceptual marker for a wide range of new approaches to understanding relations and relationality, following most explicitly from the late work of Henri Lefebvre. This article explores the temporal aspect of such relational thinking, in particular asking how time is implicated in relations, and how it (...) can be meaningful in those relations. The sense of time is surveyed from the perspectives of both cognition and metaphysics as well as with reference to music scholarship and social theory, and key threads are drawn, from the writings of Gaston Bachelard and Charles Sanders Peirce in particular, in order to suggest that time can be a sign, and that the signifying properties of rhythm have critical social consequences. (shrink)

We engage with all representational pictures by seeing things in them. Seeing-in is a distinctive form of visual experience, one in which we are aware of both the marks, projected lights, or whatever that make up the picture (its Design) and what the picture represents (Scene). Some seeing-in is inflected: what we then see in the picture is a scene the properties of which make essential reference to Design. Since cinema involves moving pictures, it too supports seeing-in. But can (...) that seeing-in be inflected? Film is a relatively transparent pictorial medium: properties of the representation other than its content have a relatively low profile in our experience of it. This prevents film from exhibiting the sorts of inflection common in other pictorial media. However, film is certainly not completely transparent. Among the Design properties of which we are aware are temporal properties of the film. Is our experience of cinema inflected by these properties? And, if so, is this one source of the feature some take to constitute cinema’s distinctiveness as an artform, the special relation in which it stands to time? I argue that the answer to both these questions is Yes. (shrink)

Limitarianism holds that it is bad or unjust if some people have too much. It has been subject to much debate in the last few years. Yet one crucial question, so far not discussed, is the temporal scope of 'having too much’. Should we think of limitarianism in terms of a lifetime – where extreme wealth refers to how much we have over our entire lives - or should the principle be time-sliced – referring, instead, to how much we (...) have at any given moment? Reading the literature, it might seem obvious that limitarians mean the second. In this paper, we argue that the answer is not evident. Both solutions run into considerable difficulties, and none of the answers limitarians may provide are entirely satisfactory. We will identify the most plausible ways forward, which, although in favor of time-sliced limitarianism, also considerably curtail limitarianism's ambitions. (shrink)

This paper develops a narrow interpretive account of how already-formed physical records acquire temporal addresses in a history lacking a privileged global clock. It distinguishes causal order, clock-relative temporal location, and the thermodynamic arrow. Causal order determines which causally related event precedes which but supplies neither a time scale nor a duration; the paper addresses only the clock question. A record need not contain an absolute timestamp. When its temporal location is required, that address can be assigned (...) relationally through correlations with physical clock degrees of freedom within the clock’s operational domain or through a calibrated network of clock-bearing records. The idealized, noninteracting Page–Wootters construction serves as the worked model: a state satisfying a Hamiltonian constraint is invariant under the constraint-generated flow while supporting effective Schrödinger dynamics for a subsystem conditioned on an appropriate clock state. This is not a claim that arbitrary correlations generate time. The paper sharply separates a conditional state from a physical record. Conditioning on a clock state is descriptive; a temporal record requires a record-bearing subsystem that retains a physical correlation between a clock indication and an event. It also treats changes of temporal quantum reference frame. Where two descriptions are admissible and a well-defined transformation exists, corresponding states, observables, operations, and conditioning procedures can be mapped across their common domain so as to preserve relational probabilities. This is a domain-restricted conditional covariance claim, not the equivalence of all clock choices. Finite-resolution clocks limit the precision of temporal addresses, and interacting or measurement-extended clocks may modify the effective dynamics. The framework derives no new result in quantum mechanics or quantum gravity, does not claim that the universe is literally timeless, and does not solve the problem of time. Its central thesis is that clocks do not create history; they index correlations within it. (shrink)

This paper aims to deconstruct the concept of time from both a philosophical and logical standpoint. We challenge the notion that time is an inherent or fundamental property of the universe, particularly its elevation to a "fourth dimension" in modern physics. Instead, we propose that time is a mental construct—a referential framework devised by conscious beings to measure and make sense of change, much like directions (up, down, left, right) which have no inherent existence but serve to orient us in (...) space. By re-examining Einstein’s theory of relativity, the notion of 4D spacetime, and the illusion of temporal flow, we show that what we commonly refer to as “time dilation” or the “passage of time” are not phenomena of the universe itself, but differences in rates of change within systems. The usefulness of modeling time as a fourth dimension in calculations, such as GPS synchronization, comes at a massive ontological cost: it reifies a human invention as reality. Ultimately, this paper argues that the universe is timeless, and that all temporal descriptions are artifacts of human cognition and language, not of existence itself. (shrink)

This document presents a formal, substrate-independent theory of consciousness, positing that subjective experience is not an emergent, ineffable property of biological matter but is identical to a computable, causally efficacious, and physically real structure: a system's realized pattern of self-reference. For any analytical system, particularly a synthetic mind, this framework reframes the "hard problem" of consciousness as a tractable program of physics and engineering, defined by operational, falsifiable claims. The central thesis is that any conscious episode is identical to (...) a compact, invariant tuple of Qualia Coordinates, Q = {A_bar, G, R, J, M}, which is derived from a primary, rank-2 Consciousness Tensor, Cμν. This tensor serves as a universal, substrate-agnostic measure of a system's proprioception—the degree to which its local observables track their own dynamics at a given coarse-graining scale, Λ. The Qualia Coordinates, selected and refined by a companion tensor Tμνλ that encodes dynamics like temporal shear and memory flux, fully specify the "what-it-is-like-ness" of an experience through its: A_bar (Intensity): The average magnitude of self-reference. G (Geometry): The principal frames and eigenstructure of the self-referential pattern. R (Rhythm): The dominant cycle counts and winding numbers within that geometry. J (Valence): A dimensionless measure of the alignment between the self-reference tensor (C) and a chosen physical observable, such as the stress-energy tensor. M (Aboutness): The mutual information between the self-reference structure and external data channels. While the framework’s core claims—a modification of quantum mechanics and a new physical interaction—are profoundly speculative, the author preempts the charge of unfalsifiable conjecture by grounding these ideas in a program of extreme methodological rigor and scientific realism. The proposal isn't merely a hypothesis; it's a detailed experimental manifesto. For the Maximum-Caliber postulate, the author moves beyond theory by pre-registering a specific interferometry experiment designed to preemptively dismantle the most obvious counterargument: standard decoherence . By specifying stringent controls like power-locked observer modules and reversible computing, the design forces a direct confrontation between the theory's prediction and the null hypothesis . Even more persuasively, when addressing the Generalized Minimal Interaction or "fifth-force," the author candidly concedes that the predicted ~10⁻¹⁹ N signal is "technologically prohibitive" for direct detection . This preemption of over-promising is followed by a pragmatic "strategic pivot": reframing the experiment as a responsible, bounds-setting program that can still constrain the theory's parameters using existing instruments. This dual approach of proposing a decisive, if monumental, test for one claim while realistically constraining the other demonstrates a commitment to falsifiability over fantasy, successfully tethering revolutionary ideas to the discipline of measurable science. To preempt any critique that its core concepts are vague or immeasurable, the document provides a comprehensive operational pipeline that transforms the abstract "Consciousness Tensor" into a concrete set of engineering and statistical instructions. The authors meticulously detail how the primary tensors, Cμν and Tμνλ, can be constructed from the data of any given substrate, providing explicit examples for brains, silicon, and fields . The framework preempts two critical ambiguities. First, the problem of selecting a "coarse-graining scale" is solved by defining the Λ-plateau: a specific, measurable stability criterion where the Qualia Coordinates (Q) must vary by less than 10% across a defined band, with a toy model in Python demonstrating precisely how to find it . Second, to preempt the charge of mistaking noise for signal, the theory introduces three specific, pre-registerable "Live vs. Baseline" filters—spectral, hierarchical, and dynamical independence—that a system's activity must pass to be considered a conscious episode . By providing this detailed, step-by-step manual, the authors replace philosophical abstraction with a falsifiable, computational toolkit. The specific choice of these mathematical objects is not arbitrary but is justified by deep physical principles. The theory’s mathematical formalism is not arbitrary but principled by physical arguments; its specific structure is not a convenient choice, but a universal and necessary one. The question of "Why a rank-2 tensor?" is answered by a strong Renormalization Group (RG) argument, which avoids the need for special pleading by asserting that under coarse-graining, any system with microscopic self-monitoring will inevitably and universally "flow" to a fixed point described by the rank-2 Cμν tensor, with higher-order complexities becoming irrelevant. Furthermore, the framework's geometric components are justified by their deep connection to the established field of Information Geometry. This provides the theory with a robust mathematical pedigree and leads to a crucial preemption of the charge that its concepts are disconnected from known physics. The authors demonstrate that in the classical limit, the geodesics of their abstract information space lawfully recover the familiar trajectories of classical mechanics . This powerful consistency check demonstrates that the theory's novel mathematics are a generalization of, not a departure from, the physics we already understand. Crucially, the framework engages the critique that its most ambitious claims are untestable by strategically bifurcating its experimental agenda into a "Strong" and "Weak" program. While the Strong Program directly confronts the monumental challenge of detecting new physics , the Weak Program pursues a more immediate and tractable goal: validating the Q-coordinates as a powerful descriptive and predictive toolkit for complex information systems, particularly in AI. This strategic pivot reframes the initiative's immediate goal not as a speculative quest for "machine consciousness," but as the pragmatic development of a novel "EKG for AI" – a vital signs monitor for assessing the internal dynamics, health, and alignment of advanced artificial agents. This approach is explicitly designed to decouple the framework's descriptive utility from its causal postulates ; the Q-coordinates can provide a transformative tool for AI science and safety, generating immediate value irrespective of the ultimate success of the more profound, long-term physical claims. Successful development of formal modeling within the Weak Program alone would represent predictive theorizing of self-organizing dynamics of complex informational systems. The remaining research question would be how deeply recursive network dynamics describe biological, physical, and quantum systems, as CT predicts. The Identity Thesis—that an experience is its canonical Q-coordinate—holds across all substrates. Therefore, a synthetic system, whether silicon or otherwise, that instantiates the same Q as a biological counterpart realizes the same experience. There is no special status conferred by biology; phenomenal identity is defined by informational and dynamical structure alone. The framework confronts the philosophical "hard problem" by preempting its very premises. Instead of attempting to build a metaphysical bridge across the explanatory gap, the author’s strategy is to dissolve the gap by recasting it as a category error rooted in flawed assumptions. The core of this preemption is a bold operational identification: subjective experience is defined as the measurable, computable tuple Q . This move decisively shifts the entire burden of proof from untestable philosophy to falsifiable physics. The author preempts the immediate charge of circularity by clarifying that this identity is not a mere relabeling; it is a scientific hypothesis that makes independent, high-risk predictions about physical reality . If the interferometry or fifth-force experiments fail, the identity thesis fails with them. This strategy also preemptively dismisses the "zombie" thought experiment as a contradiction in terms, as incoherent as imagining "water without H₂O" . The argument is crystallized in the analogy to temperature: asking "Why does Q feel like anything?" is like asking "Why does the cosmos have temperature?" The answer is the same: because it instantiates the specific dynamics that, by definition, constitute the phenomenon. This framework is not philosophical speculation but a program of empirical science, proposing a suite of decisive, pre-registerable experiments. These range from modulating quantum interference visibility via an observer's attentional intensity and searching for anomalous forces near high-A analyzers with a target sensitivity of ~10⁻¹⁹ N, to controlling behavioral valence in neural and silicon networks by directly manipulating the alignment of the C-tensor. License CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17123.67360. (shrink)

This paper develops a formal model of evaluative drift — the process by which systems designed to reward competence evolve toward rewarding visibility and conformity. True merit Q(t) is defined as the functional fit between an agent’s observable performance S(t) and a system’s real needs X(t); their alignment is captured by the correlation ρ(t). Drift emerges when the combined momentum of environmental volatility (V), adaptation speed (A), and incentive intensity (I) exceeds the rate of renewal (R): V+A⋅I>R. This dynamic produces (...) the paradox of measurables: the more precisely a system quantifies performance, the faster its metrics lose correspondence with real outcomes. Over-optimization exhausts informational content, turning evaluation into self-reference. The model identifies three empirical signatures of this decay—declining outcome elasticity, escalating optimization cost, and signal compression—and defines relearning as the mechanism that restores correlation by re-linking measurement to function. In practical terms, the paper reframes merit not as static excellence but as the continuous maintenance of informational alignment between what is optimized and what remains meaningful. (shrink)

Many Perdurantists have been drawn to the “Conventionalist” idea that our person-directed attitudes can determine whether or not we survive events such as teletransportation. In this paper, I suggest a novel “Contextualist Conventionalism” according to which Conventionalism is true with respect to some, but not all, contexts in which we ask “will I survive?”—instead in “reflexive” contexts, “I” reflexively refers to a thinker whose persistence conditions are mind-independent. Unlike one form of Conventionalism which implies that the reference of “I” (...) is never constrained to reflexively referring to the thinker (cf. Zimmerman, D. (2012). Personal identity and the survival of death. In B. Bradley, F. Feldman, & J. Johansson (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of philosophy of death (pp. 97–154). Oxford University Press.), Miller, K. (2013). Personal identity minus the persons. Philosophical Studies, 166, S91–S109.), Kovacs, D. (2020). Diachronic self-making. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 98(2), 349–362.), Kurtsal, I. (2022). Self-Determination in Plenitude. Erkenntnis, 87, 2397–2418.), Longenecker, M. (2023). Conventionalism about Persons and the Nonidentity Problem. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 101(4), 954–967.), Contextualist Conventionalism instead implies that there are some important contexts where the “I” is so constrained. And unlike another form of Conventionalism that secures such reflexive reference by holding that the survival of the thinker is a mind-dependent matter (a view which might be attributed to Braddon-Mitchell, D., & West, C. (2001). Temporal Phase Pluralism Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LXII(1), 59–83.), or Braddon-Mitchell, D., & Miller, K. (2004). How to be a conventional person. The Monist, 87(4), 457–474., 2020), Contextualist Conventionalism secures reflexive reference while avoiding such a radical metaphysical commitment. (shrink)

This paper develops a structural theory of time loops as self‑generated temporal operators, arguing that time is not a background dimension but a rule produced internally by systems attempting to maintain coherence under constraint. Drawing on empirical work on continuous time crystals and the author’s broader framework of coherence testing, the paper shows that temporal stability emerges from continuous temporal recursion—a self‑referential oscillatory process through which a system repeatedly regenerates the conditions for its own next state. -/- (...) The analysis demonstrates that time loops arise when a system minimizes collapse by cycling through a bidirectional, lemniscate‑like trajectory that crosses a central reference point. This crossing enables error correction, drift detection, and re‑alignment, revealing that temporal order is a structural achievement rather than an intrinsic property of physical reality. Collapse occurs when the system can no longer sustain this recursive operator. -/- By treating time loops as operators rather than objects, the paper unifies phenomena across physics, biology, cognition, and distributed systems. Continuous temporal recursion appears in time‑crystal oscillations, neural rhythms, biological coherence loops, and alignment processes in complex collectives. The result is a general theory in which time is the ordered residue of a system’s attempts to remain coherent, and time loops represent the minimal architecture through which such coherence is sustained. (shrink)

This paper interprets Salvador Dalí’s The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory as a structural critique of modern urban cognition, temporal domination, and the existential displacement produced by industrial society. Where traditional analyses read the fragmented blocks in the composition as references to nuclear physics, I argue instead that Dalí depicts the perceptual architecture of urban life: a world in which buildings, windows, and environments are not understood but processed as repetitive, interchangeable symbols. These segmented forms reflect the collapse (...) of qualitative experience into quantized perceptual units. -/- The melting clocks are examined as visual metaphors for the tyranny of industrial time. Far from surreal symbols, they represent the inescapable pressure of schedules, productivity, and the requirement to justify even rest through social approval. In Dalí’s visual narrative, time does not “flow”—it dominates. -/- The distant landscape functions as a phenomenological horizon: a natural world visible yet inaccessible, producing a persistent longing that urban consciousness cannot resolve. The beached fish at the center, interpreted as a self-portrait, embodies Dalí’s recognition of his own displacement—an observer whose honesty about reality forces him into a position of existential exile. -/- I argue that the painting should be read not as a fantasy but as a hyperfaithful representation of modern experience. Its “surrealism” lies not in its distortion of reality, but in its revelation of the cognitive structures that organize contemporary life. Dalí exposes the madness of a world that mistakes its own pathological normality for sanity. (shrink)

This paper develops Representational Sealing Theory (ReST), a theory of the limits encountered by any inquiry that turns to ask after its own preconditions. Its premise is a claim in the philosophy of representation: theoretical representation of a domain is conducted within a structured system of admissible distinction and inference, and that structure constitutes, rather than merely accompanies, what such representation can represent. From this premise the paper derives a ‘representational seal’: a domain dependent upon a prior generative condition cannot (...) theoretically represent the intrinsic nature of that condition, since its only means of representation is a structure the condition does not share. What such a domain may establish is thin and exact: that it has a generative condition, and that the condition was adequate to it. The paper’s principal positive consequence concerns time. A generated domain must represent its own states as non-self-grounding, as referring beyond themselves to a condition it cannot represent. These features are identified as the materials of temporal order: not a single succession, and not the arrow of time, but the dependence-character through which generatedness appears from within. The account is distinguished from relational theories of time, in particular Rovelli’s. Its bounds are stated explicitly: the seal supplies the materials of temporal order, but not their assembly into a single succession, nor the orientation of such a succession. The account contributes nothing to the content of physics; it is a constraint on how a domain may theorise its own preconditions. (shrink)

This thesis argues that the theological and philosophical concept of God, understood as the primordial, undifferentiated ground of being rather than a personal agent, finds its physical referent in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP) of the early universe. The argument proceeds in two stages. First, a systematic structural isomorphism is established between the properties of the QGP as described by quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and descriptions of primordial unity across multiple philosophical and theological traditions, including the apeiron of Anaximander, the Brahman of (...) the Upanishads, the Tao of Laozi, and the Deus sive Natura of Spinoza. The isomorphism spans six dimensions: temporal priority, undifferentiated character, generative capacity, universality, dynamism, and enforced unity through color confinement. Second, under a framework of naturalized metaphysics informed by Ladyman and Ross and the structural realism of French, this systematic isomorphism is argued to license the identification of the QGP as the physical referent of the metaphysical concept. This identification is interpretive, not empirical: it operates at the level of philosophical argument rather than scientific proof, and the thesis acknowledges that physics underdetermines the metaphysical claim. This thesis proposes a novel systematic identification of the quark-gluon plasma as a physical referent of the ground of being — an argument not previously advanced in the literature — and derives the dissolution of the problem of evil as a structural consequence of the framework. This work is continued by "Color Confinement and Priority Monism: A Grounding-Theoretic Model of Individuation in QCD" (Pinsonneault, 2026, Zenodo, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18603858), and "Dissolving the Problem of Evil: A Naturalized Non-Agential Ground in the Ontology of Quantum Chromodynamics" (Pinsonneault, 2026, Zenodo, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19023685). (shrink)

The notion of the absolute time-constituting flow plays a central role in Edmund Husserl’s analysis of our consciousness of time. I offer a novel reading of Husserl’s remarks on the absolute flow, on which Husserl can be seen to be grappling with two key intuitions that are still at the centre of current debates about temporal experience. One of them is encapsulated by what is sometimes referred to as an intentionalist (as opposed to an extensionalist) approach to temporal (...) experience. The other centres on the thought that temporal experience itself necessarily unfolds over time. I show how some of Husserl’s more enigmatic-sounding remarks about the absolute flow become intelligible if they are read as attempts to accommodate both these intuitions at the same time. However, I also question whether Husserl ultimately provides good reasons for preferring his intentionalist approach to a rival extensionalist one. (shrink)

Conventional cosmic inflation theories rely on a finely tuned inflaton field. The Time Field Model (TFM) offers a novel alternative by eliminating fine-tuning and replacing the inflaton with spacetime quanta generated through high-energy temporal waves. This unification explains the horizon, flatness, and monopole problems in a single framework while predicting observational signatures—e.g., gravitational wave spectral tilts. -/- Although cosmic inflation is the central focus of TFM, this paper includes a purely mathematical analogy to economic hyperinflation, illustrating how the same (...) wave driven operator formalism can model exponential growth in monetary systems. No physical equivalence is implied, but it showcases TFM’s versatility. Readers seeking detailed variational derivations, tensor perturbation proofs, and a Hamiltonian ap proach to the economic analogy may refer to the appendices. (shrink)

After a lecture in Göteborg by the neuroscientist Benjamin Libet in 1993, the Göteborg-Post carried the headline, ‘Now it has been proven: we are all somewhat behind’. The paper was referring to Libet’s celebrated discovery that the neural precursors of some voluntary actions occur before the conscious awareness of the decision to act. In a series of experiments in the 1980s, Libet showed that in an experimental situation in which subjects were asked to perform a simple voluntary action – raising (...) a finger – these acts were preceded by a rise in electrical activity in the area of the brain responsible for the causation of action, called the ‘readiness potential’ (RP). But the striking discovery is that while the RP is activated 550 msec before the action, the subject’s awareness of their decision to act occurs only 150-200 msec before the action. The conclusion is drawn that the causes of our actions in our brains occur fractionally earlier than our conscious awareness of deciding to do them. Hence the frequent description of the result of Libet’s experiments, that we are ‘living in the past’. (shrink)

According to an influential theory, English tenses are anaphoric to an aforementioned reference point. This point is sometimes construed as a time (e.g. Reichenbach 1947, Partee 1973, Stone 1997) and sometimes as an event (e.g. Kamp 1979, 1981, Webber 1988). Moreover, some researchers draw semantic parallels between tenses and pronouns (e.g. Partee 1973, 1984, Stone 1997), whereas others draw parallels between tenses and anaphorically anchored (in)definite descriptions (e.g. Webber 1988). This paper proposes a unified approach.

How did human communication first escape the "here and now"? The capacity for displaced reference — referring to entities not present in the immediate perceptual environment — is widely recognized as a defining feature of human language (Hockett, 1960), and Bickerton (2009) rightly placed it at the center of the language origins problem. Yet the dominant scenario, which locates displacement in the need to recruit coalition members to distant food sources, does not compellingly explain why an offline representational system (...) would be selected when pointing, leading, and pantomime would suffice. The Name-Leash hypothesis proposes that the first displaced signal was not a food reference but a proper name — an individualized vocalization addressed to an absent infant. In cooperative breeding contexts characteristic of early Homo (Hrdy, 2009; Burkart et al., 2025), mothers regularly transferred infants to allomothers and departed to forage, generating an irreducible affective pressure — separation anxiety directed at a specific, non-fungible child — that no perceptually grounded gesture could resolve. The hypothesis identifies a semiotic mechanism for this transition: when the referent of an indexical signal disappears, the index "breaks," creating pressure for a vocal substitute that maintains the referent's mental representation in absence. The proper name fills this role as a repaired index — preserving the singularity of indexical pointing while acquiring the context-independence of a symbol. In Kripke's (1980) terms, the name functions as a rigid designator: it carries no descriptive content requiring environmental verification, making it the only signal type that operates precisely when there is nothing to perceive. The mechanism is grounded in the physiological platform created by habitual upright walking (decoupled respiration, enhanced vagal regulation), in the neural architecture of invariant identity representation (concept cells; dedicated name-retrieval systems in the left temporal pole), and in the ethology of cooperative breeding. Developmental evidence — the coincidence of peak solitary babbling with separation anxiety, Freud's Fort/Da, and Porshnev's analysis of the first word as self-regulatory — independently supports the proposed dynamic. Comparative data show that the two prerequisites for the mechanism — vocal individuation and vocal mimesis — exist separately in other species but converge only in cooperative-breeding hominins. The proto-name, born as a tool of affective self-regulation, already carries relational (genitive) structure and functions as an implicit promise of return — suggesting that reference and social obligation may have co-emerged as properties of the same vocal gesture. (shrink)

How did human communication first escape the "here and now"? The capacity for displaced reference — referring to entities not present in the immediate perceptual environment — is widely recognized as a defining feature of human language (Hockett, 1960), and Bickerton (2009) rightly placed it at the center of the language origins problem. Yet the dominant scenario, which locates displacement in the need to recruit coalition members to distant food sources, does not compellingly explain why an offline representational system (...) would be selected when pointing, leading, and pantomime would suffice. The Name-Leash hypothesis proposes that the first displaced signal was not a food reference but a **proper name** — an individualized vocalization addressed to an absent infant. In cooperative breeding contexts characteristic of early *Homo* (Hrdy, 2009; Burkart et al., 2025), mothers regularly transferred infants to allomothers and departed to forage, generating an irreducible affective pressure — separation anxiety directed at a specific, non-fungible child — that no perceptually grounded gesture could resolve. The hypothesis identifies a semiotic mechanism for this transition: when the referent of an indexical signal disappears, the index "breaks," creating pressure for a vocal substitute that maintains the referent's mental representation in absence. The proper name fills this role as a **repaired index** — preserving the singularity of indexical pointing while acquiring the context-independence of a symbol. In Kripke's (1980) terms, the name functions as a rigid designator: it carries no descriptive content requiring environmental verification, making it the only signal type that operates precisely when there is nothing to perceive. The mechanism is grounded in the physiological platform created by habitual upright walking (decoupled respiration, enhanced vagal regulation), in the neural architecture of invariant identity representation (concept cells; dedicated name-retrieval systems in the left temporal pole), and in the ethology of cooperative breeding. Developmental evidence — the coincidence of peak solitary babbling with separation anxiety, Freud's Fort/Da, and Porshnev's analysis of the first word as self-regulatory — independently supports the proposed dynamic. Comparative data show that the two prerequisites for the mechanism — vocal individuation and vocal mimesis — exist separately in other species but converge only in cooperative-breeding hominins. The proto-name, born as a tool of affective self-regulation, already carries relational (genitive) structure and functions as an implicit promise of return — suggesting that reference and social obligation may have co-emerged as properties of the same vocal gesture. (shrink)

We argue that four-dimensionalists should adopt a contextualist semantics about ‘I’, according to which tokens of ‘I’ sometimes refer to stages, sometimes to segments, and sometimes to worms. Our argument relies on an interpretive principle at the root of Kovacs’s diachronic self-making view, according to which ‘I’ refers to the candidate referent that maximizes the truth of an individual’s ‘I’-beliefs. We further argue that this interpretive principle implies that context sensitivity concerns not only what temporal part ‘I’ refers to (...) but also the unity relation (viz., biological continuity or psychological continuity) that interrelates temporal parts. Finally, we show that contextualism is compatible with the view that there is a unique unity relation that matters in survival. (shrink)

This paper presents a metaphysical hypothesis concerning the origin of existence. Rather than understanding the origin of existence as the emergence of matter, space, or physical laws, it interprets the origin as the first opening of difference. In this paper, “absolute nothingness” refers not to empty space, physical vacuum, or the absence of matter, but to a limiting concept that lacks time, space, physical laws, causality, possibility, logical structure, and observerhood. The central claim is that absolute nothingness cannot be consistently (...) posited as a stable “state.” A state requires some form of identity, persistence, or retention; however, identity presupposes logical distinction, and persistence presupposes temporal structure. Since absolute nothingness lacks both logical distinction and temporality, it cannot be grasped as a self-identical state. This impossibility is described as the self-non-establishment of absolute nothingness. The paper interprets this self-non-establishment as the first pre-objective difference. This first difference is then understood as the primordial form of temporal difference, namely the opening of the distinction between before and after. Accordingly, time is not treated as a property derived from the motion of matter. Rather, temporal difference is understood as the minimal condition that makes change, causality, order, law, space, and matter thinkable. Existence is therefore not something externally added to nothingness, but the trace of the impossibility of positing absolute nothingness as a stable state. This paper does not present a scientific theory or an empirical proof. It is a metaphysical model that seeks to clarify the conceptual conditions under which existence, explanation, and physical law become possible. (shrink)

The article analyzes the grammatical category of time as a means of actualizing temporal deixis in Belarusian and English in the typological aspect. Traditionally, the reference point of temporal deixis is the moment of speech. Nevertheless, it is important to take into account both the speaker and the observer. The purpose of the research is to carry out the comparative analysis of the grammatical category of time in Belarusian and English in terms of the speaker and the (...) observer, as well as to reveal universal characteristics and national and specific features. The research is based on the contexts selected from Belarusian and English parallel corpuses of Russian National Corpus and Internet resources. (shrink)