Stratified Causal Actualization: The Structural Landscape of Reality
Thomas McLain
We propose Stratified Causal Actualization (SCA), a generative framework in which physical reality is not presupposed as spacetime populated by matter, nor as probabilistic outcomes governed by dynamical laws, but as the irreversible actualization of causally constrained possibility. Beginning from primitive events and a causality relation devoid of geometry, time, or metric structure, we construct an ordinally stratified latent causal space encoding structured potentiality. We show that physics cannot be written directly on this space: realization requires an epistemic projection that discards internal causal structure while preserving distinguishability, yielding a realizability domain Ω. On Ω we derive admissibility, filtration, valuation, and variational actualization, closing the schema (Ω,A,⪯,ρ,TA,W,Φ,JA,D) governing consistent realization. A central result is the identification of a universal causal saturation invariant: the ratio of actual to maximal admissible causal restructuring. This invariant underlies the observed invariance of light propagation without presupposing spacetime geometry or kinematic postulates, and generates causal horizons as structural, rather than geometric, phenomena. Within this framework, time emerges as restriction depth, distance as constraint-mediated reachability, matter as stable restriction cores, and physical law as the fixed-point structure of permissible actualization. General relativity and quantum mechanics arise as complementary representational regimes encoding different projections of the same underlying causal stratification. SCA does not modify existing physical theories; it identifies the landscape from which their core structures necessarily arise.
•Feb 2, 2026•0 citations