Presentism and the growing block universe make the present an objective frontier, but presuppose a global "now" that the relativity of simultaneity forbids — the Rietdijk–Putnam argument, which pushes the metaphysics of time toward eternalism (past, present and future equally real). We defend a metaphysical thesis that aims at empirical equivalence with quantum mechanics on a causal-set substrate; full verification of that requirement remains open. In the Time–Actualization (TA) ontology, the present is not a slice of simultaneity but the act of actualization of quantum potentialities into events. Covariance is required: the order of birth of events is gauge, while causal order and regional event count are physical. This reading instantiates a growing block universe without a global present, so the relativistic objection loses its purchase (it targets a global "now" that TA does not have). This dissolution is, originally, Stein's point-relative becoming; TA inherits it and lodges a process within it, uniting Stein's becoming and the covariant growth of Rideout–Sorkin causal sets under a single realist reading. The identification this proposes — becoming is actualization, and the act of actualization is, ontologically, the measurement event (whose basis and readiness TA anchors, with outcome weights imported from Born) — is advanced as programmatic: a conjecture to be earned, not a result already in hand (Sec. 7). The contribution is an ontological synthesis, not a new formalism or a new prediction.
Presentism and the growing block universe make the present an objective frontier, but presuppose a global "now" that the relativity of simultaneity forbids — the Rietdijk–Putnam argument, which pushes the metaphysics of time toward eternalism (past, present and future equally real). We defend a metaphysical thesis that aims at empirical equivalence with quantum mechanics on a causal-set substrate; full verification of that requirement remains open. In the Time–Actualization (TA) ontology, the present is not a slice of simultaneity but the act of actualization of quantum potentialities into events. Covariance is required: the order of birth of events is gauge, while causal order and regional event count are physical. This reading instantiates a growing block universe without a global present, so the relativistic objection loses its purchase (it targets a global "now" that TA does not have). This dissolution is, originally, Stein's point-relative becoming; TA inherits it and lodges a process within it, uniting Stein's becoming and the covariant growth of Rideout–Sorkin causal sets under a single realist reading. The identification this proposes — becoming is actualization, and the act of actualization is, ontologically, the measurement event (whose basis and readiness TA anchors, with outcome weights imported from Born) — is advanced as programmatic: a conjecture to be earned, not a result already in hand (Sec. 7). The contribution is an ontological synthesis, not a new formalism or a new prediction.
Quantum mechanics describes the potential future; general relativity describes the actualized past; the present is the process of actualization that turns the one into the other. That single move is Time–Actualization (TA), the foundational ontology set out here. TA assumes the quantum formalism and the relativistic causal structure, and derives neither: it adds no new physics, makes no new prediction, and asks to be judged on coherence and unifying power rather than on a measurement. It proposes a common ontological reading of measurement, EPR and the structural arrow of time. D5 locates the einselecting environment in the event's causal past; the couplings within that past remain imported, and the system/environment split is relocated rather than removed. In detail. The ontology is a minimal triplet (ρ, ν, ⟨P,≺⟩): a positive normalized state ρ on a local net of algebras (the conditional future potential), a primitive tempo ν (the rate of becoming), and a growing causal set ⟨P,≺⟩ (the past). What is not derived, and is named as such throughout, is the Born rule, Einstein's equations, and the constants. Eight core hypotheses yield seven consequences. A structural arrow of time, prior to thermodynamics (D1). A partial dissolution of the measurement problem (D2), with definiteness posited and the trigger open. Conditional dissolutions of EPR and the signalling worry (D3–D4), requiring a propagation law. A preferred basis anchored in the couplings carried by the causal past (D5). A conditional thermodynamic reading of the structural arrow (D6), requiring a posited bridge to physical reset, and further thermal assumptions for its value. And a conditional coherence lemma (D7): the actualization dynamics is generally covariant and no-signalling once the substrate carries the standard locality of physics. D7 claims less than the Rideout–Sorkin Bell causality condition, which is a screening-off analogue of Bell's local causality and is not inherited. We then develop the proposed physics of the tempo ν: a correspondence with a local quantum speed scale and a saturation choice, both posited. Quantum speed limits alone do not bound an ontic event count. The missing bridge must specify event resolution, additive counting and an applicable composable speed bound. The substrate cadence that reconstructs proper time is kept distinct from a system's tempo; their operational connection remains to be supplied. TA aims at empirical equivalence to quantum mechanics on a causal-set substrate. We label the admissibility requirement P5; its verification, including instrumented multi-time statistics, remains open. No distinctive prediction is claimed. The causal-set "swerve" is inherited from discreteness, generic and not specific to actualization. We close with the open dynamics, its system/substrate interface, the conditional constitution of systems, and the inherited limits of the programme.
The causal-set programme proposes that spacetime is, at bottom, a discrete poset whose Lorentzian geometry emerges, endowed with a covariant sequential growth dynamics. It leaves open, however, two points that an ontology must settle: the status of the "becoming" of growth (a computational procedure or a real process?), and the basis of its quantum version (quantum sequential growth, QSG, does not specify the basis of the histories). We show that the theory Time–Actualization (TA) proposes an ontological answer: becoming is posited as real actualization, while the basis is selected by the couplings carried by the causal past, where that monitoring supplies a sharp basis. This identifies an environment within the ontology; it does not derive its coupling content or construct the full quantum dynamics. We present the interface as a consistency bridge, not a refoundation. The emergent geometry and its Hauptvermutung remain inherited, and the dynamical law of actualization remains open. The proposed unification concerns a common process reading of flashes, system actualizations and causal-set growth; their different rates still require an explicit interface.
Time-Actualization (TA) is a foundational interpretation empirically equivalent to quantum mechanics on a causal-set substrate: it makes no new prediction (a consequence, forced by assuming QM, we label P5). It therefore has, by construction, no value in hard physics -- no algorithm, no measurement, no experimental gap. This essay raises a distinct question: if one adopts TA as the correct reading of the world, what does this commit one to outside physics? We argue that TA delivers a coherent package of foundational stances -- a real objective present, an ontologically open future, an objective chance, a non-classical logic of the contingent, a primary becoming -- whose radiance is limited exactly to those domains that are themselves theories of the foundation: philosophy of time, of logic, of probability, of mind, and process metaphysics. We delimit this radiance without evasion: it is conditional (the premise "the universe is TA" is not establishable against its empirical twins), interpretative (ontological clarity, never a measurable fact), and bounded (nothing in the empirical sciences). This is the profile of a foundational contribution assumed as such.
The "preferred-basis problem" — why does measurement produce definite outcomes in this basis rather than another — is treated in opposite ways by the interpretations of quantum mechanics: posited ab initio (spontaneous collapse), drawn from a contingent environment (decoherence), left to the choice of a framework (decoherent histories), avoided (many-worlds, pilot wave). We show that in the Time–Actualization ontology — where measurement is an instance of the universal process of actualizing quantum potentialities into events — the preferred basis is anchored in the causal past of the event, together with a readiness condition: which events that past has made ready to actualize. TA does not introduce a new selection mechanism: it identifies the environment of einselection with the already-actualized causal past — an environment that is not posited outside the formalism (unlike an external classical apparatus), but is part of the same substrate. The causal location of this environment is foliation-independent; its monitoring content depends on the couplings, not on the bare order alone. Covariance of the associated operations requires the locality hypotheses stated below. The uniqueness of outcomes is posited, not explained. Born's rule remains imported, and empirical equivalence with quantum mechanics on the causal-set substrate is a requirement still to be verified for a complete dynamics. The contribution is ontological and local to the preferred-basis question. A symmetric downstream mechanism — the redundant proliferation of the outcome into the causal future (quantum Darwinism) — in addition accounts for the inter-observer objectivity of the actualized fact, without deriving it.
The ontological triplet of Time–Actualization (TA) comprises three primitives, one per temporal mode: ρ (the potential future, the object of quantum mechanics), ⟨P,≺⟩ (the causal past, the object of relativity), and ν (the tempo of the present). The two external primitives are imported. ν is TA's own, and hence the only locus of a physics that might belong to it — within one limit: ν is the cadence of a system, not of the substrate, whose own cadence comes with the causal set. This article details that physics in a single sweep, one section per heading. (A) Law: TA posits a correspondence between ν and an energy scale motivated by quantum speed limits, together with saturation where attainable; a bound on state motion alone does not bound an ontic event count. (B) Two cadences: the tick assigned to a system event is distinct from the substrate's far finer scale, and agreement with substrate proper time remains a correspondence requirement. (C) Covariance: the proposed energy scale is a Lorentz scalar in the effective clock regime considered here; this does not construct a covariant actualization dynamics. (D) No signature: empirical equivalence with quantum mechanics on the causal-set substrate is an admissibility requirement whose full verification remains open. The contribution is a conditional ontological reading of imported physics.
Committed Presentism is a single-history ontology of quantum mechanics in which only the present exists, reality advances through one global now within a causal domain, and one already-decohered branch becomes actual while the others never do. The paper establishes the framework's admissibility: it is coherent, populated by explicit models, and reproduces the confirmed predictions of quantum mechanics on the finite-dimensional algebras in the commit regime and of relativity in the sectors analyzed. Within that scope, the committed present leaves no marginal signature on the pointer algebra or on any unconditioned spacelike-separated marginal; the silence is exact at every record overlap, and optimal discrimination remains at chance. Ensemble-mean energy is preserved in the commit regime. The base structure, eternalism, Committed Presentism, and Stein point-relative becoming are therefore operationally tied within the stated comparison class. Reality is the currently committed configuration and the locus of truthmaking. The future is open because it has not yet committed. The past is a prior configuration, not a stored region; wherever the present-compatible history fiber is non-singleton, the antecedent is not recoverable from the present together with the law. Past-tensed propositions are grounded by the total present, its laws, and its boundary structure, and are gap-bearing exactly when they vary across the histories compatible with that present. If this is how reality works, then the present was never supposed to show up as an extra reading on an instrument. The present is the condition under which any reading is actual at all.