1. The problem of experienced passage
A melody is experienced as an unfolding relation. Hearing one note after another is not explained simply by listing successive physical states, drawing a chronology or storing two values. The listener experiences a transition. The explanatory task is to identify the actual organization through which that transition is lived.
Nor does the experience immediately establish a present that moves through the universe. Physical temporal structure and its experienced organization are related questions with different targets. Shadow Theory's enacted-scaffolding account connects them within the observer's own activity. There is no observer outside the world looking at an already finished display.
The problem becomes particularly sharp in a complete-history or block-universe description. Events have temporal locations, but no universal present advances through them. An embedded person still receives signals, retains contributions, anticipates continuations and changes bodily state. Those relations are the resources from which a situated temporal experience must be constituted. Adding a second observer who scans the history would relocate the problem rather than explain this person's experience.
The temporal construction developed here can also be considered within other temporal ontologies. It does not first require a proof of eternalism. The block-universe integration develops the related physical and ontological questions separately.
Six targets carried by the word “time”
| Target | What must be explained or measured |
|---|---|
| Physical elapsed time | Proper intervals along trajectories and comparisons between clocks. |
| Temporal structure | Ordering, causal accessibility and any physical temporal metric. |
| Arrow and records | Conditions supporting asymmetric preparation, record formation and memory. |
| Temporal cognition | Duration estimates, order judgments, orientation and expectations. |
| Temporal experience | Presentness, succession, continuity and felt passage or pace. |
| Fundamentality | Whether flow, a temporal metric or time itself belongs to fundamental ontology. |
These are the distinctions of source Table 1. A change in a timing response does not automatically measure proper-time dilation. A model of records does not automatically explain felt passage. A successful account of experienced succession does not automatically decide whether physical time is fundamental.
The positive claim is constructive. Within an explicitly stated constitution of experience, differentiated reception, retention, interpretation and uptake can constitute an ordered transition without an additional moving present. The account specifies that organization, proves its conditional consequences, gives finite physical components and identifies empirical contrasts that can test the mechanism. Its foundations connect directly to whole-field constitution: the experiencing occurrence is the complete qualifying enactment, including its character.
This web treatment develops the complete argument of Jeremy Rodgers's Experienced Temporal Passage: Enacted Scaffolding and the Organization of Succession, dated 23 October 2026. The publication DOI identifies the supplied paper. The full mathematical development and substantive appendices continue through this reading path.
Published source: Experienced Temporal Passage. Read the original PDF alongside the web treatment.