Time as Epistemic Cognitive Fiction

In the paper's words

URL: https://papers.qnfo.org/papers/time-as-epistemic-cognitive-fiction/ Date: 2026-03-19 Version: 1.0 Human perception operates as a highly specialized biological interface designed for survival rather than objective truth. The sensory organs gather limited environmental data to construct a workable model of the immediate surroundings. This biological filtering mechanism actively discards vast amounts of fundamental physical information.

The abstract, verbatim, and its opening sentence is the claim. Every line below is quoted from the text.

Numbers it reports

No sentence of this paper reports a figure with a unit or a quantity word, so none is shown.

How it is done

1. It took centuries of technological advancement to expose the severe limitations of this intuitive approach.

   from 1.1 The Biological

2. Acknowledging the illusory nature of continuous flow fundamentally alters our approach to theoretical physics.

   from 1.3 The Illusion of Continuous

3. We use our cognitive models to project a historical narrative onto these present-day physical structures.

   from 1.4 Memory and the

4. However, the neurological processes generating these choices are entirely bound by deterministic physical laws.

   from 1.5 Predictive

What would falsify it

1. Coding and the Anticipated Future The human brain functions primarily as a highly sophisticated prediction engine.

   from 1.5 Predictive

2. When a prediction fails, the neurological system updates its models to reduce future errors.

   from 1.5 Predictive

3. When massive stars collapse into black holes, the equations of general relativity predict a point of infinite density.

   from 2.1 The

Where the claim stops

1. The success of classical mechanics and general relativity heavily relies on the assumption that physical reality mirrors this continuous mathematical structure.

   from 4.1 The Limitations

2. However, the real number line is a specific, human-constructed tool rather than an absolute, universal truth.

   from 4.1 The Limitations

3. The core assumption of the real number system is the Archimedean property, which dictates the relationship between magnitudes.

   from 4.1 The Limitations

Where to read

1. Chapter5,078 words · 22 min
2. Chapter 2:5,430 words · 24 min
3. Chapter 3:5,510 words · 24 min
4. Chapter 4:5,535 words · 24 min
5. Chapter5,224 words · 23 min
6. Chapter 6:5,647 words · 25 min
7. Chapter 7:5,180 words · 23 min