What TNT Is NOT
Before you categorize the Theory of Now and Then, let’s be clear about what it isn’t. TNT will be mischaracterized—every framework that challenges assumptions gets shoved into familiar boxes. Here’s why those boxes don’t fit.
NOT Physicalism
Physical reality is an experiential interface (P10, DP4), not fundamental ontology. The brain does not generate consciousness. Neural patterns and conscious experiences are co-constrained actualizations within a shared coherence structure—the correlation is structural, not causal.
If you’re looking for a theory where matter is fundamental and mind emerges from complexity, look elsewhere.
NOT Substance Dualism
TNT does not posit two substances (mind and matter) that somehow interact. There is one primitive: Awareness (A). Physical reality is not a second substance—it’s a stable pattern of actualization within Awareness. The interaction problem doesn’t arise because there’s nothing for mind to “interact with.”
NOT Panpsychism
Only Cᵢ experiences. Not everything has experience. Rocks, electrons, and thermostats do not have Cᵢ apertures.
Panpsychism correctly recognizes you can’t get experience from non-experience. But it faces the combination problem: how do micro-experiences combine into unified macro-experience? TNT sidesteps this entirely. Unity is primitive to Cᵢ, not constructed from parts. There’s no combination because there are no micro-experiences to combine.
NOT Idealism
TNT does not claim “mind creates reality.” B₀—the global coherence boundary—is immutable and not mind-dependent. The interface has real structure. Regularities aren’t imposed by consciousness; they reflect eternal coherence constraints.
TNT shares idealism’s commitment to the primacy of Awareness. But idealism without constraint structure can’t explain why experience exhibits regularities. TNT can.
NOT Integrated Information Theory
Information is interpretive, not intrinsic (DP10). A pattern of bits contains no information in itself—information exists only when a Tier-2 Cᵢ decodes structure as meaningful.
IIT’s Φ measures causal structure. Structure does not entail appearing. The hard problem resurfaces for any theory that treats information as fundamental.
NOT Functionalism
Functional organization does not constitute experience. Function is structure; structure does not entail appearing. A perfect functional duplicate could satisfy every functional description while having no experience at all.
Only Cᵢ selection yields Tₐ. The functional organization participates in conditions under which selection occurs—but the organization itself is not experience.
NOT Block Universe
TNT denies fundamental time (A5) but is not a block universe theory. “All times existing at once” is incoherent—”at once” is itself temporal.
TNT affirms genuine logical order without fundamental time. Actualizations are ordered through dependence on M, but this order is not temporal. There is constrained but genuine selection at N. Events are not frozen in a four-dimensional block.
What TNT IS
- Awareness (A) is primitive and irreducible
- B₀ is the eternal coherence boundary defining which potentials are actualizable
- Cᵢ is an individuated aperture through which selection and experience occur
- Tₐ (actualization) is experience—the only experience
- M (Memory) is the non-temporal accumulation of all actualizations
- Physical reality is interface, not ontology
- Time is induced, not fundamental
- The hard problem dissolves because experience is not derived from non-experience
If that doesn’t fit your existing categories, good. It wasn’t designed to.
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