Experienced Temporal Passage: Enacted Scaffolding and the Organization of Succession

How does an observer experience temporal passage without a present moving through the universe? This theoretical research paper develops a constructive account within enacted scaffolding, a framework in which experience, including its felt character, is identified with the complete qualifying organization actually enacted by a historically formed interpretive unit. Using an unfolding melody, the paper shows how retained contributions, current input and anticipation can participate in an experienced transition without representing successive source events as simultaneous. It distinguishes immediate interpretive uptake from later recollection and explains how presentness, continuity and succession can arise within ongoing activity. The investigation develops an order-information constraint, a finite physical implementation scheme, computational checks and a partial model distinguishing estimated duration from judgments of temporal pace. Research on auditory integration, prediction, memory, temporal recalibration and altered time perception constrains the proposed mechanisms. Physical clock measurements, psychological timing and experienced passage are treated as distinct explanatory targets. Under the framework’s stated constitutive premises, the specified enactment is sufficient for experienced succession without an additional moving present or actualization event. This is a conditional theoretical result, not an empirical proof of the framework’s premises. The account retains physical intervals, causal order and change, is compatible with block-universe descriptions, and does not require establishing that physical time itself is nonfundamental.