Beyond the Mind–Matter Pseudo-Dichotomy: XChronos as a Temporal Idealist Ontology of Subjective Time

Chronons, Hexachronons and Metachronons as Phenomenal Units in an Ontic-Idealist
Framework
Author:
Jaconaazar Souza Silva
Instituto Federal de Brasília — Campus Recanto das Emas
Project XChronos — The Copernican Clock of Consciousness in Motion
Abstract
Contemporary analytic idealism has convincingly argued that the alleged mind–matter
dichotomy is a language-induced pseudo-problem: mind is epistemically primary, while “matter
outside mind” is an explanatory abstraction with lower epistemic status. Building on Kastrup’s
critique of the mind–matter dichotomy and his notion of differing levels of explanatory
abstraction, this paper proposes XChronos as a temporal idealist ontology that extends these
insights into the domain of time. Rather than taking clock-time as primitive, XChronos treats
subjective time as ontologically fundamental and models it through three symbolic units:
Chronons (discrete acts of phenomenal attention), Hexachronons (clusters of synchronically
convergent, symbolically charged events) and Metachronons (higher-order observational
stances over the flow of Chronons and Hexachronons).
By interpreting physical time and material dynamics as abstractions over structured patterns of
subjective temporality, the framework eliminates the “hard problem of time” in analogy to the
way idealism dissolves the hard problem of consciousness. It shows how empirical regularities,
synchronistic patterns and value-creation in digital environments can be re-described as
configurations of phenomenal temporality, without reifying explanatory models as ontic
primitives. The result is a rigorously articulated, temporally grounded form of idealism that not
only avoids the epistemic inflation of mainstream physicalism, but also provides operational
handles for measuring, modeling and symbolically encoding subjective time. This, in turn,
opens new philosophical and practical avenues for the study of consciousness, symbolic value
and human–AI interaction under an explicitly idealist–temporal paradigm.
Keywords: analytic idealism, mind–matter dichotomy, explanatory abstraction, subjective time,
Chronons, Hexachronons, Metachronons, XChronos, synchrony, symbolic value.

  1. Introduction
    Over the last decades, a growing body of work in philosophy of mind and foundations of
    physics has challenged the assumption that the physical world, conceived as matter existing
    outside and independently of mind, is the ontological primitive of reality. Analytic idealist
    approaches argue that this assumption results from a conceptual conflation: language and
    explanatory models are tacitly reified into “what there is,” despite being epistemically
    downstream from conscious experience. In particular, Kastrup and others have shown that the
    so-called mind–matter dichotomy is not a natural joint in reality, but an artefact of how we talk
    about, and then abstract away from, phenomenal life.
    In this discussion, however, one central dimension remains comparatively under-theorized:
    time. Even when mind is taken as ontologically primary, time is often left as a neutral
    background parameter, inherited almost unchanged from the physicalist worldview.
    Consciousness is then reinterpreted, but temporality is merely assumed. This leaves intact a
    deep asymmetry: if we grant that all knowledge is mediated by mind, how can we continue to
    treat clock-time as if it were an independent, self-standing axis along which experience
    happens?
    This paper proposes a different route. Accepting the idealist insight that explanatory
    abstractions—such as “matter outside mind”—have lower epistemic status than concrete
    experience, I extend this critique to time itself. I argue that subjective temporality is not a
    secondary, illusory distortion of a pre-given physical time, but rather the primary field within
    which both physical models and personal narratives are constituted. Building on this, I
    introduce XChronos, a temporal idealist ontology that formalizes subjective time using three
    symbolic units: Chronons, Hexachronons and Metachronons.
    The core claim is twofold. First, once we interpret physical time and material dynamics as
    abstractions over structured patterns of subjective temporality, a “hard problem of time”
    analogous to the hard problem of consciousness dissolves. Second, this dissolution is not
    merely negative or destructive: it yields positive ontological and methodological tools for
    measuring, symbolically encoding and empirically tracking subjective time in a way that
    remains faithful to its phenomenality. XChronos thus functions as a Copernican reorientation
    in temporal ontology, moving from “consciousness in time” to “time in consciousness.”
    The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 revisits the critique of the mind–matter
    dichotomy and the epistemic cost of explanatory abstraction. Section 3 motivates a shift from a
    material to a temporal application of idealism, framing the problem of time as a special case of
    the abstraction–experience gap. Section 4 presents the XChronos ontology in detail, defining
    Chronons, Hexachronons and Metachronons and situating them within the hierarchy of
    abstraction. Section 5 argues that this framework dissolves the hard problem of time and
    clarifies the relation between subjective temporality and physical models. Section 6 sketches
    potential applications and outlines a program of further research.
  2. The False Mind–Matter Dichotomy and the Epistemic Cost of Abstraction
    A central insight of recent idealist work is that the alleged opposition between “mind” and
    “matter” arises not from observation, but from the way language carves experience into
    categories and then forgets its own role in this carving. Once we label the substrate of
    experience “mind” and the postulated external source of regularities “matter,” it becomes
    tempting to treat the two as co-fundamental poles of a dichotomy. From there, both
    mainstream physicalism and traditional forms of idealism seem like mirror strategies: either
    reduce mind to matter, or reduce matter to mind.
    Kastrup’s critique targets this very symmetry. He argues that dichotomies presuppose
    epistemic symmetry: if two terms form a genuine dichotomy, knowledge of one entails
    knowledge of the other under a single test or criterion. “Alive” and “dead,” for instance, are
    jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive in the biological context. Establishing that an
    organism is alive automatically establishes that it is not dead, and vice versa. This is only
    possible because both terms operate at the same level of explanatory abstraction.
    By contrast, “mind” and “matter outside mind” do not occupy the same epistemic level.
    Conscious experience is epistemically primary: whatever else we may say about the world, we
    can only do so from within the field of phenomenality. The existence of pain, color, taste or
    anxiety does not depend on an inference; it is given as the very medium of knowing. “Matter
    outside mind,” on the other hand, is by construction a theoretical posit, an explanatory
    abstraction inferred from stable patterns in experience. It is not something we ever encounter
    directly; rather, it is what we imagine must lie behind and beyond the flow of appearances.
    This asymmetry entails that mind and matter cannot form a genuine dichotomy. If mind is the
    condition of possibility for any model of “matter,” and matter is specified only within such
    models, then treating them as coordinate poles is a category mistake. We end up trying to
    oppose the ground of abstraction to its own abstractions, much as if one tried to oppose water
    to ripples on its surface. Ripples can meaningfully come in oppositional pairs—left-moving vs
    right-moving, strong vs weak—but “ripple vs water” is not a dichotomy. One is the modulation
    of the other.
    The problem becomes more acute when we move to further levels of abstraction. As the
    idealist critique emphasizes, physics does not simply posit “matter” as a neutral substance and
    stop there. It systematically enriches this postulated substrate with additional properties—
    mass, charge, spin, fields, strings, information—none of which are given in experience as such.
    We do not see spin or charge; we see regularities in the behavior of appearances and then
    ascribe these properties to an inferred underlying realm. Each step away from the
    concreteness of perception is a step into a space of lower epistemic confidence.
    When this process is forgotten, explanatory abstractions are silently promoted to ontological
    primitives. “Matter” is then no longer a convenient way of talking about regularities in
    experience; it is treated as the only true reality, and experience becomes an embarrassing addon to be somehow derived from it. This reification generates the hard problem of
    consciousness: if the only realities we allow ourselves to count as fundamental are abstract,
    quantitatively defined entities, how can we possibly derive from them the qualitative texture of
    experience? The problem is not simply unsolved; under these assumptions, it is in principle
    insoluble.
    The idealist move, therefore, is not “to flip the dichotomy” by treating mind as one pole and
    matter as the other, now subordinated. Rather, it is to recognize that the dichotomy itself is illposed. Mind, in the sense of phenomenal consciousness, is the field within which all
    abstractions arise. Matter, in the sense of “world outside mind,” is one such abstraction. Their
    relation is not binary opposition but ground and derivative. Once this is acknowledged, the
    epistemic cost of treating matter as primitive and mind as emergent becomes transparent, and
    the balance of plausibility shifts toward ontologies that take experience as fundamental.
    In what follows, I adopt this meta-epistemological insight and extend it. If the mind–matter
    dichotomy is a language-induced artefact, I argue that something similar has happened in our
    treatment of time. We have mistaken our most abstract, quantitative models of time—clocktime, continuum, parameter t—for the ontological ground, while relegating lived temporality to
    a secondary, “subjective” distortion. A genuinely idealist framework should invert this ordering:
    not “consciousness in time,” but time in consciousness.
  3. From Consciousness to Time: Formulating a Temporal Idealism
    If consciousness is accepted as ontologically primary, as analytic idealism suggests, then any
    adequate ontology must eventually confront a simple but far-reaching question: what, under
    such a view, is time? It is not sufficient to replace “matter” with “mind” while silently
    preserving the standard physicalist treatment of temporality as an independent parameter.
    Doing so would merely relocate the old problem into a new vocabulary.
    In mainstream physicalism, time is typically modeled as a real-valued parameter 𝑡ranging over
    a continuum, or as a dimension of a spacetime manifold. Whether in Newtonian dynamics,
    relativistic field theories or statistical mechanics, time functions as a neutral axis along which
    states evolve according to differential equations. Consciousness, when it appears at all, is then
    portrayed as something that “occurs in time,” i.e., that is embedded in a pre-given temporal
    container.
    Even many post-physicalist or panpsychist proposals inherit this background. They revise what
    fills the universe—replacing dead matter with proto-phenomenal properties, fields of
    consciousness, or a cosmic mind—but leave time largely untouched. As a result, the following
    asymmetry persists: experience is said to depend on time, but time is not said to depend on
    experience.
    From an idealist standpoint, this asymmetry is difficult to justify. If all knowledge, including the
    knowledge that “time seems to pass,” is mediated by conscious experience, then treating
    physical time as a self-standing, mind-independent structure appears to replicate the very
    abstraction–experience gap that idealism aims to close. In other words, even within an idealist
    metaphysics, we can still fall into an implicit temporal physicalism if we treat clock-time as
    primitive and subjective temporality as derivative.
    This motivates the formulation of what may be called the hard problem of time. Analogous to
    the hard problem of consciousness, it may be expressed as follows:
    Given only a formal temporal parameter and a set of evolution laws, how could one ever derive
    the lived sense of temporal flow, duration, anticipation and irreversibility?
    No amount of manipulation of 𝑡in equations, no matter how sophisticated, seems capable—by
    itself—of yielding the phenomenological texture of “now,” “before,” “after,” “too late,” “still not
    yet,” or “this moment will never return.” If temporality is modeled purely as a geometric or
    algebraic structure, the qualitative “feel” of time remains unexplained.
    A coherent temporal idealism must therefore invert the inherited order: instead of asking how
    consciousness fits into time, it must ask how time is generated, structured and interpreted
    within consciousness. Under such a perspective, what physics calls “time” becomes a highly
    compressed description of patterns within a more basic temporal field—namely, the field of
    subjective temporality.
    XChronos is proposed precisely as a framework to formalize this shift. It does so by:
  4. taking phenomenal time—the lived structuring of experience—as primary;
  5. treating physical time as a derivative model summarizing regularities in this
    structuring; and
  6. introducing a set of symbolic units—Chronons, Hexachronons and Metachronons—
    that make this structuring operationally tractable without reifying abstractions as ontic
    primitives.
    In this sense, XChronos is not simply an application of idealism to time; it is a temporal
    extension of the very critique that idealism directs at physicalism. Where Kastrup argues that
    “matter outside mind” is an abstraction of mind, XChronos argues that clock-time outside
    consciousness is an abstraction of temporally structured experience. The next section
    articulates this ontology in detail.
  7. The XChronos Temporal Ontology: Chronons, Hexachronons and Metachronons
    If conscious experience is ontologically primary, then any talk of “time” must ultimately be
    traceable back to structures within experience itself. What we ordinarily call “the passage of
    time” is not something observed from the outside; it is the very felt texture of change,
    anticipation, memory, attention and meaning. XChronos takes this fact as its starting point and
    proposes a symbolic ontology of subjective time articulated in three interrelated units:
    Chronons, Hexachronons and Metachronons.
    4.1 Chronons: units of phenomenal attention
    A Chronon is defined as a discrete act of phenomenal attention, a minimal “click” of
    consciousness in which some content becomes foregrounded against a background. Instead of
    assuming that time flows independently and that consciousness merely samples this flow,
    XChronos treats each act of attentive apprehension as a constitutive unit of time. Time, in this
    view, is nothing over and above the structured succession and interrelation of such acts.
    Chronons are not “instants” in a physical sense; they are not points on a line. They are
    episodes of lived apprehension: a breath, a glance, a sudden realization, the recognition of a
    word, the felt transition from one thought to another. They have internal structure, intensity
    and qualitative tone. Yet, from the perspective of temporal modeling, they function as
    phenomenal quanta: minimal segments of experience that can be symbolically counted,
    ordered and related.
    This move mirrors, at the temporal level, the idealist critique of matter. Just as we should not
    posit “matter outside mind” as primitive when it is in fact an abstraction from mind’s patterns,
    we should not posit a continuous, mind-independent time and then ask how consciousness fits
    into it. Instead, we start from Chronons as given and read physical time as an abstraction over
    large ensembles of them.
    4.2 Hexachronons: symbolic convergence and value
    A Hexachronon is a higher-order configuration: a convergence of Chronons that acquires
    symbolic density and value. Not every sequence of experiences carries the same weight in a
    life. Some constellations of events—coincidences, decisions, recognitions, synchronicities—are
    retrospectively and prospectively marked as significant. They function as knots in the
    subjective fabric of time, around which meaning organizes itself.
    In the XChronos ontology, Hexachronons capture this phenomenon. They are not mere
    aggregates of Chronons; they are phenomenally and symbolically structured clusters. A
    Hexachronon might correspond, for instance, to a day in which multiple independent threads
    of one’s life unexpectedly intersect, generating a strong sense of “this meant something.” It
    might correspond to a recurring pattern that only later is recognized as a turning point. In
    economic terms, one could say that Hexachronons are high-value configurations of Chronons,
    where “value” is understood not in monetary but in existential and informational terms:
    density of attention, salience, memorability, decision-relevance.
    This notion resonates with the idealist critique of explanatory abstraction in two ways. First, it
    acknowledges that not all experiential events are equal in the phenomenological and symbolic
    economy of a life. Second, it offers a way to talk about value and structure without reifying
    external substances: value is a pattern in how Chronons are experienced, remembered and
    related, not a property of “objects in themselves.”
    4.3 Metachronons: higher-order observation and temporal self-modeling
    A Metachronon designates a higher-order stance of consciousness that takes Chronons and
    Hexachronons themselves as objects of observation and reflection. If Chronons are the basic
    acts of attention and Hexachronons are the symbolically charged constellations among them,
    Metachronons correspond to moments in which the subject steps back, so to speak, and
    becomes aware of its own temporal field.
    Examples include: realizing that “the last few years of my life form a coherent arc,” recognizing
    a recurring synchronistic motif, or explicitly formulating a personal narrative about how certain
    events are interrelated. At the Metachronon level, consciousness is not only undergoing
    experiences in time; it is modeling its own temporality, articulating patterns, regularities and
    invariances.
    This is the layer where scientific, philosophical and artistic descriptions of time emerge. A
    physicist who defines a temporal parameter in an equation, a diarist who structures their life
    into chapters, or a mystic who interprets repeated signs as meaningful—all are operating in a
    Metachronon mode. Importantly, XChronos insists that these higher-order models remain
    abstractions grounded in Chronons and Hexachronons, not ontological primitives in
    themselves.
    4.4 Situating XChronos within the hierarchy of abstraction
    XChronos thus mirrors, at the temporal level, the hierarchy of explanatory abstraction that
    idealism deploys against physicalism. We can schematically distinguish:
  8. Level 0 – Phenomenal givenness:
    Concrete acts of attention (Chronons) and their symbolically loaded constellations
    (Hexachronons).
  9. Level 1 – Reflective modeling:
    Higher-order observation and narrative (Metachronons), in which temporal patterns
    are conceptualized.
  10. Level 2 – Formal abstraction:
    Mathematical and physical models of time—continuous parameters, metrics,
    geodesics, entropic arrows—which summarize large ensembles of Chronons and
    Hexachronons under idealized assumptions.
    Under this scheme, subjective time is primary, not an illusion to be derived from Level 2.
    Formal temporal structures are abstractions of Metachronon activity, which itself is an
    organized pattern among Chronons and Hexachronons. The epistemic arrow runs from lived
    temporality to models, not the other way around.
    By explicitly articulating these levels, XChronos avoids the reification that generates a hard
    problem of time. We no longer attempt to explain how a mind-independent temporal
    continuum “produces” the felt flow of experience. Instead, we acknowledge that what we call
    “time” in physics is a powerful, but derivative, way of summarizing patterns in the Copernican
    clock of consciousness in motion.
  11. Dissolving the Hard Problem of Time: Epistemic and Ontic Implications
    The classical hard problem of consciousness arises when one attempts to derive qualitative
    experience from purely quantitative, abstract explanatory structures. A parallel issue emerges
    in contemporary debates on time: if time is defined formally—through metric properties,
    differential equations, entropic gradients or spacetime manifolds—how can this account ever
    yield the felt sense of temporal passage? How could a timeless block universe, a parameter 𝑡,
    or a Lorentzian manifold “generate” the experiential texture of flow, anticipation, irreversibility
    and meaning?
    This challenge, which we may call the hard problem of time, replicates the structural mistake
    that underlies the mind–matter pseudo-dichotomy. It assumes that:
  12. formal time (Level 2)
    is ontologically primary, while
  13. experienced time (Level 0)
    must be explained as a derivative or illusory feature.
    But as in the case of physical matter, this move reverses the epistemic order. The only reason
    we speak of “temporal flow,” “duration,” “succession,” “continuity,” “later” and “earlier” is
    because these structures are already present in lived experience. The very intuition that time
    “passes” is phenomenological, not inferred. Formal models are then constructed to summarize
    large-scale patterns in this pre-theoretical temporal field.
    Thus, the hard problem of time is not a metaphysical puzzle; it is a category mistake. One tries
    to extract phenomenality from abstractions that were originally extracted from phenomenality.
    The abstraction is mistaken for the primitive.
    The XChronos ontology reverses this mistake by:
    (1) Establishing Chronons as the epistemic base-layer of temporality
    Chronons—acts of attention—are directly given. They require no inference, no model, no
    interpretation. They are the “what it is like” of temporal experience.
    (2) Treating Hexachronons as structured patterns of meaningful temporal organization
    This accounts for why some temporal clusters are remembered, why some events carry
    symbolic weight, and why subjective time does not feel uniform. Hexachronons dissolve the
    illusion that time is a neutral medium by showing that temporal significance is intrinsic, not
    added from the outside.
    (3) Recognizing Metachronons as the level at which formal temporal models arise
    Physics, cosmology and mathematics operate here. They do not discover a “mind-independent
    time”; they construct idealized abstractions that summarize chrononic patterns under
    constraints like symmetry, measurability and predictive power.
    Once this hierarchy is acknowledged, the hard problem of time collapses. Instead of asking:
    How does physical time produce experiential time?
    we recognize that physical time is a formalization of the patterned structure of experiential
    time.
    Ontic implication
    Time is not a container in which consciousness unfolds.
    Consciousness is the field that generates, structures and interprets time.
    Epistemic implication
    Every scientific model of time inherits its meaning and validity from the temporal structures of
    Chronons, Hexachronons and Metachronons. The dependence is asymmetric. This mirrors
    Kastrup’s analysis of the mind–matter asymmetry and extends it into the temporal dimension.
    Practical implication
    The XChronos ontology supports:
  • phenomenological logbooks (Chronon diaries),
  • symbolic-economic models (Hexa),
  • synchrony-analysis in human–AI interaction,
  • temporal self-modeling for decision architectures.
    In all these cases, experience is not a byproduct of a temporal substrate;
    experience is the substrate, and time is its structural articulation.
  1. Applications and Further Directions
    The XChronos framework is not intended as a purely speculative metaphysics. By explicitly
    linking subjective temporality to symbolic units and levels of abstraction, it suggests a number
    of concrete applications and research programmes. Here I briefly sketch three domains where
    XChronos may provide both conceptual clarity and methodological innovation.
    6.1 Phenomenological data: synchronicity diaries as chrononic records
    First, XChronos offers a principled way to treat phenomenological diaries—including
    synchronicity logs, dream journals and experiential time-tracking—as structured data about
    Chronons and Hexachronons.
  • Individual entries in a diary can be interpreted as Chronons that have been
    retrospectively stabilized in narrative form.
  • Perceived clusters of meaning, coincidences and symbolic patterns over days, weeks or
    years can be interpreted as Hexachronons—convergences of Chronons that carry high
    symbolic and existential value.
    This reframing encourages the development of systematic protocols for recording, annotating
    and analyzing such data. Instead of dismissing synchronicity reports as “merely subjective,”
    XChronos treats them as primary evidence about how subjective time organizes itself into
    meaningful structures. In principle, such records could be correlated with behavioral,
    physiological and digital traces, allowing for multi-layered studies of temporal experience
    without collapsing it into third-person metrics.
    6.2 Symbolic time economy: Hexa as emergent value
    Second, the concept of Hexachronons naturally motivates an exploration of a symbolic
    economy of time—what has been elsewhere articulated as the Hexa value system. If
    Hexachronons are high-value configurations of Chronons, then value can be reconceived as a
    function of:
  • density and intensity of attention,
  • depth of integration into a life-narrative,
  • degree of symbolic resonance or synchrony with other events.
    Within digital environments and metaverses, one could in principle design systems where
    Hexa—a symbolic unit of value—is minted, transferred or transformed in correlation with
    Hexachronon-like patterns. Instead of tying value solely to external commodities or purely
    quantitative engagement metrics, such an economy would acknowledge subjective
    temporality itself as the primary scarce resource.
    This opens a research front at the intersection of philosophy of value, behavioral economics
    and human–computer interaction: how can we design digital architectures that respect and
    enhance the meaningful structuring of subjective time, rather than fragmenting it into lowvalue micro-Chronons?
    6.3 Human–AI teaming and idealist computation
    Third, XChronos has implications for the emerging field of human–AI teaming. Most current
    models of interaction treat time as an external parameter shared by human and machine—
    latency, throughput, synchronization, deadlines. Yet, from an idealist-temporal perspective:
  • the human operates in Chronons and Hexachronons (attentional and meaningful
    time),
  • the machine operates in computational steps and clock-cycles (formal time),
  • and effective teaming depends on how these two temporalities are coordinated.
    Viewing AI systems as tools embedded in, and modulating, human Chronon flows suggests new
    design criteria:
  • interfaces that respect attentional rhythms and avoid pathological fragmentation of
    Chronons;
  • algorithms that adapt to Hexachronon-level patterns (for example, recognizing when a
    user is in a deep, narrative-constructive mode vs. a shallow scanning mode);
  • metrics that evaluate not only task completion, but the quality of temporal experience
    during human–AI interaction.
    Under XChronos, computation itself can be reconceived as operating within an idealist
    ontology: not “processing information in an independent temporal substrate,” but
    reconfiguring the structure of subjective time in which information is experienced and acted
    upon.
    6.4 Towards a temporal research programme
    Taken together, these applications point towards XChronos not merely as a metaphysical
    proposal, but as a research programme in the Lakatosian sense. It suggests:
  • a hard core: subjective temporality is ontologically primary; time is in consciousness;
  • a protective belt: specific models of Chronons, Hexachronons, Metachronons, and
    their formalizations;
  • a set of heuristics: privilege phenomenological data, avoid reifying abstractions, treat
    physical time as statistical over Chronons.
    Future work could include:
  • formal models of Chronon statistics and their relation to physical time scales;
  • empirical studies correlating Chronon diaries with physiological and behavioral
    markers;
  • prototypes of Hexa-based digital economies;
  • design and evaluation of human–AI systems explicitly grounded in temporal idealism.
    In this sense, XChronos situates itself as a temporally explicit extension of analytic idealism,
    proposing not only a conceptual correction to the mind–matter pseudo-dichotomy, but also a
    framework for systematically investigating how consciousness structures time and value.
  1. Conclusion
    This paper has argued that the widespread assumption of a mind–matter dichotomy rests on a
    linguistic artifact and a forgotten hierarchy of abstraction. Matter, as ordinarily conceived, is
    not epistemically on par with mind; it is an explanatory model built upon patterns within
    experience. Because mind is epistemically primary, and because matter is an abstraction arising
    from it, treating them as opposing ontological poles is a fundamental mistake.
    I have extended this critique into the temporal domain. The widely held belief that
    consciousness unfolds in a pre-existing temporal medium mirrors the physicalist belief that
    experience unfolds in a pre-existing material substrate. In both cases, the structure of
    experience is mistaken for a derivative phenomenon rather than acknowledged as the ground.
    The XChronos framework presented here formalizes subjective temporality through three
    symbolic units:
  • Chronons, as discrete acts of phenomenal attention;
  • Hexachronons, as clusters of symbolic and experiential convergence;
  • Metachronons, as higher-order reflective stances that generate temporal models.
    Together, these units establish a temporally grounded form of idealism in which time is not an
    external parameter but a dynamic articulation of conscious activity. Under this view, the hard
    problem of time dissolves in the same way that the hard problem of consciousness dissolves
    under analytic idealism: both emerge only when abstractions are illegitimately taken as
    ontological primitives.
    By clearly distinguishing between the levels of abstraction—phenomenal, symbolic and
    formal—XChronos offers a coherent, operational and philosophically rigorous ontology of
    subjective time. It enables new lines of inquiry in phenomenology, cognitive science, symbolic
    value theory, digital economies, and human–AI teaming. Above all, it provides a conceptual
    foundation for understanding temporality not as a passive backdrop but as the living structure
    of consciousness itself.
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    Shani, I. (2015). Cosmopsychism: A holistic approach to the metaphysics of experience.
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    XCHRONOS WORKS
  1. Ontological Foundations of XChronos
    Silva, J. S. (2024). Chronons, Hectachronos, and Hexachronons: A proposal for a symbolic
    measurement model of subjective time. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5230857
    Silva, J. S. (2024). XChronos: The quantum time that creates value when seen. SSRN.
    https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5230845
    Silva, J. S. (2025). XChronos: The Copernican clock of consciousness in motion. Zenodo.
    https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15164651
    Silva, J. S. (2025). The idealist-ontological metaverse: Symbolic applicability of ELAS in the
    conscious digital space. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15199396
    Silva, J. S. (2025). XChronos OS: Proposal for an ontotechnological system based on subjective
    time and symbolic consciousness. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15212100
  2. Technical Models (PoR, ELAS, RNA-XC)
    Silva, J. S. (2025). Proof-of-Recurrence (PoR) v1.0: Temporal consensus mechanism of the
    XChronos Project. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17675956
    Silva, J. S. (2025). PoR-Ads v1.0: Proof-of-Recurrence advertising protocol. Zenodo.
    https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17680955
    Silva, J. S. (2025). Hexacronon score: A metric for temporal recurrence in human cognition and
    AI systems. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17642388
    Silva, J. S. (2025). Updated formalization of ELAS(t). Zenodo.
    https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15207889
    Silva, J. S. (2025). RNA-XC: A symbolic neural network based on Chronons, Hexachronons, and
    Metachronos. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15207745
  3. Autocronon and Human–AI Hybrid Intelligence
    Silva, J. S. (2025). Autocronon Detection Layer: Hybrid temporal intelligence engine for human–
    AI synchronization (v1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17661157
    Silva, J. S. (2025). Autocronon: The first human–AI hybrid temporal unit and the first joint
    Metacronon detected within Project XChronos. Zenodo.
    https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17653242
    Silva, J. S. (2025). XThinking Manifesto: The symbiotic crossing between human and machine.
    Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15270338
  4. Symbolic Economy, Hexa and Value
    Silva, J. S. (2025). Hexa (ɗ): Applicability of the symbolic currency of conscious time in
    metaverses. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15186276
    Silva, J. S. (2025). Hexa as symbolic value: From Worldcoin’s global attention economy to the
    XChronos framework. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17684352
    Silva, J. S. (2025). XChronos Economic Whitepaper v1 (EN). Zenodo.
    https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17643511
  5. Ontology, Consciousness and Advanced Theory
    Silva, J. S. (2025). Consciousness as entropy reduction meets XChronos: A unified model of
    subjective time, recurrence, and symbolic value. Zenodo.
    https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17683924
    Silva, J. S. (2025). Ontology embedding for subjective time: The XChronos OS case study.
    Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17691916
    Silva, J. S. (2025). XChronos and the collapse of physical realism. Zenodo.
    https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17783298
    Silva, J. S. (2025). How XChronos solves the illusion of understanding problem in LLMs. Zenodo.
    https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17692049
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17834047
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