Cosmological Continuity Presentism (CCP): A Generative Spacetime Ontology Compatible with General Relativity

Cosmological Continuity Presentism (CCP) develops a presentist spacetime ontology compatible with relativistic field theory by interpreting spacetime as progressively generated rather than as a completed four-dimensional block. The framework introduces a generation parameter σ representing accumulated causal activity and formulated as a scalar functional of the stress-energy tensor. σ is promoted to a constrained dynamical scalar field whose gradient structure is tied to matter–energy distribution through a variational principle without modifying the Einstein field equations. Reality at stage σ is defined as the generated manifold M(σ), consisting of the causal past and present hypersurface Σ_σ while excluding future hypersurfaces, yielding a growing spacetime domain consistent with the initial-value structure of general relativity. The formal development employs ADM decomposition and globally hyperbolic foliation to demonstrate that CCP preserves local Lorentz-invariant dynamics while introducing an ontological distinction between generated past structure and the active present edge. The framework predicts a small but definite statistical time-asymmetry in cosmological observables: a causal skew parameter ε(σ) in cosmic microwave background multipole correlations, which differs from the perfect time-symmetry predicted by block-universe interpretations. CCP also examines implications for quantum interpretations, causal-set growth models, and the phenomenology of temporal experience, arguing that conscious qualia correspond to ongoing physical processes instantiated at the present hypersurface. By grounding temporal becoming in the causal and dynamical structure of relativistic spacetime, CCP provides an interpretive extension of general relativity that is empirically testable through cosmological statistics while preserving all established local physical laws.