Abstract
Physical time can pass through a cognitive episode without implying that the episode represents its own elapsed position. We distinguish process history from temporal self-location, and temporal access from temporal authority: time information may be obtainable without being relevant to continuation or closure. Retrospective duration can instead be reconstructed from remembered content or event structure. Sleep research serves only as a measurement foundation, showing why objective state/history and subjective report dimensions should be kept separate. We propose an undemonstrated waking 2 × 2 test crossing temporal access and authority during self-terminated deliberation, with content/event reconstruction treated as a competing route. The key evidence would be authority-dependent temporal sampling and closure effects that survive plausible reconstruction and generic-pressure accounts. The framework does not posit a centralized clock or claim that timing information must be conscious. The proposal remains a theoretical identification framework rather than a report of participant results.
In plain language
A thought can have a rich internal history without carrying an accessible answer to “how long has this been going on?” Physical time passing, cognitive state changing, and the system knowing its current elapsed position are different things.
The paper adds a second distinction: being able to obtain time information is not the same as time having authority over what the process does next. A clock may be visible but irrelevant to whether deliberation continues. In another task, the same clock may become a legitimate stopping signal.
Why it matters
Temporal cognition is easy to over-infer. An accurate duration report after an episode does not prove that elapsed time was represented continuously while the episode unfolded; the estimate might have been reconstructed from remembered content, event boundaries, task regularities, or a later clock reading. Likewise, the presence of temporal information does not show that it influenced the control policy of the episode.
The proposed experiment crosses temporal access with temporal authority. That makes it possible to ask whether people sample time differently when it is merely available versus when it is legitimately relevant to closure, and whether those differences survive simpler explanations based on generic urgency or retrospective reconstruction.
If the distinction is supported, it would provide a cleaner way to study how time enters ongoing cognition: not by assuming an internal clock is continuously represented, but by separately measuring process history, temporal access, temporal self-location, and the control weight assigned to time.
Publication record
The manuscript is being prepared for submission. No public preprint has yet been posted. A repository record or final journal DOI will be linked here when available.