Trajectory-Identity Theory: Retrospective Certification, Interruption, and the Postmortem Standpoint

This paper develops the epistemological foundation of Trajectory-Identity Theory. It begins from the claim that human recognition is structurally delayed: what appears as present experience is already past when it becomes available to consciousness. From this, the paper argues that recognition does not face the future. Future oriented mental activity remains possible, but it belongs to predictive imagination constructed from past regularities rather than to recognition itself. Life, therefore, i