A Covariant Objective Present: Relativistic becoming read as actualization, without a global "now"

Abstract

Presentism and the growing block universe make the present an objective frontier, but presuppose a global "now" that the relativity of simultaneity forbids — the Rietdijk–Putnam argument, which pushes the metaphysics of time toward eternalism (past, present and future equally real). We defend a metaphysical thesis that aims at empirical equivalence with quantum mechanics on a causal-set substrate; full verification of that requirement remains open. In the Time–Actualization (TA) ontology, the present is not a slice of simultaneity but the act of actualization of quantum potentialities into events. Covariance is required: the order of birth of events is gauge, while causal order and regional event count are physical. This reading instantiates a growing block universe without a global present, so the relativistic objection loses its purchase (it targets a global "now" that TA does not have). This dissolution is, originally, Stein's point-relative becoming; TA inherits it and lodges a process within it, uniting Stein's becoming and the covariant growth of Rideout–Sorkin causal sets under a single realist reading. The identification this proposes — becoming is actualization, and the act of actualization is, ontologically, the measurement event (whose basis and readiness TA anchors, with outcome weights imported from Born) — is advanced as programmatic: a conjecture to be earned, not a result already in hand (Sec. 7). The contribution is an ontological synthesis, not a new formalism or a new prediction.