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--- title: "Time, Identity, Commitment, and Future Standing" subtitle: "Personal Continuity, Intertemporal Choice, Advance Directives, Succession, Future Generations, and Temporal Systems" artifact_date: "2026-07-14" artifact_type: "adjacent-fields-and-temporal-review" domain: "TELIC-FIELDS" scope: "WORKING" lineage: "THE-TELIC-FIELD-PAPERS" status: "draft" processing_tier: 4 source_role: "research-and-claim-boundary-artifact" content_canon_status: "unset" publication_status: "unpublished" series_position: "G.7" companion_to:

• "20260714__TELIC-FIELDS__PAPER__CANDIDATE__F-6__temporal-telic-relations.md"

research_note: > This review compares temporal standing and temporal telic relations with established work in personal identity, future-self continuity, intertemporal choice, advance directives, fiduciary governance, intergenerational justice, institutional succession, temporal databases, event sourcing, and temporal logic. It is not a systematic legal or philosophical review. ---

Time, Identity, Commitment, and Future Standing

Executive finding

Temporal standing is viable as a candidate governance umbrella.

It is not a replacement for personal identity theory, future-self psychology, intertemporal choice, advance directives, fiduciary duty, intergenerational justice, succession law, temporal databases, event sourcing, or temporal logic. Each neighboring field already addresses a substantial part of the problem.

The proposed contribution is the composition:

A present actor should represent temporally displaced centers and states when current action materially constrains the conditions they will inherit; inherited authority should remain versioned, scoped, reviewable, and distinguishable from durable history.

This composition connects several concerns usually separated:

• psychological continuity with later selves;
• present bias and commitment devices;
• earlier autonomy and later welfare;
• legal representation of future generations;
• organizational obligations across succession;
• versioned consent and policy;
• immutable event history with revisable current interpretation;
• temporal logic for validity, order, and expiration.

The strongest candidate concepts are:

• temporal standing;
• future possibility as a protected condition;
• the present as temporary governor;
• inherited authority review;
• versioned consent;
• temporal breach;
• release from prior teloi.

The largest risk is overreach.

Temporal standing can become paternalism if an imagined future is allowed to suppress present agency. It can become institutional immortality if inherited commitments are presumed legitimate merely because they persisted. It can become administrative surveillance if every changing preference is permanently recorded.

The framework must protect both continuity and release.

---

1. Review frame

G.7 asks:

• What makes an earlier and later state the same center for governance purposes?
• When may an earlier decision bind a later state?
• How should present action represent uncertain future preference?
• How do present bias and commitment devices complicate self-governance?
• What authority should advance directives retain after values or capacities change?
• How are future generations represented without fabricated consent?
• What obligations survive institutional succession?
• How should time-sensitive consent, policy, and profiles be recorded?
• What must be immutable, and what must remain revisable?
• What does temporal standing add beyond existing concepts?

---

2. Personal identity

Personal-identity philosophy asks what makes a person at one time the same person at another.

Competing traditions emphasize:

• bodily continuity;
• brain continuity;
• psychological continuity;
• memory;
• causal continuity;
• narrative identity;
• practical concern;
• reductionist relations.

Derek Parfit famously argued that strict identity may matter less for rational and moral concern than psychological continuity and connectedness.

Strong overlap

• earlier and later selves;
• changing values;
• continuity without perfect sameness;
• practical concern for future states;
• survival and obligation;
• branching and transformation.

What temporal standing may add

Personal-identity theory is partly metaphysical.

Temporal standing is procedural and governance-oriented.

It asks:

• Which later state will inherit this consequence?
• Which earlier record retains authority?
• How much uncertainty should preserve future option?
• Who may revise the commitment?
• What witness is required?
• What obligations survive a change in identity or role?

Adjudication

Temporal standing should remain neutral among broad identity theories.

A governance system need not solve the metaphysics of identity before recognizing that later embodied states will inherit debt, pain, records, and closed possibilities.

Boundary

Do not claim:

The future self is literally another person.

Prefer:

Earlier and later states can be modeled as a temporal relation when their fields differ but consequence and continuity connect them.

---

3. Future-self continuity

Psychological research on future-self continuity examines how connected, similar, vivid, or positively regarded people feel toward their later selves. Greater continuity has been associated in several studies with future-oriented choices such as saving.

Future-self exercises, including age-progressed representations and reflective dialogue, attempt to make later states more psychologically present.

Strong overlap

• temporal distance;
• later-self representation;
• present decisions affecting later welfare;
• continuity and concern;
• imagination and projection;
• intertemporal agency.

What temporal standing may add

Future-self continuity is a psychological relation.

Temporal standing is a governance requirement.

A person may feel little continuity with a future state that will still inherit the consequence. A corporation may have no feelings at all while successors inherit obligations. A community may owe consideration to people who do not yet exist.

Adjudication

Future-self continuity is one mechanism supporting temporal representation, not the basis of temporal standing.

Low felt continuity should not justify imposing harm on later states.

High felt continuity should not justify present self-erasure.

AI boundary

Future-self simulations can support reflection but may create false authority.

A generated future self is a present model artifact, not a message from the actual future.

Use:

Here is one possible future perspective based on your current information.

Avoid:

Your future self is telling you what you must do.

---

4. Intertemporal choice and discounting

Intertemporal-choice research examines tradeoffs among outcomes at different times. Discounted-utility models represent future outcomes with reduced present value. Empirical work shows departures from constant exponential discounting, including present bias, hyperbolic patterns, magnitude effects, framing effects, and domain differences.

Strong overlap

• present versus future value;
• delayed consequence;
• preference change;
• self-control;
• future burden;
• time horizon.

Boundary

Discounting is a decision model.

It is not a complete theory of temporal legitimacy.

A future protected condition should not necessarily be converted into a smaller present-equivalent preference.

Examples include:

• irreversible disability;
• loss of public trust;
• species extinction;
• permanent data exposure;
• a child's future autonomy;
• institutional repair obligations.

Adjudication

Temporal polytelometry should preserve temporal categories before applying discounting.

A decision record should distinguish:

present preference
future preference estimate
future protected condition
irreversible loss
delayed benefit
speculative future
inherited obligation

Present-bias boundary

The framework should not classify every present-oriented choice as irrational.

Present well-being and uncertainty about the future are legitimate.

The constitutional issue is whether the current executive knowingly externalizes avoidable cost onto a later state whose standing has disappeared from active context.

---

5. Commitment devices

Commitment devices allow a present person to constrain later behavior.

Examples include:

• deadlines;
• automatic saving;
• restricted access;
• precommitment contracts;
• public promises;
• deposits;
• default rules;
• environmental design.

They can help a person act according to longer-term values when later temptation or avoidance is expected.

Strong overlap

• one temporal state governing another;
• expected preference change;
• self-binding;
• future action recruitment;
• reduced decision cost.

Constitutional risk

The present self may mispredict the future.

A commitment may become:

• too rigid;
• punitive;
• identity-preserving after values change;
• inaccessible to revision;
• exploitable by institutions;
• a substitute for material support;
• a route for shame or coercion.

Adjudication

Commitment devices should be treated as delegated temporal authority with explicit release conditions.

A legitimate commitment should specify:

• purpose;
• duration;
• expected conflict;
• protected conditions;
• emergency override;
• review;
• release;
• reliance by others.

A commitment is stronger when it protects a chosen future without making revision impossible.

---

6. Advance directives and precedent autonomy

Advance directives allow a person to state preferences for future periods of incapacity.

They raise a deep conflict between:

• earlier autonomous choice;
• later experiential interests;
• personal continuity;
• present interpretation;
• family and professional duties;
• uncertainty about changed values.

Ronald Dworkin's account of precedent autonomy gives substantial authority to earlier critical interests. Other views give more weight to the later person's experiential welfare or current interests.

Strong overlap

• inherited authority;
• future incapacity;
• earlier self-authorship;
• later welfare;
• delegated interpretation;
• versioned consent;
• changed circumstances.

What temporal standing may add

The framework can model the conflict without presuming one theory wins.

A temporal record can preserve:

• exact directive;
• scope;
• conditions envisioned;
• current condition;
• present welfare;
• evidence of changed values;
• delegate authority;
• uncertainty;
• legal rules;
• review process.

Adjudication

Temporal standing does not resolve advance-directive conflicts.

It prevents one side from becoming invisible.

Hard boundary

Do not treat an earlier statement as self-executing outside its described conditions.

Do not treat the inability to restate a preference as automatic revocation.

Both are authority claims requiring human governance.

---

7. Fiduciary duty

Fiduciary relationships require one party to act loyally and carefully for another's interests under conditions of entrusted power or vulnerability.

Fiduciary duty is a strong institutional neighbor for temporary governance.

Examples include:

• trustees;
• directors;
• guardians;
• attorneys;
• agents;
• pension managers.

Strong overlap

• delegated authority;
• stewardship;
• loyalty;
• care;
• conflict of interest;
• beneficiary standing;
• future and absent interests;
• record and accountability.

Candidate bridge

The present self is not literally a fiduciary for the future self in established law.

The analogy is nevertheless useful:

Present authority is held in stewardship when its decisions irreversibly structure conditions later states will inherit.

Adjudication

Use fiduciary language as an analogy and design pattern, not an established legal classification of temporal selfhood.

Institutional temporal records should preserve:

• beneficiary or affected center;
• delegated authority;
• conflicts;
• investment or decision horizon;
• review;
• successor duty.

---

8. Intergenerational justice

Intergenerational justice concerns duties among generations regarding:

• resources;
• environment;
• debt;
• institutions;
• knowledge;
• climate;
• public goods;
• opportunity;
• cultural inheritance.

The non-identity problem complicates claims of harm when present actions affect which people will exist. Yet governance still must decide what conditions may be passed forward.

Strong overlap

• future affected centers;
• irreversible inheritance;
• absent voice;
• stewardship;
• preserved possibility;
• long time horizons;
• uncertainty;
• collective action.

What temporal standing may add

Temporal standing offers a general record and representation framework.

It does not solve:

• the non-identity problem;
• population ethics;
• discount rates;
• distributive justice;
• democratic legitimacy;
• conflicts between current poverty and future protection.

Adjudication

Future generations may possess represented standing without fabricated consent.

Do not say:

Future generations consented.

Say:

Present institutions have duties to represent foreseeable conditions future people will inherit.

Governance patterns

Useful mechanisms include:

• future-generations commissioners;
• environmental trustees;
• long-term impact assessment;
• protected public assets;
• constitutional provisions;
• independent review;
• sunset and renewal rules;
• intergenerational accounts.

---

9. Future-generation standing in law

The Philippine Supreme Court's decision in Oposa v. Factoran is widely discussed because minors asserted standing for themselves and generations yet unborn in an environmental case.

Other legal systems use different mechanisms and often do not recognize broad standing for future generations.

The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 created institutional duties and a commissioner oriented toward long-term well-being rather than a general private cause of action for unborn persons.

Adjudication

Temporal standing is broader than legal standing and must not be presented as settled law.

It is a governance concept that may inform:

• representation;
• impact assessment;
• fiduciary design;
• institutional review;
• public witness.

Legal claims remain jurisdiction-specific.

Boundary

Do not infer that every future interest is judicially enforceable.

Do not use “standing” without clarifying whether the context is:

• legal;
• moral;
• constitutional;
• internal;
• institutional;
• analytical.

---

10. Institutional succession

Corporate, governmental, nonprofit, professional, and civic institutions persist through succession.

Succession rules determine:

• who may act;
• what records survive;
• what contracts continue;
• which duties transfer;
• how liabilities are treated;
• whether prior policies remain in force;
• how authority is authenticated.

Strong overlap

• continuity without stable membership;
• inherited assets and liabilities;
• delegated authority;
• role rather than personal identity;
• versioned governance;
• successor accountability.

Candidate contribution

Temporal telic relations emphasize that succession also carries:

• purpose;
• consent scope;
• unresolved repair;
• data obligations;
• standing of participants;
• context debt.

Adjudication

Institutional succession should be modeled as transfer of both capability and burden.

A successor who claims continuity for benefit should state which attached obligations it accepts.

If obligations are rejected, the continuity claim itself requires review.

---

11. Event sourcing

Event sourcing records state changes as an append-only sequence of events. Current state is derived by replaying events or applying them to projections. Corrections often occur through new compensating events rather than deleting historical events.

This is a strong technical neighbor for temporal witness.

Strong overlap

• immutable history;
• derived current state;
• versioning;
• replay;
• auditability;
• compensating action;
• multiple projections;
• temporal reconstruction.

What temporal telic systems may add

Event sourcing does not determine:

• whether the event was legitimate;
• whose standing was represented;
• whether consent was valid;
• whether a projection should continue to govern;
• which history may remain private;
• when deletion duties conflict with auditability;
• whether an inherited purpose remains authoritative.

Adjudication

Use event-sourcing patterns for witness, not as a complete governance model.

A telic event stream may include:

projection_created
consent_granted
authority_delegated
action_taken
consequence_recorded
projection_corrected
consent_withdrawn
authority_expired
obligation_transferred
telos_released

Current state should remain derivable without pretending that current interpretation rewrites history.

---

12. Temporal databases and bitemporal records

Temporal databases distinguish different dimensions of time.

Two especially useful dimensions are:

• valid time: when a fact is true in the represented world;
• transaction time: when the database recorded or knew the fact.

Bitemporal systems preserve both.

Relevance

A projection may be:

• valid for the source at one time;
• recorded later;
• corrected later still;
• used by a system during an interval between those events.

Without both times, the system may falsely reconstruct history.

Example:

Preference valid from January 1.
Recorded January 10.
Corrected February 1.
System acted January 20.

The current database may show only the corrected preference unless transaction history is preserved.

Adjudication

Temporal telic records should use bitemporal concepts where historical reconstruction matters.

Candidate fields include:

valid_from
valid_to
recorded_at
superseded_at
acted_under_at

Privacy boundary

Complete temporal history can become surveillance.

The system needs role-based disclosure, retention rules, and selective witness.

---

13. Temporal logic

Temporal logic provides formal languages for reasoning about order, persistence, eventuality, and obligation through time.

Examples include operators corresponding to:

• always;
• eventually;
• until;
• next;
• previously;
• since.

Relevance

Temporal logic can formalize policies such as:

• consent must remain active until the action completes;
• a correction must eventually propagate;
• an expired authority must never govern a new action;
• a review must occur before irreversible execution;
• a withdrawal must disable future use;
• a successor must preserve an obligation until discharged.

Boundary

Formal temporal validity does not establish moral legitimacy.

A policy can be consistently enforced and still be unjust.

Adjudication

Temporal logic is a Phase I implementation bridge, not the source of telic authority.

The policy must first be constitutionally specified.

Logic can then test temporal compliance.

---

14. Versioned policy and consent

Policies and consents often change while systems continue operating.

A versioned record should answer:

• which version applied;
• to whom;
• during which interval;
• under which jurisdiction;
• with what notice;
• with what acceptance or consent;
• what happened after withdrawal;
• what obligations survived.

Common failure

A current terms page replaces the previous page.

Later, the institution cannot show which terms governed an earlier action.

Another failure occurs when a user accepts one version and is silently migrated to a materially different purpose.

Adjudication

Versioning is required whenever current authority depends on historical terms.

A version identifier without readable differences is insufficient.

A consentful version change should provide:

• material-change summary;
• source text;
• effective date;
• action required;
• refusal or exit route;
• effect on existing data and obligations.

---

15. Commitment, reliance, and release

Commitments create reliance.

A later desire to exit does not erase the standing of those who relied on the promise.

Temporal governance must therefore represent both:

• the changing field of the committing center;
• the reliance and future planning of others.

Release may require:

• notice;
• transition;
• compensation;
• completion of a bounded obligation;
• transfer;
• partial performance;
• mutual revision;
• witnessed dissolution.

Adjudication

Release is not unilateral erasure of consequence.

It changes future authority while preserving legitimate residual duties.

Boundary

The framework should not romanticize persistence.

Reliance can be manipulated.

A coercive system may deliberately create dependency to make exit appear immoral.

The legitimacy of reliance depends partly on the legitimacy of the original recruitment.

---

16. Temporal capture

Temporal capture occurs when one time horizon dominates the system.

16.1 Present capture

Immediate reward or crisis suppresses future standing.

16.2 Past capture

Tradition, record, trauma, policy, or identity remains sovereign after its substrate changes.

16.3 Future capture

An imagined future justifies unlimited present sacrifice.

16.4 Institutional capture

The organization's survival becomes the overriding temporal telos.

16.5 Model capture

A persistent profile or prediction freezes a changing person.

16.6 Emergency capture

Temporary emergency authority becomes permanent.

Adjudication

Temporal integrity requires plural time horizons.

No horizon becomes sovereign merely because it is urgent, inherited, measurable, or rhetorically sacred.

17. Temporal integrity

Temporal integrity is the preservation of valid temporal relations among:

• source;
• authority;
• consent;
• state;
• consequence;
• correction;
• succession;
• release.

It requires more than chronological accuracy.

A record may correctly state that consent occurred while concealing that the consent expired before the action.

A policy may be historically authentic while no longer legitimate.

A successor may accurately inherit a contract while denying the repair obligation attached to the relationship.

Candidate dimensions

17.1 Chronological integrity

Events and versions are ordered correctly.

17.2 Valid-time integrity

The system represents when a projection, rule, authority, or condition was actually valid.

17.3 Transaction-time integrity

The system represents when it learned, recorded, or changed the information.

17.4 Authority integrity

Historical authority is not silently projected into a new scope or time.

17.5 Consent integrity

Current action is governed by the correct consent state.

17.6 Succession integrity

Benefits, burdens, records, and repair duties transfer consistently.

17.7 Correction integrity

Later corrections preserve the history of earlier operation and propagate to current use.

17.8 Release integrity

A purpose may stop governing without falsifying or erasing its history.

Adjudication

Temporal integrity: adopt as a companion to semantic, projection, and telic integrity.

The term should remain explicitly scoped.

It is not a claim that all continuity is good.

---

18. Temporal breach and repair

F.6 proposes a temporal-breach taxonomy. G.7 supports it with one refinement:

A breach should be classified by both:

• the time relation that failed;
• the authority or standing consequence.

A candidate matrix includes:

| Breach | Failed relation | Consequence | |---|---|---| | Stale projection | Past representation → present use | Changing source is frozen | | Consent persistence | Prior authorization → later action | Historical yes becomes permanent permission | | Future-standing breach | Present action → later inheritance | Later cost bearer is absent | | Succession breach | Prior institution → successor | Benefits transfer without obligations | | Revision erasure | Later update → historical record | Earlier operation becomes unintelligible | | Release breach | Prior commitment → current authority | Obsolete telos cannot cease governing | | Present erasure | Future ideal → current sacrifice | Current standing becomes merely instrumental | | Emergency capture | Temporary crisis → normal governance | Exceptional authority persists |

Repair patterns

• annotate;
• supersede;
• compensate;
• renew;
• revoke;
• replay;
• restore;
• transfer;
• sunset;
• release;
• reconstitute;
• preserve a dispute marker.

Adjudication

Temporal repair should not imply that every past consequence can be reversed.

Where reversal is impossible, repair may consist of:

• truthful witness;
• restitution;
• changed authority;
• preserved learning;
• protection against recurrence.

---

19. Terminology adjudication

Temporal telic relation

Decision: retain.

Boundary: governance relation among temporally displaced states or centers; not proof they are separate persons.

Temporal standing

Decision: retain.

Boundary: representation requirement; distinguish from legal standing, psychological continuity, and metaphysical identity.

Future possibility

Decision: retain as a protected-condition class.

Boundary: not an unlimited duty to preserve every option.

Temporary governor

Decision: retain as an explanatory metaphor.

Boundary: not a legal fiduciary classification of the present self.

Inherited authority

Decision: retain.

Boundary: authority carried from earlier decisions and subject to continuity and review tests.

Versioned consent

Decision: adopt.

Boundary: version history does not by itself make consent meaningful.

Temporal witness

Decision: retain.

Boundary: durable history plus revisable current interpretation.

Identity as continuity protocol

Decision: retain provisionally.

Boundary: design and governance metaphor; does not resolve personal-identity metaphysics.

Temporal breach

Decision: retain.

Temporal integrity

Decision: adopt.

Boundary: valid relations through time, not preservation of every inherited order.

Temporal capture

Decision: retain.

Boundary: analytic description of horizon dominance.

Release from prior teloi

Decision: retain.

Boundary: release may preserve residual reliance, repair, and legal duties.

---

20. Claim adjudication

May be stated strongly

• Present decisions can impose consequences on later states and successors.
• Preferences, circumstances, authority, and consent can change over time.
• Historical persistence does not prove current validity.
• Earlier and later selves can differ while remaining practically connected.
• People show systematic variation and inconsistency in intertemporal choice.
• Commitment devices can support or constrain later agency.
• Advance directives create genuine conflict between earlier autonomy and later interests.
• Institutional succession carries records, assets, liabilities, and authority.
• Event sourcing preserves state-changing history through ordered events.
• Temporal databases can distinguish valid time from transaction time.
• Temporal logic can express persistence, order, expiration, and eventuality.

May be stated as a proposed synthesis

• Temporal standing usefully unifies future-self, succession, and intergenerational representation.
• Future possibility should be represented as a protected condition.
• The present can be modeled as temporary governor of inherited conditions.
• Versioned consent improves temporal witness.
• Temporal integrity adds constitutional constraints to temporal data systems.
• Release from prior teloi is a distinct governance act.
• Temporal capture is a useful cross-domain failure category.

Must remain hypotheses

• Temporal-standing prompts improve long-term decisions.
• Versioned consent produces meaningful rather than procedural renewal.
• Temporal witness improves later self-recognition.
• One temporal-breach framework can scale across persons, institutions, and generations.
• Future possibility can be operationalized without excessive conservatism.
• Temporal records can preserve witness without producing surveillance.

Should not be claimed

• Future selves are legally independent persons.
• Future generations can presently consent.
• Earlier preferences always outrank later welfare.
• Later preferences automatically revoke valid reliance.
• Every commitment should remain easily reversible.
• Event sourcing guarantees ethical accountability.
• Bitemporal accuracy establishes legitimacy.
• Temporal logic determines what ought to persist.
• The present is morally required to maximize all future welfare.

---

21. Required F.6 boundaries

F.6 appropriately includes:

• continuity without perfect sameness;
• temporal standing as representation rather than sovereignty;
• present and future standing;
• future possibility without maximal option preservation;
• commitment and inherited authority review;
• versioned consent;
• advance-directive conflict without false resolution;
• durable history with revisable interpretation;
• identity as a provisional continuity protocol;
• institutional and model succession;
• release from prior teloi;
• temporal breach and repair;
• bitemporal and event-sourcing bridges;
• falsification and paternalism risks.

Before Phase I implementation, temporal records require:

• legal review;
• privacy and retention review;
• jurisdiction-specific consent analysis;
• records-management policy;
• human-readable version comparison;
• successor-authority threat modeling;
• deletion and historical-witness reconciliation.

---

22. Empirical differentiation agenda

22.1 Temporal-standing versus future-consequence prompts

Compare ordinary future-impact analysis with prompts that explicitly identify later centers, preserved possibility, authority, and review.

Measure whether the added structure changes decisions.

22.2 Future-self simulation study

Compare:

• no future representation;
• reflective writing;
• age-progressed visualization;
• AI-generated possible-future dialogue;
• temporal-standing record.

Measure:

• future orientation;
• perceived authority;
• present pressure;
• later recognition;
• false certainty.

22.3 Commitment-device study

Compare rigid precommitment with reviewable commitment carrying release and reliance terms.

Measure follow-through, regret, trust, and exploitation risk.

22.4 Consent-version study

Test whether participants can accurately identify:

• what changed;
• which version governs;
• what past action used;
• how to withdraw;
• what withdrawal cannot reverse.

22.5 Event-sourced governance study

Represent projection, consent, correction, and release as events.

Measure reconstruction, correction propagation, privacy burden, and user comprehension.

22.6 Institutional-succession study

Compare ordinary asset and liability transition with telic succession mapping.

Measure preservation of:

• commitments;
• repair;
• data obligations;
• affected-center standing;
• authority limits.

22.7 Intergenerational representation study

Compare cost-benefit analysis with standing-aware long-horizon review.

Measure present burden, future-condition preservation, transparency, and democratic legitimacy.

---

23. Candidate technical bridges

23.1 Bitemporal projection records

Use:

valid_from
valid_to
recorded_at
superseded_at
acted_under_at

23.2 Append-only temporal witness

Record state changes as events rather than overwriting history.

23.3 Materialized current projections

Derive current operative state from event history.

23.4 Temporal policy rules

Examples:

An expired consent must not authorize a new action.

A source correction must eventually propagate to every active derived record.

An irreversible action must not execute before the required review event.

An emergency authority must expire unless explicitly renewed.

A released telos must not remain an active optimization objective.

23.5 Successor bundles

Transfer:

• authority;
• obligations;
• active consent;
• disputes;
• repair duties;
• release conditions;
• provenance.

Boundary

These are Phase I candidates.

They are not production specifications in G.7.

---

24. Bottom line

Temporal standing should proceed.

It should proceed as:

• a governance umbrella;
• a bridge among future-self psychology, succession, consent, and intergenerational responsibility;
• a requirement for versioned authority;
• a model of present stewardship;
• a framework for release as well as continuity;
• a source of testable records and temporal policies.

It should not proceed as:

• a solution to personal-identity metaphysics;
• a legal claim that future persons always have standing;
• a permanent archive of every preference;
• a reason to suppress present well-being;
• a universal prohibition against irreversible action;
• a replacement for advance-directive law or professional judgment;
• a claim that technical versioning makes authority legitimate.

The strongest defensible formulation is:

Temporal standing extends existing accounts of future concern and succession by requiring present systems to represent who will inherit their decisions, which authority remains valid, what possibilities are being closed, and how later states may review, repair, or release what they receive.

---

Primary references

Allen, James F. “Maintaining Knowledge About Temporal Intervals.” Communications of the ACM 26, no. 11, 1983.

Ariely, Dan, and Klaus Wertenbroch. “Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance: Self-Control by Precommitment.” Psychological Science 13, no. 3, 2002.

Buchanan, Allen E., and Dan W. Brock. Deciding for Others: The Ethics of Surrogate Decision Making. Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Department of Health, 497 U.S. 261, 1990.

Dworkin, Ronald. Life's Dominion. Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.

Ersner-Hershfield, Hal, et al. “Saving for the Future Self: Neural Measures of Future Self-Continuity Predict Temporal Discounting.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 4, no. 1, 2009.

Frederick, Shane, George Loewenstein, and Ted O'Donoghue. “Time Discounting and Time Preference: A Critical Review.” Journal of Economic Literature 40, no. 2, 2002.

Laibson, David. “Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, no. 2, 1997.

Lamport, Leslie. “Proving the Correctness of Multiprocess Programs.” IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering SE-3, no. 2, 1977.

O'Donoghue, Ted, and Matthew Rabin. “Doing It Now or Later.” American Economic Review 89, no. 1, 1999.

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