Abstract

We propose a structural reformulation of presentism that rejects the need for ontological substrata such as temporal instants or persisting entities as the basis of temporal ontology. Instead, we define the present as a dynamically stabilized configuration within a stratified field of constraints. This framework replaces existential quantification over objects with a logic of stratified actualization, captured by a family of non-normal, layer-indexed modal operators. Drawing from field-theoretic and structural realist perspectives, we show how presence, causality, and persistence can be grounded in the local propagation of constraint regimes rather than in the persistence of entities. The resulting model dissolves the meta- physical tension between presentism and the formal structure of physics, without collapsing into relativism. We introduce a formal apparatus Stratified Actualization Logic (SAL) to articulate this shift, and argue that presentness should be understood not as the occupa- tion of a temporal location, but as the local coherence of dynamic configurations within a constraint-regulated system. This offers a new foundation for presentist metaphysics that is both ontologically parsimonious and structurally robust.