Why Does Anything Exist?

Why Does Anything Exist? | Authorea try { document.documentElement.classList.add('js'); } catch (e) { } var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'G-8VDV14Y67G']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); Skip to main content Preprints Collections Wiley Open Research IET Open Research Ecological Society of Japan All Collections About About Authorea FAQs Contact Us Quick Search anywhere Search for preprint articles, keywords, etc. Search Search ADVANCED SEARCH SCROLL This is a preprint and has not been peer reviewed. Data may be preliminary. 10 April 2026 V3 Latest version Share on Why Does Anything Exist? Author : Michael Timothy Bennett 0000-0001-6895-8782 [email protected] Authors Info & Affiliations https://doi.org/10.22541/au.177499235.58145822/v3 263 views 151 downloads Contents Abstract Supplementary Material Information & Authors Metrics & Citations View Options References Figures Tables Media Share Abstract Living things interpret their environment to survive. Computation requires an interpreter. I argue the interpreter problem and the origins of life are the same problem, but the interpreter is not a primitive. Change is the primitive. Each change is contentless. It is a state defined only by its difference from the other changes. An aspect of reality is a set of changes. A timeline is a sequence of changes. As a timeline progresses, it preserves some aspects of reality and destroys others. That preservation is already a value judgement, before any organism exists. I define a persistence ordering for each trajectory and prove different trajectories induce different orderings. Every timeline is an opinion about what ought to persist. Persistence favours self-producing systems, because they recover from perturbations that destroy rigid structures. Autopoiesis is usually assumed. I show it is implied by change, and I prove that adding any representational commitment beyond viability strictly reduces persistence. This is a novel, bottom-up proof of the Psychophysical Principle of Causality. Prior work derived it top-down, assuming an organism and minimising free energy. Here it follows from the persistence ordering alone. The only safe primitive is valence. Objects and properties are patterns in attraction and repulsion. To sum up, change implies all possible timelines, not a subset. That is why I say anything exists instead of asserting a particular timeline. Every timeline is an opinion about what ought to exist, meaning a persistence ordering. Persistence ordering implies life and representational commitments. Supplementary Material File (wdae4.pdf) Download 237.96 KB Information & Authors Information Version history V1 Version 1 31 March 2026 V2 Version 2 02 April 2026 V3 Version 3 10 April 2026 Copyright This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License Keywords artificial intelligence artificial life origins of life philosophy of mind time Authors Affiliations Michael Timothy Bennett 0000-0001-6895-8782 [email protected] View all articles by this author Metrics & Citations Metrics Article Usage 263 views 151 downloads .FvxKWukQNSOunydq8rnd { width: 100px; } Citations Download citation Michael Timothy Bennett. Why Does Anything Exist?. Authorea . 10 April 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.177499235.58145822/v3 If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download. 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