Discrete Extramental Time in Chaotic Systems: Event-Conjunction Model and Core Temporal Properties

This technical note isolates and formally presents the discrete-time model first introduced across Padilla-Villanueva’s 2025 preprints. Real (extramental) time in complex chaotic systems is shown to be an emergent succession of statistically significant ordinal conjunctions of trajectories, governed by a universal gating function of systemic tau ($\tau_s$). The model yields three qualitatively distinct temporal regimes — monotonic forward, fractional/critical, and locally retrograde — without violating global causality or the fractal dimension of the underlying attractor. All foundational definitions and empirical validations of $\tau_s$ are available in prior works [1–3].