Causal Priority Theory — Foundations, Episode 0 Constructing Time from Causal Updates: A Minimal Framework for Time as a Derived Quantity

This paper proposes a minimal framework in which time is defined not as a fundamental physical variable, but as a derived quantity constructed from the accumulation of causally ordered state updates. Specifically, it defines irreversible state transitions as events and constructs derived time T(Γ) as the cumulative sum of causal updates ΔC.