I've been struggling to try to support the ideas of deduction and induction, which seem just so fundamental that they should be self-evident, but then Hume fucks up induction for us and we have to figure it all out again.

I think time can be constructed as the if-then relationship. A vector, if you will. An outcome is reliant on its source. Time is causality playing out. Of course it gets a little more complicated when it comes to quantum mechanics, where things happen for no apparent reason. Perhaps these are the original causes? Haven't figured that out yet. But what I do know is that deduction is, at its simplest, if-then relationships. If A is true then B is true. A is not true (quantum stuff) then B is not true (entanglement and jazz). Could it be true then that deduction and time are rooted in the same fundamental relationship?

I've been thinking of deduction as the sort of metaphorical vector space of the universe. How do if-thens play out? What are the rules? Deduction is the summation of the rules. Time might be how one is carried around the vector space. We all know the famous phrase “I think therefore I am”, which is supposedly the only conclusion that can be made about anything. But the “therefore” indicates a relationship: an if-then relationship. It presupposes deduction. But if thinking is known, which knowing is thinking so it must be known, time is also known, because thinking is by definition an action, a fundamental part of which is time.

It could probably be stated a bit more eloquently, but perhaps it ought to be “I think therefore therefores”, with “therefores” being the dual system of deduction and time, which are in reality one in the same: if-then. Deduction is the description of the if-then, time is the enactment. They are the same process. Thinking is the evidence for deduction, and as such, allows the “I am” to be realized.