We are mobile organisms, so this sequential process of perception is essential for navigation. Though it means our experience of time is as the point of the present, moving past to future. Which physics codifies as measures of duration.

The reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is the present, as the events come and go.

There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. It's called causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but we don't call them dimensions of space, because they are only foundational to our emotions and bodily functions, not the sequence of thought.

Energy is conserved, because it is the present. It creates time, as well as temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

As process, energy goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall.

Given consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts go future to past, it seems consciousness functions as an energy. Though it is the gut and heart processing the energy, while the head sorts the patterns. Hence the tendency to frame everything in terms of the patterns, rather than the processes generating them.

The point being that the act of determination can only occur as the present. In which consciousness functions as a form of energy.

That our thought process isn't in direct control of our immediate motor functions is because all the mental clutter would slow our reaction times, which has been necessary for survival. We are not flies.

The function of our imagination is to process all the information, so our future reactions are better informed.

Free will is also an oxymoron, as an action free of cause would be equally free of effect and the premise of will is to affect. We are a small part of nature's process of selection.