I don't understand your objection. Can you really not reflect on your own experiences? Either you are suffering from massive brain damage, or you are just not thinking clearly about your inner life (it happens).

But the article seems silly. We know the "intrinsic nature" of one very specialized, hyper-complex entity which might be both unique and uniquely complex over the whole universe, so lets just generalize that to everything, including elementary particles, it's probably true.

It also presupposes that it makes sense to speak of an "intrinsic nature" of elementary particles or tire irons. This is a massive philosophical leap.

I view the human species as a bacterium whose population exploded exponentially after discovering a remarkable source of energy, a puddle of oil. This suddenly huge colony was for all intents and purpose made of the oil it gobbled down as quickly as possible.

This bacterium was "intelligent", and there was a general awareness that the puddle of oil it was gobbling was rapidly draining, and would soon be exhausted. This didn't matter though, for bacteria is bacteria, and the population continued gobbling uncontrollably, in a way that any individual bacterium was completely helpless to halt. If anything this "intelligence" made the problem worse, vast collective cleverness was put to the task of extracting and using this puddle as quickly as possible, and the colony was rapidly reorganized so that it was utterly dependent on its puddle to survive.

A certain complacency developed among many of the bacteria, and they told themselves "We'll think of something when the puddle runs out. We always have before." After all, the bacteria had done startlingly clever things since finding the puddle. What they didn't realize was that all their ingenuity was essentially finding new ways to use the puddle. Without it they couldn't really do that much. And that the puddle was their food, without it they had very little to eat.

Unsurprisingly, things went badly.

If beauty is inherent in nature, how do you account for individual taste?

You understand that symmetry is just a surrogate for genetic fitness. So what then is inherently special about symmetry? If there were a unsymmetrical being capable of appraising beauty, it would undoubtedly find it's own brand of asymmetry beautiful.

Are there supposed to be fractal dragon equations inherent in the shit-stained canvas?

so like if you enjoy the object 30% AND the object enjoys you back 40% - you have 70% beauty ? — Benjamin Dovano

Um, like, no. Not even close.

I'm saying that beauty is a relationship. It is difficult to "prove" such a thing. But beauty certainly does not reside entirely *in* the object. That doesn't make sense. What is the material substratum for beauty? And it doesn't reside entirely *in* the subject either. If a million people walk in the gallery and judge the first painting superior, it suggests something existent outside of personal judgement is in play.

Consider the case of two paintings hanging in a gallery. One is the Mona Lisa; the other is simply a canvas randomly smeared with feces and vomit. A man walks into the gallery, finds the first pleasing, and recoils in disgust from the second. Then a dog walks into the gallery, sniffs them both, and finds the second to hold vastly more aesthetic interest.

Beauty is *both* in the object and in the eye of the observer. That is because it is a relation, between the properties of an object and the nature and tastes of the observer.

Of course. I am asking why, if time really *is* every process, how is it possible that it's state can be communicable with a single number? For instance, seconds since the big bang? Or, from the discussion with apokrisis, 2.725K?

If time is every process in the universe, then how is a single number sufficient to tell us the current state of time?

A thermometer measures temperature and perhaps represents a conception of temperature, but in no way can you say a thermometer *is* temperature.

That seems over-broad though, like saying that "Time is the universe." What isn't a process, or a part of one?

I don't understand the conflation of the measurement of time and time itself. CBR might be a universal clock. But does it make sense, in response to the question "What is Time?", to point to a clock? Is there any justification in believing that time itself would stop if the universe were to stop expanding?

Then how can a range over all processes have a speed relative to specific processes?

When you said "time is just process.", I took that to mean that you regard time as somehow the abstract essence of processes. If not that, then what?

Thanks for the stimulating reply. I am still stuck though.

A realm of objects in eternal inertial motion is already as rock-bottom unchanging as you are going to get.

We can imagine space as a 3D euclidean space, divided into a mesh of invisible little points or cubes. Motion then has an absolute meaning, as moving with respect to this mesh.

But, this is a fiction. Motion is meaningful only relative to other frames of reference. That is fine, as objects are distributed throughout space, with their own separate velocities. But, if we were to claim that the *entire* universe is moving at some velocity, then, without this lattice of cubes to move against, this is exactly equivalent to saying that the universe is completely stationary.

But what if we treat time as a 1D line, analogous with space? Then, unlike with space, every object is at the same point, and moving through time at the same rate. Which, unless you imagine absolute points along this 1D line, analogous to the lattice of cubes in space, is also like saying that every object is motionless in time. Or, if you invoke relativity, then objects are only moving in time to the degree that relativistic effects are observed.

If we aren't moving through time, then how did I seem to start this at time t, and arrive at t + 20 seconds when I finished? Do we need the imaginary points, or some other unobservable, "unchanging backdrop thing"?

Or can we dispense with time altogether? Everything is just process, at rates relative to each other and nothing else, in an eternal present? I am ignorant as to whether physics actually requires an ontologically existent time, as opposed to a formal notion which makes the equations work.

How can Process Itself have a speed relative to actual processes?

You can measure it's average position, the rate of jumping, it's average instantaneous speed between jumps... I'm talking about speed in the sense of rate of change.

Another reason time can have no speed: change in time over time makes no sense.

That is not an example, that is the topic. I have no faith in your authority as a physicist. And you yourself said that Einstein was an eternalist.

I would say it is logically impossible for something to have no speed, and yet be dynamic.

Not having speed is not the logical equivalent to is not dynamic.

Explain then, or provide an example.

Time does not have a speed.
Speed is a measure of distance traveled in an amount of time.
It does not make any sense to say time has a speed.

Any dynamic process, a chemical reaction for example, has a speed. "Rate", if you prefer.
Time, as you point out, cannot have a speed/rate.
Therefore, time cannot be a dynamic process.

You introduce a problem, how can a thing which is static be converted into an abstraction which is dynamic?

Perhaps the entirety of time exists all at once, no one moment is more privileged than the next. What we perceive as a dynamic 3-dimensional system is really a static 4-dimensional one. The extra dimension gives "room" to project a 4-d static reality as a dynamic 3-d abstraction, just as the different chemical properties of different wavelengths of light allow for their projection as colors.

Reality is not colorful, but it is colorful as we perceive it, or in the abstract, as you put it. According to you, this should be impossible. Or is there a difference between these two cases?

Yes, time is a dimension. But saying that is not enough, time also keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future. We seem to be moving through this dimension, at a constant speed.

I think the confusion arises because morality is in it's nature both objective and subjective. As you say, mores are not whims of the moment; they persist in the face of an individual's belief or disavowal of them, in the same manner that a teapot does. Mores may be studied and classified, and books are written about them which can be said to be accurate, or not. And yet, moralities are subjective, in that it has no reality outside of the minds of the societies which formulate them.

The situation is analogous to the valuation placed on money, or gold. That money is valuable is a real, objective fact of the world; it makes the difference between someone wielding enormous power vs. a stack of worthless paper. And yet, there is nothing objective in the world which confers on money it's value, outside of the collective agreement of the individuals who use it.

Maybe a new term is called for. Morality is neither objective nor subjective, but rather collective.

Er ... no ... ever heard of relativity?

Yes... and if one is foolishly brazen enough to issue grand pronouncements on the nature of time, he should at least mention relativity!

So yes, time does have a speed, when measured against other frames of reference. And of course, these relative speeds are incredibly minute, at least as far as the everyday world is concerned.

But I am arguing that time has no absolute speed. We can easily accept that motion can have only a relative speed, this accords more or less well with our intuitive understanding of motion. But with time, it is much more difficult. It clashes with the intuitive notion that time is plodding forward at a constant rate.

So the problem remains: there are at most minute measurable differences, in most cases, in the relative speeds of time. But there is no such thing as an absolute speed of time. And without a speed, how can time, as we understand it, operate at all?