Daryl,
I apologize for late answering you questions of 22. Aug. 23:56 in Edwin Klingman's thread.
Do not blame me for sloppiness in language. With "for observers" I meant as observers may observe it. I did not write "the" observer but observers. Different observers at the same location may observe it differently if they are moving with different velocities relative to the observed at distance object. There is perhaps no decisive difference between "according to" and "as determined by" while I tend to be reluctant using the biased construct "in the proper coordinate system of".
Writing "time-coordinate of one system" you are assuming that there is no universal time. You are a good fellow of Lorentz/Einstein. I see my Fig. 5 an understandable to everybody explanation why Potier, Lorentz, Michelson and Morley were wrong when they expected a non-null result. This is utterly important in so far it puts Einstein's special theory of relativity in question too. What I cautiously called your weak parts are therefore not YOUR mistakes.
I consider you quite right: "The past, present, and future don't all "exist" in the same sense". Didn't you read my firs appendix? While the notions past and future exclude each other, the present time belongs to quite a different, deliberately undecided view. To me someone who writes past, present, and future, as did Einstein, does not show that he seriously deals with the role of past and future in physics.
By the way, the correct spelling in German is not ideel but ideell.
You wrote:
(Einstein's) "relativity adds another layer, complicating this picture further, because it comes to mean that together with the dual meaning of the copular verb "is" in relation to the dimension of time, there must also be a dual meaning of the word "time" if the theory should be reconciled with a Heraclitean flowing present. Thus, the common-sense impression of "time" that we have when we consider present "existence" in three-dimensional space---which is what we refer to when we say two events occur "simultaneously"---must be separated from the sense of "time" that's described by any space-time coordinate system."
I agree with the caveat that only the common sense notion - not impression - of time is necessary as to be concluded from my Fig. 5.
You added: "This is precisely because any claim that two events occur at the same "time" in the latter sense cannot be universal, since any change of coordinates describes one event as preceding the other; i.e., "synchronicity" is relative." My Fig. 5 implies what other experiments also have shown: We may admit a universal frame of reference and also a universal time: absolute synchronicity.
If you understood this then you may reconsider your further reasoning yourself.
Sorry for my disillusioning words.
Eckard
