Hi Jim,
I am in agreement with your statement that "As the Earth rotates we see the constant effects of the rotational motion in seamless concert with our clocks. This constant evidence of change validates our clocks and our sense of time passing.
As a result, we are in error, in assuming that time exists as some kind of force or thing. It is only motion that exists, not time."
In the last essay contest I discussed presentism which supports what you have stated. I quote from my essy below:
I want to further discuss determinism from the point of view that
only present things exist. This philosophy is called presentism. What we mean by present is "the Now". My definition of duration favours presentism of the form "Only present things exist and what is present changes". That is to say, by definition, only dynamical energy in the "Now" (present) can be considered to exist.
Past and future are presently only constructs of biological systems, from viruses to humans, and only exist as symbolic maps (image realities) of a variety of types, in the "Now".
Examples of the past could be the digital arrangement of ones and zeros that are found in a photograph stored on a USB memory stick, or a memory or thought encoded in the biochemistry of my brain, or the arrangement of DNA stored in a plant seed, to the layers of a sedimentary rock being considered by a geologist.
Take for example my love for my dead father. My love is an emotion in the now, based on chemical reactions in my brain, regarding memories of my father which are also stored in my brain, possibly in conjunction with a photo of my father (or some other facsimile such as a video or a sculpture) that elicits some further emotion in my brain. Ultimately all of this can be reduced to causal relations between energy forms in my brain in the Now.
Included in our maps are all the creations of skuld6 organisms such as the realm of mathematics or anything else that is contained in living memory, or preserved in any other form of memory such as a book. Once the 'memory' is lost it no longer exists in the now. It may be re-invented in the future or may remain lost for all eternity (never returning to the now).
Ultimately my form of presentism is that only energy in space exists. "Relative Presentism"
is my claim that energy in one defined space exists relative to energy in another defined
space with dynamical force laws that describe the relative motion of both the energy forms.
In keeping with my practice of using Old Norse naming, I suggest that relative presentism be known as Relative Verdandism7 (RV). As previously mentioned SR eliminates absolute simultaneity so it eliminates a universal present across all space, thus I believe forcing one to a position of accepting relative presentism. General Relativity (GR), as defined by
Einstein, is compatible with relative presentism, as GR considers how both energy and momentum (mass times velocity) warp space-time. RV can be seen as a universe of three dimensional space modulated by the movement (change) of the energy contained within.
Note that General Relativity and Relative Verdandism are theories that do not require 'observers', unlike Special Relativity which requires observers with clocks and rulers. Crosstemporal relations do not pose an issue as I have allowed the physical (electric, magnetic and gravitational) force laws of to act between disparate energy forms in space so that causal relations still hold.
Cheers
Lockie