[MA]

The problem here is that you are addressing a philosophical viewpoint, and I the scientific. Specifically, yours seems to be that time neither flows not has a present through which the universe flows, but is an intellectual structure that we use to compare events and order them sequentially. This for me is exceedingly unsatisfactory, since it is an anthropomorphisation (something that I always oppose) that implies that without humans to observe the universe, time does not exist. This further implies that therefore time is not necessary for change, since change has clearly occured without a present observer. This leads to the requirement to have a way to distinguish time from change, and holds that time itself cannot be measured, this last point to me is like fingers on a chalk board.

no, i think that a much bigger force similar to time (as in what we have created in an attempt to understand it) actually is the true time that we are trying to understand, but never will. TIME FLOWS! its the time we have created ourselves that doesn't flow. this is what im trying to explain: we only imagine time as what we can calculate to an understandable effect, this is balls, time itself is incomprehensible to the Human mind because time flowing constantly is unconceivable to us;

In his Progressive Dichotomy Paradox (The Racecourse), Zeno argued that a runner will never reach a fixed goal because he first must have time to reach the halfway point to the goal, but after arriving there he will need more time to get to the halfway point of the remaining distance, namely the 3/4 point, then time to reach the halfway point of the remaining distance, namely the 7/8 point, and so forth. The runner, hoping to reach a distance of, say, one meter must reach the 1/2 meter point, the 3/4 meter point, the 7/8 meter point, and so forth; this is an infinity of actions. The runner must cover a distance of 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ... meters. Zeno himself did not explicitly say this sum is infinite, though later scholars did, but Zeno did complain that arriving at the goal would require the completion of an infinite number of actions which would be impossible. Worse yet, argued Zeno in his Regressive Dichotomy Paradox, the runner can't even take a first step. Any first step may be divided conceptually into a first half and a second half. Before taking a full step, the runner must have time to take a 1/2 step, but before that a 1/4 step, and so forth. The runner would have to complete an infinite number of actions in order to take a first step, and so will never get going.

we must question everything, otherwise we fear we may not understand a concept, thus is Human psychology. of course time would continue to flow if we ceased to exist, and if every living thing that is currently in existance did so also. dont worry, i'm not about to enter the immature theory of 'if a tree falls in a forest, and nothing is around to hear it, does it make a noise?'. time, the true force that is, has always been here and everywhere, and always will be. our own creation of physical time would of course cease, along with our psychological time.

In science, as I have said, time is a fundamental quantity. It is used to define many physical concepts that we know to be real (speed, acceleration etc) so must be real itself.

lets over simplify this: a child beleives in Saint Nicholas. when the child finds presents etc, it assumes someone put them there, seeing as this would be the most logical explanation and is what the child understands, 'the presents are there and exist, so the person who put them there must also exist', thus refers to the long dead Saint. the child continues to believe its theory is true until proven wrong, and even then will still partially beleive it until its proven wrong to the point of it being impossible for the original concept to still be 'true'.

Science is a lot like this, therefore it is possible that the time Humans use is wrong (which i beleive), and that the true force that is time itself has not yet been expanded upon or even perceived yet, making the assumption that 'time must be real, because it helps calculate other things that are real', void.

However, being a fundamental quantity, it cannot be defined by another fundamental quantity, since this would lead to a circular definition to the effect of "time is time" or "time exists because time exists" which is unacceptable and most unsatisfactory.

this is not the case, there are 3 sets of 'time', the smallest being the psychological time of each and every Human being, and most probably animal too. like the body clock. then there's 'time', the one Humans have created to try and grapple the much bigger force that is time, and is almost mathematical, therfore is more likely not to be true to time itself. then we have TIME. this IS time, but is simply unfathomable to Humans. therefore, it would never amount to the statement of 'time is time' etc, because in my veiw, there is only one true time, and it is not the one we know most commonly.

Science has and needs only an operational definition of time. Like temperature, which is defined in terms of operations with a gas thermometer, a most accurate and sophisticated instrument by which we can standardise it, and thus derive figures from the world around us for use in calculations. Is temperature, then, subjective, anthropocentric and ultimately undefinable?

no, your correct. Humans only have an operational estimated definition of time itself, not time itself. and temeperature doesn't even come into it, as its obvious it exists due to the sensation of heat, which also blurs vision and could be classed as 'seeing' heat. unless you want to go into the whole 'language philosophies' debate. i certainly don't.

...If time did not exist, there would be no way for the universe to change from one state to another, thus, it would be locked in one state. I would use "eternally" to describe this, but that is meaningless without there being time.

unless there is a greater force than time itself, absolutely nothing that exists at this very moment in time and in the future would know what would happen if time ceased to exist. you made a good point earlier about time being conceived as like 'pausing a video', because we would be the observer still subject to time. but just now you've stated that if time stopped or ceased to exist (whether their the same is unknown), we would be 'locked in one state'. no we wouldn't, because it is beyond anything, therefore you could say that pink elephants would fill the skies and Timmy Mallet would become an idol. in other words, we simply dont know.

Alien intelligence probably does not use Caesium-133 to define their scientific unit of time. This does not mean that it is impossible to convert one to the other as we would feet to meters. Their experience of time may be significantly different to ours, and their unit(s) may reflect this, but such would be down to their metabolic speed, which would affect their nervous/equivalent rate, but not the nature of time. Indeed, intelligence cannot exist without time because (and this is but one of many reasons) intelligence requires information to move from one place to another, which cannot occur where the universe cannot proceed from one state to the next.

touché, nothing can be said on this really until intelligent lifeforms make contact and tell us their situation. if their time is differnt to ours, if related at all, then it proves my theory that time is secondary and less specific to TIME. but on the other hand, if their time is exactly the same as our own, maybe even the same measurements and identicle to the last minute, then i've fucked up, and i'll eat my hat, with a side order of my own words. but if it turns out to be a parallel universe to our own (somehow), both of our theories are dismissed by default. parallel universe's dont count.