Time is often described as an independent medium within which events take place. But this description conflates several different things: change, the order of events, measurable duration, and the subject’s experience of time.
Change Is Not Yet Time
Change is the transition of a particular system from one state to another. A material ages, a body moves, temperature changes, a thought arises and disappears. In each case, there is a difference between states.
But the presence of change does not yet imply the existence of a single duration that is the same for everyone. To speak of duration, changes must be compared: with another process, with a recurring cycle, or with a previously accepted unit of measurement.
Change provides the content of a process; measurement connects processes through a relationship of duration.
Time as a Relationship Between Processes
If a clock has completed a certain number of cycles between two events, we call that interval a minute, an hour, or a year. In this sense, time is defined not by a separate thing but by a relationship between events and a selected measuring process.
One process may be fast relative to another and slow relative to a third. Therefore, the question “how long?” always presupposes a measure and a scale.
A physical description can dispense with an experiencing observer: a clock can keep running in an empty room. However, such a description records stable relationships between processes, not necessarily time as experienced or appropriated duration.
The Mannequin and External Duration
A mannequin may remain in the same place for ten years. During that time, its material, the room, and the surrounding world will change. An external observer will measure those changes as a ten-year interval.
But the mannequin has no position of its own from which it could say: “I have lived for ten years.” It has no anticipation, memory, choice, or loss of alternatives. It is therefore important to distinguish:
- ten years as a measured external interval;
- the changes that occurred to the mannequin;
- the subject’s own duration;
- time as a resource for action.
The mannequin does not refute the physical description of time. It shows that external duration is not identical to experienced time.
Objectivity as a Separate Question
The fact that there is no experienced time without a subject does not automatically imply that no time whatsoever exists without a subject. Different positions can be defended:
- time exists as a fundamental structure of reality;
- time is a relationship between changing processes;
- time is a parameter of physical description;
- time as experienced duration arises only in relation to a subject.
The formulation that most carefully preserves the distinction between levels is:
Without a subject, changes, causal order, and relationships between processes may remain; but time as experience, appropriated duration, and a resource of the subject does not arise without the subject.
Conclusion
Time should not be treated as a single homogeneous concept. Change, the relationship between processes, measurable duration, and subjective time must be distinguished. Only then can one separately ask what exactly makes duration a resource and how the subject produces its value.
