Lizzie L

And the fact that we are the authors of the very models we are debating. Without people there are no models, right?

Sure. I just meant that you can hold the view that time only makes sense relative to change without indulging in quasi-religious woo about it. In any case "doesn't exist" is a bit of a non-starter IMO. We model the world with our perceptual apparatus, and with more sophisticated mathematical models, and if the models make good predictions, we keep them. Are the models "real"? Dunno. But if they are part of a good predictive system then they are as good as anything else we have. The fact that we can make predictive models suggests there is something consistently "there" that we can call "real", but all we have access to is models. *gets off hobby horse*

I didn't mean to imply it wasn't real. I just mean that it only makes sense conceptually in regard to change, including changing place (i.e. moving) but also changing state. It makes sense if you can talk about things happening over time. But I guess it's a philosophical point one rather than a physics one. The first clause seems OK, but the second and third don't seem to me to follow from the first.

Well I guess my point is that time is only meaningful relative to change. So I sort of agree with the OP (Substituting "change" for "movement")

Well,that was sort of the point behind my question. The OP suggested that "time is movement". It's not a big step to say that "time is change". So while you could say, as you do, that time flows for an atom, you support that case by showing that it eventually changes. But you could invert that, couldn't you, that and say that time is change? And of course the interesting thing, for an single atom, is that its stable state is non-aging - you can't say, well, it's had a long time doing nothing, it's probably going to do something soon.

But would it still pass for an unchanging object?

The biggest problem it seems to me with the theory, not that it isn't fascinating, is that it's trying to solve a problem that may not even be a problem. From the paper: (my bold) The entire theory assumes that the bolded is true. I think it is false. And if it's false, then what they have is an interesting possible layer of complexity in our models of how oscillations arise and are modulate din the brain, but no particular breakthrough with regard to consciousness specifically. This is also a bit of a giveaway IMO: Firstly, why should there be a "threshold"? That seems to assume that consciousness is an all-or-nothing state rather than minimally to maximally present. And lots of "specific neuronal activities" have been "put forth" to account for conscious experience. Edelman and Tononi, for a start. And why should we think there is such a thing as "discrete conscious moments"? The authors just assume there are. I don't think that assumption is justified.

heh.

Hi Schneibster! I think you mean "pedagogic" not "pedantic", right? (Being a pedant and all, I thought I'd make that clear....)