I would agree with Zak. Teh evidence suggests that inanimate objects are subjected to a time process.
In considering these matters I think it helps to distinguish between the time process and the experience of the time process.
I woudl agree that only conscious beings can experience the time process.
But our experience of time is rather ambiguous. We can see clearly that it is an objective process: "Time and tide wait for no man." i.e. time will pass whatever we try to do. Yet we know that time is experienced subjectively: "A watched pot never boils." i.e. if we are bored, time can seem to pass extremely slowly; if we are excited it can pass quickly (but if we are in danger it can also appear to pass slowly - as though each tiny element action is receiving an extended time "slot").
Ultimately I believe time is "merely" an expression of will i.e. the will of the creator to fashion this cosmos. It is something necessary for teh causal world to exist. IN order for causality to exist I think time needs some fundamental unity (many scientists believe there is a common extremely small "unit" of time - a beat which is the rythmn of the universe, allowing everything to interact).
Conscious beings then experience the world of causality - through the phenomena of their senses and their own thoughts and feelings.
"Inanimate objects look aged. But they need to be led through their steps in time. By whom ? By you.
Looks to me to be a very still world."
This isn't really an argument. It's a chain of assertions.
You say inanimate objects need to be led through their steps in time. Where is your evidence to back this assertion?
Are you saying that there is more than one version of inanimate objects? If NOT presumably you would accept that different individuals existing in the same cosmos might lead the same object in different directions - or age them at different rates. How can such contradictions co-exist in the one same object?
If you are saying that there are multiple versions of the same object, then how many? Presumably there are 4 billion plus versions of the moon since we all see the moon don't we? But what about the stars? Are there 4 billion versions of them. Some stars I see only very faintly. I certainly have no idea what or where they are. How do I lead them through the aging process?
I am sure as soon as you start to think about this you will see that the multiple versions idea is absurd (when does a new version begin - at conception, at a foetal stage, at birth, after birth???)
So you are going to have to stick with the idea that our perceptions are sharing the same object. But then you have to explain how the same object appears unaffected by these individual perceptions. The faintly perceived star seems unconcerned by our private perceptions of it. When a child is very young they may think the stars are made new each
night. Does that mean that is true?
If the world is still, it seems to me it must be still at a much deeper level than the level of perception and of ageing processes.
Of course you might be trying to argue the Bishop Berkely position, which is actually quite a subtle one. But the difference I think is that Berkeley would say the object exists in the mind of God and it is God that determines the ageing process. That is coherent; it is the equivalent of saying the object has an objective existence. It is not coherent to say an object has no objective existence.
In my own personal opinion, the ability to live goes hand in hand with the ability to "feel" the passing of time. Trying to comprehend what death means has lead me to thinking what existing would be like in the absence of time.
Whether or not inanimate objects feel the passing of time or not would lead to an argument of what it means to be alive.
...that time appears to distort depending on you level of personal boredom?
i suggest that your heart-rate increases under stress. i suggest that you heart-rate decreases when you are relaxed. i have found that i view times of high heart rate as passing 'slowly' and times of slow heart rate as 'fast'.
time flies when you're having fun.
a watched kettle never boils.
that sort of thing.
can you have a measure without a scale?
given these points, what do you deduce re: relative time perception?
