for a sound naturalist wishing to avoid drowning in the useless vortices of idealism, the former (the physical world) comes first, while the latter (consciousness)—independently of how well we understand it—is determined by the first. It is an entirely reasonable objection, just so long as physics reassures us that the external flow of time is real, universal, and in keeping with our intuitions. But if physics shows us instead that such time is not an elementary part of reality, can we continue to overlook Augustine’s observation and treat it as irrelevant to the true nature of time?
