Time as a Manifestation of Causal Chains

Ok this is related to our current discussion of time in davids idea i felt it merits its own.

Here is something that i have been chewing over.

herbie said that we cant be certain that time exists, and consequently cant be certain that causal chains exist.

Now it seems that what we experience, or rather label as time is nothing more then our perception of motion of matter. Imagine an hourglass, each grain changes position via a multitude of causes the chief of these being gravity. Now as we observer grains consecutively changing position it gives the appearance of a linear progression. It seems for some reason we are only able to perceive motion of matter in a linear faction.

But what if we look at time as being simply a manifestation of the causal chains, not a property in itself. Everything from what we perceive as time, to the way we measure it is just motion of perceived matter. A clock simply mimics the natural motion in a predictable pattern, and for us this pattern is most easily perceived as linear. Cause and effect could be viewed as synonyms for past and present, but again that is because we experience material motion in a linear fashion, perhaps in a different context there is nothing linear about cause and effect.

In fact maby this is what behind the seeming randomness on the scale of quantum mechanics. Perhaps the causal chains are just as true on that scale but the motion of the matter can not so easily fit our linear perspective so the events appear eradic and random simply because we lack the capacity to view events on this scale in a nonlinear manner.

I eagerly await your comment, particularly you herbie.