It's about time again

Admittedly, however, this could be a somewhat willfully obtuse reading of Barbour's timeless physics, and not consistent with his intended meaning. Perhaps a fairer appraisal would conclude that Platonia IS the real universe, and all of the experiences and perceptual events that we take to be "real" (and are thus rendered temporally) are actually composed of phenomenological "granules"; spatio-temporal aggregates of timeless physical states, like individual volumes in a series, centered around some locus of nervous activity. But it could only be the perceived continuity of the headspace resulting from particular configurations of matter undergirding any notion of a relation, analogous to the idea of a series, between the multitude of unique yet atemporal configurational possibilities. At least that seems to me to be a necessary consequence of this variety of timeless physics.  

Given how (relatively) little is definitively understood about the role and nature of consciousness, there is no obvious reason to immediately reject such a notion, but there is neither an obvious reason to favor it other than its utility in supporting the hypothesis. 

Several important questions remain: whether we have access to the tools required to adequately understand the nature of matter, which, as the presumed basis of the phenomenon in question, must be thought of as essentially valueless, both existing and acting independently of our peculiar perspective. But it is precisely that "peculiar" perspective, if we accept that physics is fundamentally an empirical pursit, that has itself formed the basis of our understanding and description of what we take to be the material universe. Moreover, we lack an adequate description of the phenomenon of consciousness as a material process, leaving us at a loss to explain why or how this type of scenario might even emerge - and for what reason the material universe would go to such great lengths to conceal, deceive or otherwise baffle its (apparently) sole consciously aware inhabitants as to the reality of their true condition.     

On the level of theory these questions have tended to hinge in no small way on what is assumed to be real, and how that notion of reality is to be defined. In what sense can anyone confidently declare they have thoroughly resolved this "timeless" paradox? On the one hand, we take for granted the reality of everyday occurances, what we might call "events", playing out in their various expected and often unexpected ways in the theater of the world. But we also know that beneath all of this there is a deeper reality, that of the material substrate of which the universe actually consists, as described by physics. But despite this being the reality that is typically taken to be more fundamental in an important way, nobody actually lives in such a reality. In fact, the only reality you or I or anyone else can reasonably claim to know is the world of experience, which consists not only of perceptible objects and events but an entire range of sensorial and phenomenological flora, the full reality of which a mere description of the material universe at any point will not suffice to render.

To be fair, this is a paradox afflicting practically the whole of physical theory, not just that of Julian Barbour, so it should be noted that in this respect his fares no better or worse than other physical theories, including those that may also accept the reality of time.