general relativity - Is it time or duration?

Taking this post: "Is there a proof of existence of time?", as a starting point. Therein was mentioned that there is confusion between:

"time" and "flow of time".

There was a comment (of mine) that the confusion is not between time and flow of time (which are equivalent), but between time and duration of which one is a dimension (i.e duration).

Given the importance of the problem of time in General Relativity and Quantum Gravity.

Having made this disctinction is an important step, since duration can easily be considered as a dimension (with the proper $c$ factor) along with other space dimensions, than actual time (or flow of time).

Can we say that time parameter/dimension in SR/GR actually represents not event time but duration (i.e time-interval)?

By the way this would elucidate the wick-rotation method, as transforming from "duration" to "frequency" representation.

(Not to mention that one can have as many duration dimensions in a manifold as one wants with no conceptual or definition problems like when one attempts that with extra time dimensions, per some theoretical proposals)

Answer

Duration is certainly a more physical concept than time.

Duration is something you may measure between timelike separated events while time is always something you compute by adding up duration measurements + an arbitrary constant to fix the origin.

Duration is experimental and relational while time (e.g. GPS time) is an abstract a posteriori construction.

For these reasons I think your proposal is correct.

It could happen that advanced theories get rid of most of Time, but at some point these advanced theories will need to have some room for durations (even if only in a limit).

Beyond this quantitative component of Time, or rather more fundamentally, there is also the more qualitative notion of ordering of timelike separated events, linked to causality. The ordering does not require a continuous flow, e.g. discontinuous "pre-time" can work for this purpose. In particular if durations are discrete in a way or another. This would be quite a different concept for time.

@BrandonEnRight : in such a domain as modern gravitation theory, it is normal to have discussions on fundamental concepts because they need to be questioned and understood to see better what is useful in the postulates of the theory under construction. I understand you want to contain the pseudo-scientific spontaneous trends of discussion, but this not the case here. And about reverting to philosophy SE, I would say yes if we were into metaphysics (discussion on non-experimentable concepts). But here we are still in physics as all the assertions lend themselves to experimental tests, at least in principle