The mental itself is all too often suggested as firmly attached to the physical, ignoring the fact that thought is completely untouchable. This is the sacrosanct standpoint of dualism. Such a physical reality implies for time a material envolvement. While this does not ask that time itself be material it does suggest that materials be continuous in a dynamic universe. Thus the problem of change.
Physical time is more than an invention which gives name to changes of material.
As we do not deny change we do not deny the reality of time. Time is as unpalpable as is thought, per se, but both are real enough. Thought is observable, second handed, in the fact of the recognition of entities independent of the entities. But in thought the factor of time is irrelevent. Past and present can coexist.