> I often think that the flow of time is really just an artifact
All human concepts are artifacts. "Flow" is a concept that presupposes the concept of "time", i.e. it is self-referential as you say. "Movement" presupposes "time". Citation marks are used here to highlight the conceptual nature of these terms - to say that time is something other than our concepts is true since the phenomenon is different than the concept, but once you conceptualize those differences you are again creating artifacts.
This process flows a common pattern, but usually just means one has found a new way of looking at a phenomenon which is different than conventional concepts, usually involving the removal of some dimension from view and viewing it as a two-dimensional or three-dimensional object, or similar (even 11-dimensional). It can be a truer view, if it explains something causally that previously was just guessed or misunderstood, but usually it just an expression of some hoping-for-a-goldmine theoretical framework that is going nowhere.
Some phenomena are especially prone to these kinds of gymnastics - economics comes to mind, attempts at creating historical models another. They take extreme complex and volatile phenomena and extract (reduce it to) a few dimensions, which may explain things with in a very limited frame of reference, not in its totality. It is certainly true of that which we denote as "time", a phenomenon that we have no problem communication about (we know what "time" is) but which at the core as a phenomenon is a mystery to us.
The insight that terms differ from, and can never fully explain phenomena in and of themselves, is an insight that comes with philosophy. At least since Kant. Science tends to downplay this, to the detriment of our understanding of the world.
I don't think it's necessary to introduce human perception to illustrate the directionality of time.
Mathematically, there are innumerable physical laws where time is a variable, where the current state of something is dependent upon the previous state - and specifically _independent_ of the future state.
...or maybe that too is just an illusion. Perhaps we misinterpret those equations (eg simple Dynamics in Physics I).
...but regardless, discussing human perception is an unnecessary complication in the discussion.
All human concepts are artifacts. "Flow" is a concept that presupposes the concept of "time", i.e. it is self-referential as you say. "Movement" presupposes "time". Citation marks are used here to highlight the conceptual nature of these terms - to say that time is something other than our concepts is true since the phenomenon is different than the concept, but once you conceptualize those differences you are again creating artifacts.
This process flows a common pattern, but usually just means one has found a new way of looking at a phenomenon which is different than conventional concepts, usually involving the removal of some dimension from view and viewing it as a two-dimensional or three-dimensional object, or similar (even 11-dimensional). It can be a truer view, if it explains something causally that previously was just guessed or misunderstood, but usually it just an expression of some hoping-for-a-goldmine theoretical framework that is going nowhere.
Some phenomena are especially prone to these kinds of gymnastics - economics comes to mind, attempts at creating historical models another. They take extreme complex and volatile phenomena and extract (reduce it to) a few dimensions, which may explain things with in a very limited frame of reference, not in its totality. It is certainly true of that which we denote as "time", a phenomenon that we have no problem communication about (we know what "time" is) but which at the core as a phenomenon is a mystery to us.
The insight that terms differ from, and can never fully explain phenomena in and of themselves, is an insight that comes with philosophy. At least since Kant. Science tends to downplay this, to the detriment of our understanding of the world.