The notion that the speed of a massive body is somehow absolute seems to be a category error
Nah. Speed is relative. But that is maybe not what you ment...
That speed should be relative is fine with me. Re-reading my English it's clear that this is what my sentence sugested to begin with.
That being said, we don't really know what is speed anyway!
the way competent speakers use the word "speed", in the case of massive bodies, as the distance traveled divided by the time of travel.
Who are these "competent speakers"?
I knew you had no idea who they are!
Very simple. Tune to 198LW (not midday just now they are working on their broadcasting station or something! Try the evening.)
That's British English of course. It turns out competent speakers of English call themselves "the English".
Seems you speak of something else than speed at a specific time moment. Som sort of "mean speed over land" or something line that.
Why, I speak competent speaker's English! Look up English dictionaries. I'm talking about that sort of definitions. Sure, I mean mean speed. It's Hussain Bolt's kind of speed. Who would have a mind to disagree?
But how is distance measured if not relatively to other massive objects? Science says we don't measure the distance between two points of space but between objects.
Eh, again. Who says this?
Me.
But in competent speech, distance is the extent of space between two objects... or two places. So, the lexical meaning is clear and leaves room enough for the idea of absolute speed, which physicists say doesn't apply to the speed of massive objects.
What does these "physicist" really say? Cause what you say doesnt make sense.
It seems to make sense... Which part you don't like?
You can always talk about speed as the rate of change relative time of anything, really.
Sure but time itself is relative, right?
That real objects cannot have higher speed than c is a totally different matter.
I think your problem stems from the way we measure distance: in time units of light flight.
It's kinda out of the blue here.
Never mind.
EB