In theory, upping the resolution will also remove the need for spatial anti-aliasing, though it's not efficient. Distributing rays in time feels a bit different because what you're really trying to do is integrate over an interval of time. So I'm not sure I agree that they are the same thing.
Remember that to remove aliasing (spatial and temporal), you want no frequencies above the nyquist rate.
Typically, anti-aliasing uses an average of multiple samples across the width of the pixel (MSAA), or across the timespan of the frame to eliminate this.
That is in fact a rectangular function in the time/spatial domain. Which is wrong. A rectangular function reduces rather than eliminates the frequency components above the nyquist rate, and also attenuates frequencies near but below the nyquist rate (leading to blur).
In fact, you want a rectangular frequency domain function, which in the spatial/time domain is a sinc function.
This isn't done in real cameras because it is technically too hard, but in 3D rendering, it should be done, and will produce smoother animations.
I have never seen anyone do this, but results should be theoretically better. I’d also like to see a freeze frame of a sinc time domain sampled motion blur - it would probably look very weird, even though it looks good at the playback rate.
They aren't different, just different dimensions. If you increase the frame rate you would need less temporal anti-aliasing. You can actually see noise artifacts in the motion blur of the first ice age movie (and many other places to be fair, like the slices in the transitions on Big Bang Theory).
In theory, upping the resolution will also remove the need for spatial anti-aliasing, though it's not efficient. Distributing rays in time feels a bit different because what you're really trying to do is integrate over an interval of time. So I'm not sure I agree that they are the same thing.