Time and the domain of consciousness

TLDR: It is argued that existing attempts to explain the conflict between appearance and reality as the result of a perceptual illusion fail, and that it is, in fact, the nature of memory, rather than perception, that explains why the authors are inclined to think of time as passing.

Abstract: It is often thought that there is little that seems more obvious from experience than that time objectively passes, and that time is, in this respect, quite unlike space. Yet nothing in the physical picture of the world seems to correspond to the idea of such an objective passage of time. In this paper, I discuss some attempts to explain this apparent conflict between appearance and reality. I argue that existing attempts to explain the conflict as the result of a perceptual illusion fail, and that it is, in fact, the nature of memory, rather than perception, that explains why we are inclined to think of time as passing. I also offer a diagnosis as to why philosophers have sometimes been tempted to think that an objective passage of time seems to figure directly in perceptual experience, even though it does not.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in this paper?

In this paper, I discuss some attempts to explain this apparent conflict between appearance and reality. 

Q2. What is the argument used to explain the alleged illusion of passage?

Paul’s argument invokes the psychological phenomenon of apparent motion,in which two brief stationary stimuli presented successively in two separate locations give rise to an illusory impression as of one persisting stimulus moving from the first location to the second.31 32 33 

Q3. What is the metaphysical reading of ‘static’?

They are static in the sense that each of them lasts for a brief period of time, overwhich it does not change its position or colour, even though the display as a whole generates the experience as of something continuously moving and changing over time. 

Q4. How can the authors become aware of the movement of an object?

In cases of this sort, the authors can become aware of the movement only through the involvement of memory: by remembering it having been at a different position from the one it occupies now. 

Q5. What is the argument that time is unreal?

And what he suggests in the second sentence is that their seeming awareness of passage is in fact the result of the fact that their own consciousness itself unfolds over time, at each moment of time only ever taking in how things are at that moment.