Title: The Experienced Present, the Strict Present, and the Passage of Time

Abstract:

In this talk I will outline a view according to which the experienced present is best understood as the origin of the sort of temporal point of view that we occupy when we are conscious, and our experience of the passage of time is best understood as experience of apparent change in location of the origin of that temporal point of view. I shall discuss how this way of thinking of the experienced present bears on debates about the so-called ‘doctrine of the specious present’. This will include a discussion of some of the ways in which the phenomenology of our experience of the passage of time can help diagnose some sources of resistance to the idea that the experienced present is an interval. I shall be suggesting that while the experienced present has duration, there is nonetheless a sense in which we seem to experience the passage of time in a way that makes tempting the idea that there must be a strict present. So there is a respect in which the phenomenology of our temporal experience speaks in favour of the strict present, and also tells against it, which in turn makes tempting the claim that the experienced present is ‘specious’.