The Elusive Appearance of Time

What is it about?

This is a contribution to the phenomenology and metaphysics of time. The paper addresses the source of the idea that time appears to us as tensed and transitory, i.e. in the form of events passing from the future into the present and away into the past. I argue that we do not really perceive time that way, but we think of it in that way, through a fairly elaborate process in which anticipation and memory is involved, as well as some theoretical ideas about time. I venture to analyse our experience in time, distinguishing between a ‘pure input perception’ in which there is no obvious temporal element involved, and a and ‘perceptual experience modulated by top–down processes’ where we clearly find a temporal element. However, the most salient temporal element is not of temporal passage, but of things enduring through changes.

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Why is it important?

It challenges the view that we directly perceive temporal passage, but rather that we infer the passage of time through a more complicated cognitive process.