Abstract

Most philosophers believe that we have experiences as of temporally extended phenomena like change, motion, and succession. Almost all theories of time consciousness explain these temporal experiences by subscribing to the doctrine of the specious present, the idea that the contents of our experiences embrace temporally extended intervals of time and are presented as temporally structured. Against these theories, I argue that the doctrine is false and present a theory that does not require the notion of a specious present. Furthermore, I argue that the different aspects of temporal experiences arise from different mechanisms operating separately. If the theory is true, then temporal experiences do not tell us anything special about the nature of consciousness and its temporal properties per se.