THEORIES OF TIME
Presentism
What is the view that only the present moment exists?
Experiential passage realism
What is the view that passage is real and we veridically experience temporal passage?
The time-lag problem
What is the argument that we cannot directly experience the objective present because physical signals and neural processing take time?
Presentism’s Explanatory Hypothesis
What is the hypothesis that we experience the present as privileged because only the present moment exists?
Phenomeno-temporal realism
What is the view that we directly perceive or represent temporally extended phenomena such as change, motion, and succession?
Growing block theory
What is the view that the past and present exist objectively, but the future does not yet exist?
Passage illusionism
What is the view that our experiences represent passage, but passage does not exist, making the experience an illusion?
Detector argument
What is Prosser's argument that no physical device, and so no brain, could reliably detect A-passage.
Growing Block Theory's Explanatory Hypothesis
What is the hypothesis that we experience the present as privileged because we exist on the leading edge of reality (the objective present)?
Extensionalism
What is the view that perceptual experiences are themselves temporally extended?
A-series
What is the ordering of events as possessing objective tense properties such as the past, present, or future?
Passage Deflationism
What is the view that our experiences do not actually represent temporal passage but we may falsely believe that they do because of some cognitive errors or linguistic habits?
The intelligibility problem
What is the objection that illusionism is incoherent because to call an experience illusory presupposes we know what a veridical experience would be like, but if passage does not exist, no such contrast can be drawn?
Moving Spotlight Theory's Explanatory Hypothesis
What is the hypothesis that we experience the present as privileged because the present moment is metaphysically distinguished by being lit up by a spotlight?
Retentionalism
What is the view that each moment of experience is itself instantaneous but has a tripartite structure of primal impression, retention, and protention allowing a momentary experience to represent temporal extension?
B-Series
What is the static ordering of events as earlier than, simultaneous with, or later than one another?
Non-experiential passage realism
What is the view that robust passage is real but is not itself the content of our experiences?
Prosser’s indistinguishability argument (against the specious present)
What is the argument which states that once we discard the idea of a Cartesian Theatre then the cinematic theory, retentionalism, and extensionalism become behaviourally, phenomenologically, and experimentally indistinguishable?
The Common Now (Callender's explanation of the privileged present)
What is the idea that because we all occupy roughly the same region of spacetime, we all perceive roughly the same parts of the world as a common shared 'present’ moment?
Specious Present
What is the doctrine that there is a brief experiential window within which events are experienced as occurring presently and in succession, even though mathematically the present is an instant?