Temporal transparency and the flow of time

Abstract

AbstractTemporal transparency is the thesis that our awareness of the temporal properties of what we perceive is more fundamental than our awareness of the temporal properties of our own experiences. In this chapter, a radical form of transparency for duration and succession is defended, while it is argued that the experience of the flow of time entails a failure of transparency, since it requires that we attend to the properties of our own experiences somehow directly. It is then argued that the temporal modifier theory of the felling of time passing—roughly, the thesis that we are aware of an internal flow in virtue of being presented in a ‘flowy’ manner with successions of events—has certain explanatory advantages over rival views in explaining how the flow of time that we experience in the external succession of events, and that which we experience within us can be unified.