The well-known phenomenological argument draws metaphysical conclusions about time, specifically about change through time and the resulting passage or flow of time, from our temporal experience. The argument begins with the phenomenological premise that there is a class of properties which underlies our experience of time and change through time, and its conclusion is that these properties are not merely experienced but exemplified. I argue that the phenomenological argument is best served by the adoption of a representational theory of perception. (...) I then present a representational theory of temporal experience. (shrink)

Concerning the versions of the Tenseless Theory of Time, the Old Btheory has two: the Date-analysis version and the Token-reflexive version, while the New B-theory has three: the Date-analysis, the Token-reflexive and the Sentence-type versions. Each of these five versions of the B-theory has received serious attacks from the A-theorists, some of whom even claim that the tenseless theory “though still widely held, is a theory in retreat” (Craig 1996), and that “if Quentin Smith (1993) delivered the mortal blow to (...) the New B-Theory of Language then Laurie Paul (1997) has written its obituary” (Craig 1999). In this paper, by making more precise some key notions involved in the formulation of a tenseless theory – in particular, two notions of truth conditions, two notions of meaning and two notions of translation are distinguished – I have come up with a single B-thesis for the B-theory. When charitably interpreted, the two versions of the old theory and the three versions of the new theory can all be regarded as special ways of presenting the same B-thesis, and the various A-attacks raised against these versions can then be resolved in a systematic way. (shrink)

In this essay I respond to Quentin Smith's chargethat `the date-analysis version ofthe tenseless theory of time cannot give adequateaccounts of the truth conditions ofthe statements made by tensed sentence-tokens'(Smith 1999, 236). His argument isbased on an analysis of certain counterfactualsituations that is at odds with thedate-analysis account of language and hence succeedsonly in begging the questionagainst that theory. To anticipate: his argumentfails if one allows that temporalindexicals such as `now' rigidly designate theirtime of utterance, something thedate-analyst can happily admit (...) whether she adheresto an absolute or relationalmetaphysics of time. (shrink)