Abstract

Partly following suggestions from Dewey, I show how we may acquire the concepts of Now and time without our being able to sense time. I rationally reconstruct these concepts by ‘deriving’ them from the concepts of ‘required for’ and ‘sensed’ (taken tenselessly). Among other reasons, because activity is explicitly required for succeeding or failing, and because these ubiquitous conditions are sensed, our concept of time is rooted squarely in our experience of these conditions.