The Experience of Time
Contents
We see colors, hear sounds, and feel texture. Some aspects of the world are percieved through particular senses. Others, like shape, are perceived through multiple senses. But what sense do we use to perceive time?
It is not associated with one particular sense. In fact, it is odd to say that we see, hear, or touch time passing. Yet if all of these senses were unable to function for some while, we could still take notice of the passing of time.
Time perception raises a number of intriguing puzzles, including what it means to say we perceive time.
The very expression 'the perception of time' invites objection. Insofar as time is something different from events, we do not perceive time as such, but changes or events in time. But, arguably, we do not perceive events only, but also their temporal relations.
So, just as it is natural to say that we perceive spatial distances and other relations between objects, it seems natural to talk of perceiving one event following another, though even here there is a difficulty.
For what we perceive, we perceive as present—as going on right now. Can we perceive a relation between two events without also perceiving the events themselves?
If not, then it seems we perceive both events as present, in which case we must perceive them as simultaneous, and so not as successive after all.
There is then a paradox in the notion of perceiving an event as occurring after another, though one that perhaps admits of a straightforward solution.