Do We Actually Experience the Flow of Time?

Do We Actually Experience the Flow of Time?


by Bernardo Kastrup

Let’s make an analogy with space. Suppose that you suddenly find yourself sitting on the side of a long, straight desert road. Looking ahead, you see mountains in the distance. Looking behind, you see a dry valley. The mountains and the valley provide references that allow you to locate yourself in space. But the mountains, the valley, your sitting on the roadside, all exist simultaneously in the present snapshot of your conscious life.

An entirely analogous situation occurs in time: right now, you find yourself reading this essay. As you read it, you can remember having done something else—say, having brushed your teeth—earlier today. You can also imagine that you will do something else later—say, lie down in bed. Brushing your teeth and lying down in bed are respectively behind and ahead of you on the road of time—your “timescape”—just as the valley and the mountains were on the road of space. They provide references that allow you to locate yourself in time. But again, the experiences of remembering the past and imagining the future, as well as that of reading this essay right now, all exist simultaneously in the present snapshot of your conscious life.

The problem is that we then construe from this that there is an experiential flow of time. Such a conclusion is as unjustifiable as to construe, purely from seeing the mountains ahead and the valley behind while you sit by the roadside, that you are moving on the road. You aren’t; you are simply taking account of your relative position on it. You have no more experiential reason to believe that time flows than that space flows while you sit quietly by the roadside.