The passage of time pertains to the dynamic happening of anticipated future events merging into a present actuality and subsequently becoming the past. Philosophers and scientists alike often endorse the view that the passage of time is an illusion. Here we instead account for the phenomenology of time passage as a real psycho-biological phenomenon. We argue that the experience of time passage has a real and measurable basis as it arises from an internal generative model for anticipating upcoming events. The (...) experience of passage is not merely a representation by a passive recipient of sensory stimulation but is generated by predictive processes of the brain and proactive sensorimotor activity of the whole body. Although some philosophical approaches to time consider some psycho-biological evidence, the biological basis of the passage of time has not been examined in detail from a thorough scientific perspective. This paper proposes to remedy this omission. (shrink)

In the two feature articles for this volume, Gruber et al and Buonomano & Rovelli focus on what the former call the 'two-times problem', in short, the apparent lack of fit between time as described by physical science and our own temporal experience, where 'experience' involves things like memory, anticipation, and perception of change and motion. In this short note I'll make the case that the twotimes problem is less serious than it is often made out to be in the (...) specific case of features like 'passage ' and 'presentness' that are central to the 'A-theory' of time ---the theory that holds time to be composed of dynamic regions of 'past', 'present' and future', and for time to genuinely flow or pass.My contention is three-fold: (1) the two-times problem is better understood as a three-times problem: rather than a conflict between 'physical' and 'manifest' time, what we have in the case of time is differences between the time of physics, the time of experience, and the 'folk' concept of time. (2) Understanding the problem in this way helps deflate certain problems about the relationship of these three pictures; the time of experience and the time of physics are less obviously in a problematic conflict than often supposed; and the folk concept of time is what brings in problematic features of time hard to fit with either the time of physics of experience. (3) Understanding the time of experience as independent from the folk concept of time better fits the actual aims of the... (shrink)