Human time

Richard M. Gale

pp. 293-386

in: Richard M. Gale (ed), The philosophy of time, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1968

Abstract

In this section we shall explore the question: What aspects of time are a result of the existence of human beings who perceive and talk about time? We are concerned with finding out what features of our concept of time have only an anthropomorphic significance. This large question will be broken up into three smaller ones: (1) What distinction is there between the perceptual present and the real or physical present? (2) Is temporal becoming subjective? and (3) To what extent does the grammatical structure of our language determine our way of conceiving time?