What we perceive directly Position1 #109898 The present is the reality we perceive directly, as distinct from events we remember or anticipate. Note that it is not claimed that the present is what we perceive NOW - it is what we see simpliciter, unmediated by memory. |
|
+Citations (1)
- CitationsAdd new citationList by: CiterankMapLink[1] The Moment of Experience (article)
Author: Carr, H.W. Cited by: Peter Baldwin 1:41 AM 28 May 2011 GMT URL: |
Excerpt / Summary "The moment of experience is the present moment, the moment in which what we are actually experiencing is contained, as distinguished from an abstract mathematical moment of time which has no content at all. Whatever we experience is now, and only what is now is immediate experience. But the word 'now', as used in ordinary discourse, is vague. Anyone unexpectedly asked to say what length of clock-time he associates with his moment of experience would probably hesitate and be in doubt whether to assign to it three or four minutes or something less than a second. The moment of experience is not vague, however, when its content is considered; it is then sharply distinguished from all other moments. It is the moment during which experience is sense experience. It is the only moment the experience of which may be analysed by the psychologist as it occurs, and the experience which occurs in it is the only experience which exists as immediate experience.
It is in the moment of experience, therefore, that the mind and the world are immediately related. This moment has duration, and yet all that occurs within it is present, nothing that occurs within it is past or future. It is altogether now, no part of it is then or when. The moment is also distinguished by the special character or quality of its content, sensation. This quality is unmistakable, but it is undefinable otherwise than by reference to the experience itself. Other moments contain remembered or imagined or inferred experience, in the present moment only is the experience actually felt." |