Philosophical presentism

[2] Augustine of Hippo proposed that the present is analogous to a knife edge placed exactly between the perceived past and the imaginary future and does not include the concept of time.

Contrary to Saint Augustine, some philosophers propose that conscious experience is extended in time.

For instance, William James said that time is "the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible".

Vincent Conitzer has made a similar argument connecting A-theory with the vertiginous question.

[8] Some philosophers view time as a dimension equal to spatial dimensions, that future events are "already there" in the same sense different places exist, and that there is no objective flow of time; however, this view is disputed.

[9] Since relativity has been confirmed by experiment, and it posits that time is a coordinate or "dimension" between two points in spacetime, it gave rise to a philosophical viewpoint known as four dimensionalism.

In particular, presentism is said to be in conflict with truth-maker theory according to this critique,[14] one theory which looks to capture the dependence of truth upon being with the idea that truths (e.g., true propositions) are true in virtue of the existence of some entity or entities ('truth-makers').

[15] The conflict arises because most presentists accept that there are evidence-transcendent and objective truths about the past (and some accept that there are truths about the future, pace concerns about fatalism), but presentists deny the existence of the past and the future.

The bar and ring paradox is an example of the relativity of simultaneity . Both ends of the bar pass through the ring simultaneously in the rest frame of the ring (left), but the ends of the bar pass one after the other in the rest frame of the bar (right).