The present to which the datum refers is really a part of the past—a recent past—delusively given as being a time that intervenes between the past and the future.
All the notes of a bar of a song seem to the listener to be contained in the present.
At the instant of the termination of such series, no part of the time measured by them seems to be a past.
[3] James defined the specious present to be "the prototype of all conceived times... the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible".
[4] C. D. Broad in "Scientific Thought" (1930) further elaborated on the concept of the specious present, arguing that it may be construed as the temporal equivalent of a sensory datum.