ABSTRACT
Awareness exists in time as well as in some sort of ‘space’ within the brain, so there’s not much hope of understanding consciousness without a knowledge of how time, brain and awareness are related. Unfortunately, it’s a slippery subject to tackle for a wide range of reasons. One fairly basic difficulty is that we have no adequate vocabulary with which to discuss it. Take that catch phrase used by trendy managers in the early 1980s — ‘At this moment in time’. It seems fairly innocuous at first hearing, if ugly and trite, until one dwells on what ‘moment’ might mean. To a relativity theorist it would probably imply a minimum quantum unit of duration taking in all events occurring on the surface of a light cone originating from the manager who spoke; not a very helpful concept for everyday purposes.
