ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses three phenomenological features of perception—presentness, reality, and externality—is important. 'Externality' can have one or both of two meanings. It can mean 'mind-independence' or 'physically external'. Spatial relations are not intentional relations; if they really occur, they have real relata. Tense theory promotes the denial of spatial relation to past things. However, if one accepts eternalism, then there seems to be no reason to enforce this. According to tense theory, there is only one present moment. According to eternalism, something at one time is as real as something at any other time. However, given presentism, the light leaving the star is not a real event in perceptual experience; it is earlier than both neural activity and the proximal stimulus, events that are part of the experience. Compared to presentism, eternalism fares much better. There is less of a discrepancy between appearances and reality.
