ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that despite its current popularity the doctrine of the specious present, or at least every current version of it, should be rejected. It presents two different accounts, which deal with experiences of two different kinds of change. The first account explains what the dynamic snapshot theory, which accounts for the way people experience continuous changes such as motion and other motion-like phenomena. The second account deals with the way people experience discontinuous changes, those for which there is no finite rate of change. Although the dynamic snapshot theory gives a straightforward account of the experience of motion and other continuous changes, it cannot explain the experience of discontinuous changes. A significant majority of philosophers writing about temporal experience today accept one or another version of the doctrine of the specious present, according to which conscious experiences have temporally extended contents. The literature on temporal experience contains surprisingly few direct arguments in favour of the specious present.
