ABSTRACT
It is a natural thought, that there are philosophically significant connections between experience and temporal awareness. This chapter elucidates these aspects of significant connections by reflection on the distinctive temporal properties of experience in different states of consciousness. One suggestion is that what is missing by way of such a temporal perspective is that one who is dreamlessly asleep cannot be in psychological states with a temporal representational content, that is, a content that must be specified in temporal terms. Similarly, dreamless sleepers appear to be capable of belief with representational content that must be characterised in terms of the temporal indexical "now". The experience of change and succession that marks much of experienced life has distinctive temporal characteristics. O' Shaughnessy suggests dreaming involves a relation to time that is inconsistent with wakeful consciousness; and that his argument for that claim depends on the assumption that our dreams are imaginings.
