The Illusions of Time Passage: Why Time Passage is Real

Philosophers and scientists alike often endorse the view that the passage of time is an illusion. Here we instead account for the phenomenology of passage as a real psycho-biological phenomenon. We argue that the experience of time passage has a real and measurable basis as it arises from an internal generative model for anticipating upcoming events. The experience of passage is not representation by a passive recipient of sensory stimulation but is generated by predictive processes of the brain and proactive sensorimotor activity of the whole body. The biological basis of the passage of time has not been examined in the metaphysics of time or the epistemology of time perception from a scientific perspective. This paper proposes to remedy this omission.