Abstract

Our present experiences are strikingly different from past and future ones. Every philosophy of time must explain this difference. It has long been argued that A-theorists can do it better than B-theorists because their explanation is most natural and straightforward: present experiences appear to be special because they are special. I do not wish to dispute one aspect of this advantage. But I contend that the general perception of this debate is seriously incomplete as it tends to conflate two rather different aspects of the phenomenon behind it, the individual and the common dimensions of the present. When they are carefully distinguished and the emerging costs of the A-theories are balanced against their benefits, the advantage disappears.