Conscious experiences of change, from seeing a bird take flight to listening to a melody, cannot be broken down into ever smaller units of experience. They must inhabit what William James called the “specious present,” a sliding window of time where the immediate past and present overlap. Philosopher Lyu Zhou argues that this exposes a deep rift between mind and matter. When the physical world undergoes change, it does so through succession – one physical state replaces another, and the past is gone – whereas consciousness requires the active retention of the past inside the present, revealing its fundamentally non-physical nature.

1. Consciousness, change and time

You are now conscious as you read this article. Is your consciousness physical? Many today think it is. They claim that it either is a physical system made of matter – most likely the neural network of your brain – or is realized by matter through a physical process, most likely by your brain through a neural biochemical process. However, I hope to convince you that this view is wrong. I hope to show you that your immediate present consciousness has certain features that physical systems and processes cannot have.