Time Perception

The question of "does time pass" or what are the qualities of time passing is extremely interesting. In order to start looking at that concept time first has to be divided into "A Theory" and "B Theory". A theory states that past, present, and future do exist and time passes as it flows between them. B theory states there is no such thing as the past, present, and future or the passage of time and all time exists equally. 

A philosopher by the name of Simon Prosser has very interesting insight on the passage of time. He asks the question, "which one of your experiences is the experience of time passing?" This is interesting to think about, because for me and for everyone else you cannot pin point this experience. This is because experience does not happen all at once. He talks about a theory called the uniqueness constraint, which is that each one of your experiences matches up to some unique object in the world. So when you think of a banana, say the banana that you saw on the table this morning, your experience of that banana matches up to the object of the banana on the table and nothing else. So according to Prosser, because no experience you have of time matches up to the passage of time better than any other experience, you don't have an experience of time passing. 

Magical time measuring "Machine"
(Probably not what Prossor intend but fun nonetheless)

Prossor has also come up with a mind experiment called "the machine." He asks could we build a machine that detects the passage of time.  In an A universe it would detect something that indicated passing of time and alert us of that "something", but in a B universe it wouldn't detect that thing and we would know that time wasn't passing. But whatever the machine detected would be there whether the universe was A or B, and all of the same events would happen in both universes. In a way we already have that machine and it's our brain! So according to Prossor, we cannot detect the passage of time so any argument that relies on experience as proof must be wrong. But maybe there are different things happening in an A universe than in a B universe which would allow for the detection of time passing. So if Prossor is wrong and we can perceive time, our perception of time differs greatly. Here is a video as to why that is.

http://ed.ted.com/lessons/an-exercise-in-time-perception-matt-danzico