Felt Time: The Phenomenological Present as the Ground of Temporal Experience

Conscious experience always includes a vivid sense of presence—a felt 'now'—that persists regardless of how time is measured or perceived. While physics suggests time may not be fundamental and neuroscience treats subjective time as constructed, this paper argues that Felt Time is not a perception of time but the ground condition from which temporal concepts arise. This reversal of the explanatory arrow reframes debates in phenomenology, neuroscience, and physics, and offers a candidate phenomenosignature for consciousness itself. A neurophenomenological protocol is proposed to test Felt Time's invariance across conditions where clock-time perception varies.

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Abstract

Contemporary physics increasingly suggests that time may not be fundamental, while neuroscience treats subjective temporality as constructed and elastic. Yet conscious experience is invariably characterized by a vivid sense of presence—a felt "now"—that persists across all states. This paper introduces Felt Time: the intrinsic phenomenological present that underlies all experience but is not reducible to clocks, sequences, or representations. I argue that Felt Time is not a perception of time, but the ground condition from which temporal concepts are projected. This reversal of the explanatory arrow reframes debates in phenomenology, neuroscience, and physics, and provides a candidate phenomenosignature for consciousness itself. A neurophenomenological protocol is proposed to test Felt Time's invariance across conditions where clock-time perception varies. Keywords: phenomenology, time consciousness, phenomenosignatures, temporal experience, neurophenomenology