specious present

American  

noun

Philosophy.

1. a short time span in which change and duration are alleged to be directly experienced.

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Example Sentences

So far as the two events are practically adjacent in one specious present, this continuity of passage may be directly perceived.

From The Concept of Nature The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 by Whitehead, Alfred North

But this present is not the momentary meeting-place of two eternities or the brief span of time which psychologists have named 'the specious present'.

From The Unity of Civilization by Various

Spatial and temporal relations must sometimes be included, for example in the case of a swift motion falling wholly within the specious present.

From Our Knowledge of the External World as a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy by Russell, Bertrand

When the finger-tip leaves the filled space, part of it, because of its length, has already, as it were, left the specious present, and has suffered the foreshortening effect of being relegated to the past.

From Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory. by Münsterberg, Hugo

The people who will not be patient with a troublesome neighbor, who want to bring everything to a "showdown" are no less the victims of a specious present.

From Public Opinion by Lippmann, Walter