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

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

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

Although painting is essentially a spatial art, it includes a temporal element, the "specious present," the single moment of action or of motion.

From The Principles of Aesthetics by Parker, Dewitt H.

The specious present includes elements at all stages on the journey from sensation to image.

From The Analysis of Mind by Russell, Bertrand