We don't know the past or the future, but we think we know the present. The moment of the present, TS Eliot's 'still point of the turning world', provides us with our observations of the world, the evidence for science, and the content of our consciousness. Yet, philosophers and neuroscientists have argued the present is unattainable and unknowable. Poststructuralists like Derrida claim there is no 'now' that provides direct and immediate access to meaning. Our descriptions are part of a shifting web of meaning that we can never get to the bottom of and which is limited by culture and history. While leading neuroscientists claim the reality we perceive in the present is a form of hallucination, or interface, evolved for survival.
Do we need to give up the idea that the present is a moment of truth that provides the reality of experience? Are our descriptions of the present always undecidable and indeterminate? Or is the notion of a fixed present essential if we are to create and judge our theories and accounts of reality, without which we would be hopelessly lost?
Award-winning novelist Joanna Kavenna, outspoken scientist Rupert Sheldrake and author of Hyposubjects: On Becoming Human Timothy Morton debate whether the present moment is as stable as we like to think.