Felt Time: The Phenomenological Present as the Ground of Temporal Experience
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) January 7, 2026 Anthony James Donnelly
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.