He drove a taxi.

Now

he drives a truck. So

must he be driving the truck right

now

? Must he

as long as he's working as a truck driver

keep driving his truck all day and all night? What do we speak of

when we speak of "now"? In this talk

some popular conceptions in the philosophy of time will be put under critical scrutiny: (1) The present (the "now") is an instant

a time point with no length; (2) the "content" of the present is always an event

a happening

which constitutes a segment of a larger process; (3) what (time) is now

is determined by the passage of time (itself). The following points will be defended respectively: (1) The present may be a time period. "Now" is not an indivisible time-atom in the substantival sense. (2) What is now can be an event

a process

or a state. "Driving a truck now" – in the sense of being a truck driver – is neither an event nor something happening to him. (3) "Now"

among other temporal concepts

is not a name for any

thing

but schemata under which we understand ways things being themselves. There are variety of ways of being

and accordingly there are multiple aspects of now-ness.