Jacksoon:
You'll find a lot of interesting and stupid things here:
http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t144.htm
http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t494-0.htm
In all my posts I tried to conciliate the mathematical and psychological visions of time. We wpould often go in rounds in that enormous thread, but there were interesting points.
When I have enough time, I'll write a summary of my views on the problem. Now I'll just vsay that there an easy and natural way to define all English tenses with mathematical certainity.
To people with the left cerebellar hemisphere prevailing my explanation may seem more clear because it doesn't refer to psychology, intuition and so on.
I'll post it ASAP.
EDIT:
CJ:
«There is the present moment - which only lasts an instant -- and is constantly changing. Then there is everything before the present moment and everything after the present moment.»
Yes.
«In this view, almost everything that happens is either in the past or in the future. The present is only an instant in time.»
No. Everything happens in the present becuase the present is the moment at which everything happens. And yes, present (Now) is only a moment, while the future and the past are time periods:
Past = (-inf, Now);
Present = Now;
Future = (Now, +inf);
And this Now point is a moving moment. It mover from the past into the future. (One might add that the motion of this point converts future into past at a rate of 1 second per second).
If we take into account that an action is a process with a duration, then there are three alternatives.
1. The whole period (that an action occupies) is in the past (before the point of Now, to the left of it on the time axis). This is a past action.
2. The whole period is in the future (after the point of Now, to the right of it on the time axis). It is our future.
3. The point of now divides an action into two parts. This is a present action. To the left of Now lies the past part of the action, and to the right of it — the action's future part.
Example:
I am eating apples — a present action.
At some moment of time I have eaten three apples of five.
The action of eating those three apples is the past part, and, assuming all the apples are to be eaten, the action of eating the remaining two apples is the future part.
Of course not all actions occupy a single continuous time period.
For example:
"go to school every morning" — occupies a number of time periods.
(...to be continued...)
This was kinda sample fragment