The time-lapse argument, also known as the time-lag argument is a philosophical argument that says that whatever we as people perceive, we do not directly perceive anything that is ever physical. The argument is not saying though that we are never able to perceive things, just that what we perceive is something in the physical past. It does mean though that the things we do perceive have varying temporal distances in the past, it all depends on how long it takes for the stimulus energy to arrive at our sensory organs and how long it takes for our neural impulses to recognize and transmit to other sensory regions. An example is that when we are looking into the night sky and see or wish on a star, we were only seeing a past image of the star …show more content…
Another argument could be made that the things we perceive are not at a spatial distance from us, but that we are at a special distance from the physical objects, and that we are also coexisting with other physical events and objects. Other philosophers such as, Pitcher, claim that we do actually see physical objects but that we are just “seeing them as they were some time ago”. But how do we as people know whether we are the ones at a spatial distance from the physical object or whether or not the physical object is the one at a spatial distance from us. Clarifying the stage of a physical object can help us more easily identify if there is a spatial distance at all between the physical object, and us because sometimes we are even able to perceive physical objects or events that have no spatial distance from us at all. Because we as humans are in fact able to perceive things, by logic, we are always perceiving past stages of the physical objects and events, because when we look and see a object or something happening, while it may seem as if it is happening at that moment, you are actually seeing something that has taken place before you were able to see