  The Retentional approach has some distinct advantages over the alternative forms of realism. All variants of the approach have this much in common: they compress the experiencing of change into momentary (or near-momentary) phases of consciousness. In virtue of this, Retentional models are compatible with metaphysical doctrines which require precisely this feature. The most obvious candidate here is Presentism, the doctrine that what is not present is not real (see §7.2). In contrast, Extensional models require contents that are distributed through an interval of (ordinary, objective) time to be experienced together, in a single unified phenomenal state. It is not obvious that such models are compatible with the doctrine that reality itself is confined to the momentary present. Accommodating the latter doctrine poses no problems whatsoever for Retentional models.