  In his influential writings on these matters William James argued that to make sense of our temporal experience we need to distinguish the strict (or mathematical) present from the from the experiential (or specious) present: whereas the first is indeed durationless, the second possesses a brief duration, sufficient to accommodate the change and persistence we find in our immediate experience. The Retentional and Extensional approaches can each be seen as implementing James’ proposal, albeit in very different ways.