Retentional direct realism

Retentionalism and extensionalism are theories of temporal consciousness. As such, they aim to explain how subjects are aware of temporally extended phenomena as succession. Direct realism and representationalism are theories of general perception: they aim to explain what our perceptual experience consists of and what kinds of objects we perceive. The received view marries retentionalism with representationalism and extensionalism with direct realism. Although some forms of extensionalism departing from direct realism have been advanced, nobody has proposed the fourth combination: retentional direct realism. This paper aims to fill the gap and provide a way to understand how retentionalism and direct realism can be coherently combined. This new theory takes the best of the two worlds, putting together the, arguably, best theory of temporal consciousness with the, arguably, best theory of general perception. And it has an additional advantage: it easily solves one of the main problems for retentionalism in the literature: the problem of repeated contents.