Abstract Augustine says that he knows what time is as long as no one asks him to say what time is. Many of us are in the same boat. Nevertheless, M. Oreste Fiocco, in his Time and the World: Every Thing and Then Some, attempts to answer the question What is time?. I argue that his answer falls short of actually saying what time is. Then I consider the standard way to answer this question, according to which time is one of four more or less similar dimensions that make up a unified manifold appropriately called spacetime. I offer several arguments against this view. I also consider several other proposals, including the claim that there is no such thing as time, and the claim that time is a logical construction out of maximal, consistent propositions. But in the end I defend an answer to our question according to which time is best understood as a complicated and multifaceted dimension of reality (akin to the modal and moral dimensions) that is concerned with the ways reality has been, is, or will be.
Ned Markosian (Sat,) studied this question.