The time has come for me to make good on the promise I issued in the Introduction. As I understand these puzzles, their purpose is to cast doubt on the very existence of time and to problematize the status of the now, and I believe that Aristotle clearly takes them to be sophistical. There is in Physicsiv no explicit, systematic treatment of them (nor anywhere else in the corpus, for that matter). Indeed, immediately after rehearsing the puzzles, Aristotle forthrightly drops them and takes up the other principal question concerning time, namely its nature (218a30). This suggests to me that the puzzles are easily solved, or so Aristotle thinks, when one sees the mistaken conception of time on which they rest and replaces that mistaken conception with the proper concept. And this is in fact the case. Once we get the puzzles in view, it will not be difficult to understand why Aristotle didn't trouble himself to dismantle them, since they aren't really the obstacles they appear to be, but rather are for the most part mirages.

I recast the puzzles here in the form of three arguments, the second offered as a response to an implicit objection to the first: