This regress, identified by Gurwitsch and later Barry Dainton, means that Retentionalism implicitly presupposes the very extended temporal window it claims to derive from momentary states.

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Barry Dainton(as a philosopher who developed Gurwitsch's ideas further): A contemporary philosopher who studies consciousness and how we experience time as a continuous flow rather than as separate frozen moments.
Extended temporal window(as what Retentionalism claims to explain): The human ability to experience a stretch of time as connected and continuous (like hearing a melody as a whole) rather than as isolated individual moments.
Gurwitsch(as a philosopher who identified a logical problem): Aron Gurwitsch was a 20th-century philosopher who studied how our minds experience things like time and consciousness.
Momentary states(as the building blocks Retentionalism tries to explain time with): Snapshots of consciousness that last only an instant, with no duration or connection to past or future moments.
Presupposes(as describing what Plantinga's argument takes for granted): Assumes something to be true without proving it—like how an argument might presuppose that logic works, without first arguing that logic is valid.
Regress(as used in epistemology and logic): An infinite chain of reasoning where each explanation requires another explanation, like asking 'why?' infinitely and never reaching a final answer.
Retentionalism(as a theory about how humans experience time): A theory about how we experience time that says consciousness holds onto recent past moments in memory, allowing us to feel time as flowing rather than as separate instants.

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