Title: Motion(less) Pictures and Temporal Appearances

Abstract: In this session I will present some work-in-progress which connects issues in the philosophy of mind, concerning temporal appearances, with the metaphysics of aesthetics, while also incorporating some insights regarding our use of perceptual verbs.

Viewing typical moving images (i.e., animations/video recordings), we see what appears to be a variety of objects, subjects, and their various respective activities unfolding over time. Viewing a still image (i.e., paintings/photographs) we also see what appears to be a variety of objects and subjects, and we see them as appearing to be engaged in various activities, though we do not see what appears to be these activities unfolding over time. This should sound much like common sense. Yet, the tenability of these claims depends on making explicit much that is only implicit. To make good sense of our experiential encounter with imagistic representations of activity, we need to say more about our talk of ‘temporal appearances’, and the comparisons and contrasts between the appearances presented by moving images and still images. Ultimately, I argue that we should make room for two dissociable forms of temporal appearance: a dynamic pattern of appearance of ϕ-ing over time, and the appearance of an object as an object that is ϕ-ing.

One further key aim in the talk is drawing the proper distinction between still and moving images. As noted by Danto (2006) and Walton (2008), moving images of static scenes can be visually indistinguishable from still images of the same scene; yet the two are experienced differently. I argue that this observation can be best explained, with the two dissociable forms of temporal appearance, if – unlike Danto and Walton – we take the differentia between still and moving images to simply be that the latter presents a duration, while the former does not. While this might sound like common sense, in making this case I dispute claims which notable authors have said to be ‘obvious’ (e.g., Carroll 2021).