This paper is concerned with the senses in which paintings do and do not depict various temporal phenomena, such as motion, stasis and duration. I begin by explaining the popular – though not uncontroversial – assumption that depiction, as a pictorial form of representation, is a matter of an experiential resemblance between the pictorial representation and that which it is a depiction of. Given this assumption, I illustrate a tension between two plausible claims: that paintings do not depict motion in the sense that video recordings do, and that paintings do not merely depict objects but may depict those objects as engaged in various activities, such as moving. To resolve the tension, I demonstrate that we need to recognise an ambiguity in talk of the appearance of motion, and distinguish between the depiction of motion and the depiction of an object as an object that is moving. Armed with this distinction, I argue that there is an important sense in which paintings depict neither motion, duration, nor – perhaps more controversially – stasis.

The aim of this paper is to motivate and solve a puzzle regarding the intuition that just as in the absence of perceptual experience we lack an important kind of understanding of sensory properties like colour, in the absence of affective experience we lack an important kind of understanding of value. The puzzle consists in understanding how can a property pertaining to the experience of the subject i.e. the affective component of emotional experience, provide us with a distinctive epistemic access to, and therefore an understanding of, properties that are instantiated by objects distinct from the experience i.e. the evaluative property of the object of experience. I argue that solving the puzzle necessitates us to commit to a metaphysical view of value according to which affective experience and evaluative properties are related by explanatory circularity. The upshot of the paper is that affective experience provides us with the sort of understanding of value that motivates the generation of evaluative concepts.

This essay examines two conceptions of the ancient ideal of ‘living in the present’, one that may be called ‘Platonic’, suggested by a remark of Ludwig Wittgenstein, and one that may be called ‘Stoic’, developed by Pierre Hadot. On both conceptions, a life lived and considered in the right way is complete in the present, so that nothing is wanting. I introduce a problem concerning the coherence of this concept: Life involves movement, and movement is aimed at some completion in the future. How, then, can a life be complete in the present and yet not be static? I consider and reject an answer by Hadot, based on psychological concentration on the present. I then propose an alternative answer, based on Aristotle's concept of complete activity, and discuss its significance for both the Platonic and the Stoic conception of the ideal. Throughout, my focus is on this metaphysical and conceptual problem, thus preparing the way for the ethical question whether ‘living in the present’ would be a good way to live.

Does the scope of beliefs that people can form on the basis of perception remain fixed, or can it be amplified with learning? The answer to this question is important for our understanding of why and when we ought to trust experts, and also for assessing the plausibility of epistemic foundationalism. The empirical study of perceptual expertise suggests that experts can indeed enrich their perceptual experiences through learning. Yet this does not settle the epistemic status of their beliefs. One might hold that the background knowledge of experts is the cause of their enriched perceptual experience – what is known as cognitive permeation – and so their subsequent beliefs are only mediately justified because they are epistemically dependent on this background knowledge. I argue against this view. Perceptual expertise is not the result of cognitive permeation but is rather the result of perceptual learning, and perceptual learning does not involve cognition in a way that entails cognitive permeation. Perceptual expertise thus provides a means of widening the scope of the immediately justified beliefs that experts can form.

There are norms on action and norms on assertion. That is, there are things we should and shouldn't do, and things we should and shouldn't say. How do these two kinds of norm relate? Are norms on assertion reducible to norms on action? Many philosophers think they are not. These philosophers claim there is a sui generis norm specific to assertion, a norm which is also often claimed to be constitutive of assertion. Both claims, I argue, should be rejected. The phenomenon claimed to support them – the intuitive wrongness of certain assertions – does not in fact support them. Because assertion is an action, the wrongness of assertions can be explained purely by norms on action. And the specifically epistemic wrongness an assertion norm is typically supposed to explain can be explained by an uncontroversial norm on action: one shouldn't act on epistemically faulty beliefs. No additional sui generis norm on assertion is needed.

Having a self means being able think of myself under a certain profile that that is me: that is who I am, that is how I am. But if I raise the question as to who or how I am, there are three salient profiles in which I can cast myself, three selves with which we can identify. I can see myself just as an agent identified over time by the linkages between my experiences, my attitudes and my actions. I can see myself as the persona that I invite others to rely on and that, if sincere, I internalize. And I can see myself as the figure I cut in other people's eyes, whether or not I welcome that image. Such ambiguities help explain the complexity in philosophical discussion of the self as well as the conflict in everyday exhortations to be ourselves and know ourselves, yet also to forget ourselves and lose ourselves.