  It is perfectly true that perceiving a succession of still images can result in a full-blooded perception of motion. If the stills which compose cinema film are shown quite slowly – say 2–5 frames per second (fps) – they are seen quite clearly as stills; if the pace picks up – to around 10 fps, they start to look somewhat blurred; if the pace picks up still further – to 20 or 25 fps – something remarkable happens: the images come alive, and we suddenly start to see genuine (and very clear, non-blurry) motion. This phenomenon – known as ‘illusory motion’ or ‘the phi phenomenon’ was first explored in the 19th century by Exner, and has been much-studied since then (not surprisingly, since it underpins televisual industries). But while it is real enough, the phi phenomenon is of little assistance to the Cinematic realist. What the latter needs is an account of how successions of momentary conscious states, each possessing entirely static contents, can give rise to the experience of motion. Static images are indeed being displayed on a cinema screen while we view a movie, but not only are these onscreen stills not themselves experiences, they do not register in our visual experience as static images: what we actually seem to see onscreen are objects in motion. Phenomenologically speaking, the stills are invisible. Given this, all the phi phenomenon clearly and unambiguously demonstrates is that a rapid succession of brief perceptual stimuli (each deriving from a brief on-screen image) can be transformed by our visual systems – after a good deal of processing – into experiences which feature motion. These perceptual stimuli are not themselves experiential in nature, consisting as they do of showers of photons (or, alternatively, patterns of electro-chemical activity on the surface of the retina).