Unity and particularity in perception
Philosophical Psychology March 17, 2026 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2026.2637463 via OpenAlex
Summary
The article argues that standard accounts of object perception force a choice between explaining the unity of objects (using general, repeatable representations) and explaining their particularity (using particular, unrepeatable representations). The author shows how Susanna Schellenberg's capacitism—which treats perception as exercises of capacities to discriminate concrete perceptual particulars—can capture motivations for both views, but struggles to explain object perception's structure without non-perceptual capacities. The author proposes a capacity to discriminate unity, whose successful exercises produce representations of objects bound with their properties, making us directly aware of an object's unity.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Positing a capacity to discriminate unity resolves tensions between generalist and particularist accounts of object perception within Schellenberg's capacitism. |
Abstract
Standard accounts of object perception force us to choose between the unity of objects and the particularity of objects. The unity of objects is explained in terms of general, repeatable representations and a mental act of predication that binds those representations. The particularity of objects is explained in terms of particular, unrepeatable representations and a pre-predicational mode of perceptual consciousness. Generalists argue that particularists cannot explain the structure of perception while particularists argue that generalism makes perception indifferent to the objects themselves. Here, I show how Susanna Schellenberg’s capacitism can capture the motivations for both views. According to capacitism, perception is the result of exercises of perceptual capacities to discriminate concrete perceptual particulars. The trouble is that Schellenberg’s capacitism struggles to explain the structure of object perception without resorting to a further contribution from non-perceptual capacities. I propose that these problems can be avoided by positing a capacity to discriminate unity. Successful exercises of this capacity result in a representation of an object bound with its properties and make us directly aware of an object’s unity.