Categorical Phenomenology
The Anatomy of Experience December 12, 2025 Jody Azzouni
Careful introspection reveals that both categorical perception and pure noncategorical thisness are relatively empty. Categorical perception is the experience of generality, that something is an instance, but being an instance comes to very little because our experience of the scope of categories is partial and incomplete. Using a thought experiment about brain-grayers (hypothetical people who are sightless from birth), the experience of noncategorical thisness also comes to very little, because every human experience includes categorical perception as well as thisness. Any attempt to describe thisness apart from categorical perception fails to capture what our experience is actually like.