Unity and particularity in perception

Philosophical accounts of object perception typically split between explaining objects as unified wholes through general representations and explaining them as particular individuals through unrepeatable representations. Susanna Schellenberg's capacitism—which treats perception as the exercise of capacities to discriminate concrete perceptual particulars—aims to reconcile these views but struggles to account for perceptual structure without invoking non-perceptual capacities. The author proposes a solution: a distinct capacity to discriminate unity, whose successful exercise yields a representation of an object bound with its properties, enabling direct awareness of an object's unity. This preserves both the particularity and the structured wholeness of perceived objects.

Study at a glance

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.