Perceptual Particularity

Edited by Susanna Schellenberg (Rutgers - New Brunswick)
Assistant editor: Zhiguo Huang (Rutgers - New Brunswick)
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  1. A Higher-Order Account of the Phenomenology of Particularity.Jacob Berger - forthcoming - Erkenntnis:1-20.
    Many theorists maintain that perceptual experience exhibits the what is often called the phenomenology of particularity: that in perceptual experience it phenomenally seems that there are particular things. Some urge that this phenomenology demands special accounts of perception on which particulars somehow constitute perceptual experience, including versions of relationalism, on which perception is a relation between perceivers and particular perceived objects, or complex forms of representationalism, on which perception exhibits demonstrative or special particular-involving types of content. I argue here that (...)
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  2. Perceptual experiences of particularity.Błażej Skrzypulec - 2024 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 67 (6):1881-1907.
    Philosophers of perception often claim that usual perceptual experiences not only present particulars but also phenomenally present them as particulars. Nevertheless, despite the initial plausibility of this thesis, it is not clear what exactly it means to say that particularity is phenomenally presented. The paper aims to provide a deeper analysis of the claim that perceptual experiences phenomenally present objects as particulars. In doing so, I distinguish two theses regarding phenomenally presented particularity: Generic Particularity and Specific Particularity. According to the (...)
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  3. Does Property-Perception Entail the Content View?Keith A. Wilson - 2024 - Erkenntnis 89:841–860.
    Visual perception is widely taken to present properties such as redness, roundness, and so on. This in turn might be thought to give rise to accuracy conditions for experience, and so content, regardless of which metaphysical view of perception one endorses. An influential version of this argument—Susanna Siegel’s ’Argument from Appearing’—aims to establish the existence of content as common ground between representational and relational views of perception. This goes against proponents of ‘austere’ relationalism who deny that content plays a substantive (...)
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  4. Naïve Realism and the Relationality of Phenomenal Character.Roberta Locatelli - 2023 - Topoi 43 (1).
    Naïve realism (also called ‘relationalism’ or ‘object view’) is becoming increasingly popular, but the specific outline of its commitments remains often underspecified by proponents and misunderstood by critics. Naïve realism is associated with two claims, both concerning genuine, veridical perceptual experience (where this excludes hallucinations). Constitutive Claim (CC): The phenomenal character of perception is (partly) constituted by the mind-independent objects in one’s surrounding and their properties. Relational Claim (RC): Perception is a relation to mind-independent objects in the environment and their (...)
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  5. Crossmodal Basing.Zoe Jenkin - 2022 - Mind 131 (524):1163-1194.
    What kinds of mental states can be based on epistemic reasons? The standard answer is only beliefs. I argue that perceptual states can also be based on reasons, as the result of crossmodal interactions. A perceptual state from one modality can provide a reason on which an experience in another modality is based. My argument identifies key markers of the basing relation and locates them in the crossmodal Marimba Illusion (Schutz & Kubovy 2009). The subject’s auditory experience of musical tone (...)
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  6. Perceiving properties versus perceiving objects.Boyd Millar - 2022 - Analytic Philosophy 63 (2):99-117.
    The fact that you see some particular object seems to be due to the causal relation between your visual experience and that object, rather than to your experiences’ phenomenal character. On the one hand, whenever some phenomenal element of your experience stands in the right sort of causal relation to some object, your experience presents that object (your experience’s phenomenology doesn’t need to match that object). On the other hand, you can’t have a perceptual experience that presents some object unless (...)
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  7. Perceptual capacitism: an argument for disjunctive disunity.James Openshaw & Assaf Weksler - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (11):3325-3348.
    According to capacitism, to perceive is to employ personal-level, perceptual capacities. In a series of publications, Schellenberg (2016, 2018, 2019b, 2020) has argued that capacitism offers unified analyses of perceptual particularity, perceptual content, perceptual consciousness, perceptual evidence, and perceptual knowledge. “Capacities first” (2020: 715); appealing accounts of an impressive array of perceptual and epistemological phenomena will follow. We argue that, given the Schellenbergian way of individuating perceptual capacities which underpins the above analyses, perceiving an object does not require employing a (...)
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  8. Cartesian intuition.Elliot Samuel Paul - 2022 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 31 (4):693-723.
    This paper explicates Descartes’ theory of intuition (intuitus). Departing from certain commentators, I argue that intuition, for Descartes, is a form of clear and distinct intellectual perception. Because it is clear and distinct, it is indubitable, infallible, and provides a grade of certain knowledge he calls ‘cognitio’. I pay special attention to why he treats intuition as a form of perception, and what he means when he says it is ‘clear and distinct’. Finally, I situate his view in relation to (...)
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  9. Perceptual Content, Phenomenal Contrasts, and Externalism.Thomas Raleigh - 2022 - Journal of Philosophy 119 (11):602-627.
    According to Sparse views of perceptual content, the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is exhausted by the experiential presentation of ‘low-level’ properties such as (in the case of vision) shapes, colors, and textures Whereas, according to Rich views of perceptual content, the phenomenal character of perceptual experience can also sometimes involve experiencing ‘high-level’ properties such as natural kinds, artefactual kinds, causal relations, linguistic meanings, and moral properties. An important dialectical tool in the debate between Rich and Sparse theorists is the (...)
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  10. The Subject-Dependency of Perceptual Objects.Błażej Skrzypulec - 2022 - Erkenntnis 87 (6):2827-2842.
    Entities that are, in ordinary perceptual situations, veridically presented as objects can be called ‘perceptual objects’. In the philosophical literature, one can find various approaches to the crucial features that distinguish the class of perceptual objects. While these positions differ in many respects, they share an important general feature: they all characterize perceptual objects as largely subject-independent. More specifically, they do not attribute a significant constitutive role to the perceptual relation connecting a fragment of the environment with a perceiving subject. (...)
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  11. A Holey Perspective on Venn Diagrams.Anna N. Bartel, Kevin J. Lande, Joris Roos & Karen B. Schloss - 2021 - Cognitive Science 46 (1):e13073.
    When interpreting the meanings of visual features in information visualizations, observers have expectations about how visual features map onto concepts (inferred mappings.) In this study, we examined whether aspects of inferred mappings that have been previously identified for colormap data visualizations generalize to a different type of visualization, Venn diagrams. Venn diagrams offer an interesting test case because empirical evidence about the nature of inferred mappings for colormaps suggests that established conventions for Venn diagrams are counterintuitive. Venn diagrams represent classes (...)
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  12. Seeing and Visual Reference.Kevin J. Lande - 2021 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2):402-433.
    Perception is a central means by which we come to represent and be aware of particulars in the world. I argue that an adequate account of perception must distinguish between what one perceives and what one's perceptual experience is of or about. Through capacities for visual completion, one can be visually aware of particular parts of a scene that one nevertheless does not see. Seeing corresponds to a basic, but not exhaustive, way in which one can be visually aware of (...)
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  13. A representationalist reading of Kantian intuitions.Ayoob Shahmoradi - 2021 - Synthese 198 (3):2169-2191.
    There are passages in Kant’s writings according to which empirical intuitions have to be (a) singular, (b) object-dependent, and (c) immediate. It has also been argued that empirical intuitions (d) are not truth-apt, and (e) need to provide the subject with a proof of the possibility of the cognized object. Having relied on one or another of the a-e constraints, the naïve realist readers of Kant have argued that it is not possible for empirical intuitions to be representations. Instead they (...)
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  14. The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, Evidence, by Susanna Schellenberg. [REVIEW]Craig French - 2020 - Mind 129 (513):339-349.
    The Unity of Perception: Content, Consciousness, Evidence, by SchellenbergSusanna. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 272.
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  15. When nothing looks blue.Joseph Gottlieb & Ali Rezaei - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):2553-2561.
    Pitt :735–741, 2017) has argued that reductive representationalism entails an absurdity akin to the “paramechanical hypothesis” Ryle attributed to Descartes. This paper focuses on one version of reductive representationalism: the property-complex theory. We contend that at least insofar as the property-complex theory goes, Pitt is wrong. The result is not just a response to Pitt, but also a clarification of the aims and structure of the property-complex theory.
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  16. Naïve Realism and Phenomenal Intentionality.Takuya Niikawa - 2020 - Philosophia 49 (3):1127-1143.
    This paper argues for the conjunctive thesis of naïve realism and phenomenal intentionalism about perceptual experiences. Naïve realism holds that the phenomenology of veridical perceptual experience is constituted by environmental objects that the subject perceives. Phenomenal intentionalism about perceptual experience states that perceptual experience has intentionality in virtue of its phenomenology. I first argue that naïve realism is not incompatible with phenomenal intentionalism. I then argue that phenomenal intentionalists can handle two objections to it by adopting naïve realism: the first (...)
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  17. Non‐epistemic perception as technology.Kurt Sylvan - 2020 - Philosophical Issues 30 (1):324-345.
    Some epistemologists and philosophers of mind hold that the non-epistemic perceptual relation of which feature-seeing and object-seeing are special cases is the foundation of perceptual knowledge. This paper argues that such relations are best understood as having only a technological role in explaining perceptual knowledge. After introducing the opposing view in §1, §2 considers why its defenders deny that some cases in which one has perceptual knowledge without the relevant acquaintance relations are counterexamples, detailing their case for lurking inferential epistemology. (...)
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  18. Two Conceptions of Phenomenology.Ori Beck - 2019 - Philosophers' Imprint 19:1-17.
    The phenomenal particularity thesis says that if a mind-independent particular is consciously perceived in a given perception, that particular is among the constituents of the perception’s phenomenology. Martin, Campbell, Gomes and French and others defend this thesis. Against them are Mehta, Montague, Schellenberg and others, who have produced strong arguments that the phenomenal particularity thesis is false. Unfortunately, neither side has persuaded the other, and it seems that the debate between them is now at an impasse. This paper aims to (...)
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  19. How Naïve Realism can Explain Both the Particularity and the Generality of Experience.Craig French & Anil Gomes - 2019 - Philosophical Quarterly 69 (274):41-63.
    Visual experiences seem to exhibit phenomenological particularity: when you look at some object, it – that particular object – looks some way to you. But experiences exhibit generality too: when you look at a distinct but qualitatively identical object, things seem the same to you as they did in seeing the first object. Naïve realist accounts of visual experience have often been thought to have a problem with each of these observations. It has been claimed that naïve realist views cannot (...)
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  20. Perceptual Kinds as Supervening Sortals.Błażej Skrzypulec - 2018 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (1):174-201.
    It seems intuitive that in situations of perceptual recognition additional properties are represented. While much has been written about the significance of such properties for perceptual phenomenology, it is still unclear (a) what is the relation between recognition-based properties and lower-level perceptual properties, and (b) whether it is justified to classify them as kind-properties. Relying on results in cognitive psychology, I argue that recognition-based properties (I) are irreducible, high-level properties, (II) are kind properties by virtue of being sortal properties, but (...)
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  21. Particularity of Content and Illusions of Identity.Błażej Skrzypulec - 2018 - Axiomathes 28 (5):491-506.
    This paper argues that the accuracy of perceptual experiences cannot be properly characterized by using the particular notion of content without breaking one of the three plausible assumptions. On the other hand, the general notion of content is not threatened by this problem. The first assumption is that all elements of content determine the accuracy conditions of an experience. The second states that objects needed for the accuracy of experiences are physical entities that stand in a perceptual relation to a (...)
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  22. Illusions of Optimal Motion, Relationism, and Perceptual Content.Santiago Echeverri - 2017 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 98 (S1):146-173.
    Austere relationism rejects the orthodox analysis of hallucinations and illusions as incorrect perceptual representations. In this article, I argue that illusions of optimal motion present a serious challenge for this view. First, I submit that austere-relationist accounts of misleading experiences cannot be adapted to account for IOMs. Second, I show that any attempt at elucidating IOMs within an austere-relationist framework undermines the claim that perceptual experiences fundamentally involve relations to mind-independent objects. Third, I develop a representationalist model of IOMs. The (...)
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  23. Low-Level Properties in Perceptual Experience.Philip J. Walsh - 2017 - International Journal of Philosophical Studies 25 (5):682-703.
    Whether perceptual experience represents high-level properties like causation and natural-kind in virtue of its phenomenology is an open question in philosophy of mind. While the question of high-level properties has sparked disagreement, there is widespread agreement that the sensory phenomenology of perceptual experience presents us with low-level properties like shape and color. This paper argues that the relationship between the sensory character of experience and the low-level properties represented therein is more complex than most assume. Careful consideration of mundane examples, (...)
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  24. Perceptual Acquaintance and the Seeming Relationality of Hallucinations.Fabian Dorsch - 2016 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 23 (7-8):23-64.
    Relationalism about perception minimally claims that instances of perception -- in contrast to instances of hallucination -- are constituted by the external objects perceived. Most variants of relationalism furthermore maintain that this difference in constitution is due to a difference in mental kind. One prominent example is acquaintance relationalism, which argues that perceptions are relational in virtue of acquainting us with external objects. I distinguish three variants of acquaintance relationalism -- which differ in their answers to the question of which (...)
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  25. On the Particularity of Experience.Anil Gomes & Craig French - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (2):451-460.
    Phenomenal particularism is the view that particular external objects are sometimes part of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. It is a central part of naïve realist or relational views of perception. We consider a series of recent objections to phenomenal particularism and argue that naïve realism has the resources to block them. In particular, we show that these objections rest on assumptions about the nature of phenomenal character that the naïve realist will reject, and that they ignore the full (...)
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  26. Perceptual Particularity.Susanna Schellenberg - 2016 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 93 (1):25-54.
    Perception grounds demonstrative reference, yields singular thoughts, and fixes the reference of singular terms. Moreover, perception provides us with knowledge of particulars in our environment and justifies singular thoughts about particulars. How does perception play these cognitive and epistemic roles in our lives? I address this question by exploring the fundamental nature of perceptual experience. I argue that perceptual states are constituted by particulars and discuss epistemic, ontological, psychologistic, and semantic approaches to account for perceptual particularity.
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  27. A Dual-Component View of Propositional Grasping.John Dilworth & Dylan Sabo - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (3):511-522.
    On a traditional or default view of the grasping or understanding of a singular proposition by an individual, it is assumed to be a unitary or holistic activity. However, naturalistic views of cognition plausibly could analyze propositional thinking in terms of more than one distinctive functional stage of cognitive processing, suggesting at least the potential legitimacy of a non-unitary analysis of propositional grasping. We outline a novel dual-component view of this kind, and show that it is well supported by current (...)
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  28. The Limited Role of Particulars in Phenomenal Experience.Neil Mehta - 2014 - Journal of Philosophy 111 (6):311-331.
    Consider two deeply appealing thoughts: first, that we experience external particulars, and second, that what it’s like to have an experience – the phenomenal character of an experience – is somehow independent of external particulars. The first thought is readily captured by phenomenal particularism, the view that external particulars are sometimes part of the phenomenal character of experience. The second thought is readily captured by phenomenal generalism, the view that external particulars are never part of phenomenal character. -/- Here I (...)
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  29. The Goldilocks Problem of the specificity of visual phenomenal content.Robert Schroer - 2014 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 44 (3-4):476-495.
    Existentialist accounts maintain that visual phenomenal content takes the logical form of an existentially quantified sentence. These accounts do not make phenomenal content specific enough. Singularist accounts posit a singular content in which the seen object is a constituent. These accounts make phenomenal content too specific. My account gets the specificity of visual phenomenal content just right. My account begins with John Searle's suggestion that visual experience represents an object as seen, moves this relation outside the scope of the existential (...)
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  30. Perceiving tropes.Bence Nanay - 2012 - Erkenntnis 77 (1):1-14.
    There are two very different ways of thinking about perception. According to the first one, perception is representational: it represents the world as being a certain way. According to the second, perception is a genuine relation between the perceiver and a token object. These two views are thought to be incompatible. My aim is to work out the least problematic version of the representational view of perception that preserves the most important considerations in favor of the relational view. According to (...)
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  31. The particularity and phenomenology of perceptual experience.Susanna Schellenberg - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 149 (1):19-48.
    I argue that any account of perceptual experience should satisfy the following two desiderata. First, it should account for the particularity of perceptual experience, that is, it should account for the mind-independent object of an experience making a difference to individuating the experience. Second, it should explain the possibility that perceptual relations to distinct environments could yield subjectively indistinguishable experiences. Relational views of perceptual experience can easily satisfy the first but not the second desideratum. Representational views can easily satisfy the (...)
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  32. Identidad y discriminación en el contenido no conceptual.Justina Díaz Legaspe - 2009 - Critica 41 (123):65-93.
    En The Varieties of Reference, Evans sostiene que el contenido perceptual posee una naturaleza no conceptual. Precisamente, los vínculos informacionales entre sujeto y objeto habilitan el pensamiento singular, al permitir la localización del objeto en un entorno egocéntrico. Anclados en algunos casos en estos vínculos, los pensamientos singulares contienen Ideas adecuadas del objeto, dependientes de una determinada clasificación del mismo. Nada en el contenido perceptual equivale a este recorte conceptual del objeto en el pensamiento. Sostendré entonces la necesidad de introducir (...)
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  33. Nonconceptual Epicycles.Sonia Sedivy - 2006 - European Review of Philosophy 6:33-66.
    This paper argues that perception is a mode of engagement with individuals and their determinate properties. Perceptual content involves determinate properties in a way that relies on our conceptual capacities no less than on the properties. The “richness” of perceptual experience is explained as a distinctive individual and property involving content. This position is developed in three steps: (i) novel phenomenological description of lived experience; (ii) detailed reconstruction of Gareth Evans’ proposal that we are capable of genuinely singular thought that (...)
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  34. (1 other version)How perception fixes reference.Kevin Mulligan - 1997 - In Language and Thought. Hawthorne: De Gruyter. pp. 122-138.
    The answer I shall sketch is not mine. Nor, as far as I can tell, is it an answer to be found in the voluminous literature inspired by Kripke’s work. Many of the elements of the answer are to be found in the writings of Wittgenstein and his Austro-German predecessors, Martinak, Husserl, Marty, Landgrebe and Bühler. Within this Austro-German tradition we may distinguish between a strand which is Platonist and anti-naturalist and a strand which is nominalist and naturalist. Thus Husserl’s (...)
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  35. Still Particular: A Reply to Ganson and Mehta.Anil Gomes & Craig French - manuscript
    We are grateful to Ganson and Mehta (forthcoming) for their reply to our defence of phenomenal particularism against the objections raised by Mehta in his (2014). Their reply clarifies the nature of their objections to phenomenal particularism and helps identify the locus of our disagreements. In what follows we aim to defend phenomenal particularism against the objections raised in their reply.
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  36. On Schellenberg’s The Unity of Perception[REVIEW]Ayoob Shahmoradi - manuscript
    My general worry is that Schellenberg’s arguments against naive realism, generalism, and Russellian representationalism do not seem to be successful. Thus her attempt at ruling these views out fails. Her main arguments rely on a shared premise whose plausibility, in the absence of an appropriate theory of particulars, is hard to assess (§2.1). Apart from that, these arguments rely on an under-specified notion of constitution; there seems to be no sense of the term that makes all the premises of her (...)
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