Introduction to the topical collection "The Structure of Perceptual Objects"—with contributions by Mohan Matthen, EJ Green, Alisa Mandrigin, Blazej Skrzypulec, and Anna Drożdżowicz.

While there is a growing philosophical interest in analysing olfactory experiences, the mereological structure of odours considered in respect of how they are perceptually experienced has not yet been extensively investigated. The paper argues that odours are perceptually experienced as having a mereological structure, but this structure is significantly different from the spatial mereological structure of visually experienced objects. Most importantly, in the case of the olfactory part-structure, the classical weak supplementation principle is not satisfied. This thesis is justified by (...) referring to empirical results in olfactory science concerning the human ability to identify components in complex olfactory stimuli. Further, it is shown how differences between olfactory and visual mereologies may arise from the way in which these modalities represent space. (shrink)

When you hear a person speaking in a familiar language you perceive the speech sounds uttered and the voice that produces them. How are speech sounds and voice related in a typical auditory experience of hearing speech in a particular voice? And how to conceive of the objects of such experiences? I propose a conception of auditory objects of speech perception as temporally structured mereologically complex individuals. A common experience is that speech sounds and the voice that produces them appear (...) united. I argue that the metaphysical underpinnings of the experienced unity of speech sounds and voices can be explained in terms of the mereological view on sounds and their sources. I also propose a psychological explanation of how we form and individuate the auditory objects of experiences of listening to speech in a particular voice. Voice characteristics enable determining the identity of auditory objects of speech sound perception by making some features of the speech signal stable and predictable. (shrink)