Abstract
According to the traditional view, visual objects can be characterized as bundles of features and locations. This initially plausible idea is contested within the contemporary psychology and philosophy of perception, where it is claimed that the visual system can represent objects as merely ‘this’ or ‘that’, in abstraction from their qualities. In this paper, I consider whether philosophical and psychological arguments connected with the rejection of the ‘bundle’ view of visual objects show that it is needed to postulate an additional, purely individualizing characteristic, known in the philosophical tradition as ‘thisness’, within the structure of visual objects. I argue that the phenomenon of asymmetry of errors observed in Multiple Object Tracking experiments strongly suggests that reference to ‘thisness’ is needed if we are to formulate a proper diachronic identity criterion of visual objects.
Highlights
According to the traditional view, visual objects can be characterized as bundles of features and locations
An individuator’s being unavoidable means that any identity criteria that are not constituted by its identity are not valid: (4) Characteristics belonging to a category E are unavoidable individuators of objects belonging to a category O iff (I) they are individuators as specified in (2) and (II) there is no valid identity criterion for O-objects that is not constituted by the identity of E- characteristics
The above argumentation relies on the assumption that in Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) experiments there is an asymmetry of errors
Summary
Philosophers have offered various accounts of thisness, characterizing it as an individualizing feature, an individual essence, or an unqualitiative subject. I use a more general account that abstracts from the above variants, focusing on the individualizing aspect of thisness. Speaking, by thisness I understand a characteristic of an object that is a pure and unavoidable individuator
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