Thisness and Visual Objects

old_uid14926
titleThisness and Visual Objects
start_date2015/01/15
schedule10h-12h
onlineno
summaryAccording to the traditional view on visual objects, the perceptual system represents objects in the environment 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 visual system can “pick out” objects merely as numerically different ‘this’ and ‘that’ in abstraction from their qualities. In the presentation, I consider whether philosophical and psychological arguments justify the rejection of the ‘bundle’ view of visual objects and show that it is needed to postulate an additional, purely individualizing element, known in the philosophical tradition as ‘thisness’, within the visual objects’ structures. I argue that while most of the arguments are not sufficient to justify the presence of ‘thisness’, the phenomenon of asymmetry of errors observed in Multiple Object Tracking experiments strongly suggests that reference to ‘thisness’ is needed to provide a proper identity criterion for visual objects.
responsiblesGiardino