Perceiving Particulars

Abstract

Causalists contend that you see a specific object (rather than a lookalike, or no object at all) because that object sits at the beginning of an appropriate causal chain that terminates in your visual experience. We argue that neither standard causalists nor their non‐causalist opponents can adequately accommodate a striking asymmetry between perception and thought. The asymmetry concerns the conditions under which a thought or sensory experience can inherit its object from another thought or sensory experience. Accommodating this asymmetry instead requires adopting a new and radical causalist view with important implications for the metaphysics of sensory experience.