Predicting ordinary objects into the world

Abstract

Ordinary objects are experienced to endure over space and time, to not be collocated with each other, to be composed of proper parts, and to survive the loss of some of their parts. These qualities are on the one hand difficult to reconcile for theorists of perception and on the other hand pose a variety of problems when considered in isolation. Relying on the theoretical framework of predictive processing, this paper argues that we can use the category of a robust predictive process to conceptualize qualities such as persistence and compositionality in a unified manner. Traditional problems concerning the structural properties of ordinary objects, such as the question of when two objects compose, can then be reformulated using this new category.