The Epistemology of Perception

Of all the problems attending the sense-datum theory, arguably the deepest is that it draws a veil of appearances over the external world. Today, the sense-datum theory is widely regarded as an overreaction to the problem of hallucination. Instead of accounting for hallucination in terms of intentional relations to sense data, it is often thought that we should account for it in terms of intentional relations to properties. In this paper, however, I argue that in the versions that might address the problem of hallucination, this newer account is guilty of a vice similar to sense-datum theory's: it draws a veil of abtracta over the concrete world. Sense-Datum Theory One of the most ill-reputed theories in the philosophy of mind, perhaps the whole of philosophy, is the sense-datum theory of perception (see 1 More precisely: (1) For any perceptual experience E, (a) what makes E the perceptual experience it is (rather than another experience) is that E bears an intentional relation to the sense data it does (rather than to other sense data), and (b) what makes E a perceptual experience at all (rather than a non-perceptual and/or non-experiential state) is that E bears an intentional relation to sense data. Thus the identity and existence conditions of perceptual experiences are determined, on this view, by the sense data the experiences are intentionally related to