A Defense of Sense-Data

Abstract

In recent years, the sense-datum account of visual experience has fallen into disfavor. The primary reason for its demise is the widespread belief that the adverbial approach provides an alternative theory which accommodates the data of visual experience as well as the sense-datum theory but has the advantages of being a simpler theory and one which avoids some puzzling problems faced by its competitor. It is only recently, however, that the adverbial approach has been developed in sufficient detail so that its claim to superiority can be evaluated. The two philosophers who are primarily responsible for articulating the theory are R. M. Chisholm and Wilfrid Sellars. A careful examination of their views, however, reveals serious deficiencies.' Michael Tye has recently attempted to elaborate the adverbial approach in a manner which remedies the shortcomings of his predecessors.2 One of the chief virtues of Tye's paper is that it recognizes that the adverbial approach can be elaborated in a number of different ways. Tye goes on to distinguish a number of-different adverbial approaches and argues that two of them provide viable alternatives to the sense-datum theory. My primary purpose is to show that neither of these adverbial approaches is successful. The argument of this paper provides further support for the more general thesis that there presently exists no viable alternative to the sense-datum theory.