ABSTRACT
A treatment of the philosophy of perception is not among the main purposes of this work, yet my views on this subject do much to set the terms in which my discussion of other issues is couched. It is unfortunate that my views, though in conformity with those of many wise philosophers, some of them still living and philosophically active, are of a kind rather often condemned as outmoded and disproven. What is objected to is not so much any solution I might offer to what seems to me to be the problem of perception, as the very terms in which I set it. For me the problem of perception concerns the answer to these two questions. First, what view is implicit in the thought of the ordinary man as to the relation between the material things he perceives and the sensedata immediately present to him when he does so? Second, is this view correct, and if not, what alternative view may be substituted for it? My answer to the first question is given in the main text, and some hint of my answer to the second. (See the later part of this chapter and Chapter XII, sections 2 and 7.)
