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1. Broad (1923: 240) used instead the term “sensa” (singular“sensum”).

2. Firth (1949–50 [1976: 220]) suggests that, prior to Price,sense-data theorists agreed with Locke and Berkeley in positing flator planar sense data (Firth has vision in mind). See Section 2.1.1 foran exception in Descartes.

3. It is a vexed question to what extent the notion of sensoryimpression or bare sensation is present in various ancient andmedieval authors. Hamlyn (1961: 28) finds that Aristotle “was onthe verge” of distinguishing sensation from perception. Bynum(1987: secs. 4, 8, 9) accepts a standard view on which Aristotledistinguishes between what is passively received by the senses (theproper objects such as color or sound) and subsequent acts of judgmentand interpretation by the common sense and phantasia, which make forperceptions of objects. Gregoric (2007: pt. 3, ch. 5) qualifies thisstandard view but accepts a role for the “common sense” inperceiving objects. Lesses (1998) conveys the Stoic distinctionbetween impression and assent. Løkke (2008) examines the Stoicdistinction between passively received sense impressions and furtherperceptual cognitive acts that yield perception of objects andconceptual knowledge. Robinson (1994: ch. 1.2) finds a dominant themein ancient and medieval theories of perception to be the distinctionbetween a passively received sense impression and an active, perhapsinterpretive, response. Pasnau (1997) and Adriaenssen (2017) arguethat a “veil of species” problem arose in medievalphilosophy, with authors such as Thomas Aquinas being accused bysubsequent theorists of abetting skepticism about our knowledge of theexternal world by making “sensible species” the immediateobjects of perception (even though the latter position was rejected byAquinas). Pasnau (1997: ch. 3.1) suggests that William Crathornposited intervening species that manifest natural instances of red inthe case of our seeing a red thing, so that the intervening medium andthe eye actually turn red (consonant withitem 3 of the Classical Notion). By contrast, most adherents of species theories held that the qualityof red in things causes intervening species that have a diminishedexistence in the medium, eyes, and sensory nerves, which receive thespecies without turning red, allowing the species to cause a visualperception of red as a quality of the distal object. Typical speciestheories thus do not affirm item 3. More generally, the presence of adistinction between the reception of sense impressions and furtherperceptual acts depending on interpretation or judgment is notequivalent to the positing of classical sense data.

4. Lewis (1929), for example, while rejecting traditional sense data(1929: 61), attributes to sensory experience two elements, sensuousand conceptual:

There are, in our cognitive experience, two elements: the immediatedata, such as those of sense, which are presented or given to themind, and a form, construction, or interpretation, which representsthe activity of thought. Recognition of this fact is one of the oldestand most universal of philosophic insights. (1929: 38)

5. Keeling (1968: 177; also, 160) ascribes to Descartes“sensa” that are not ideas but objects of ideas. Firth(1949–50 [1976: 215–216]) finds that Locke and Berkeleyposited sense data. Mundle (1971: 27, 38–44, 64–67, 72)ascribes the concept of sense data to Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, andHume. Yolton (1996: 26–27) notes that these authors have beenread as predicating sensory qualities “of the mind”, whichmatches his conception of what “sense-datum philosophers”maintain. Yolton himself resists this reading (although he finds theposition present in Hume’s philosophical persona, but not hiscommon-sense persona: 1996: 134). Williams (1986) reads Descartes asforcing perceivers to infer the external world from a sensory giventhat shares many of the features of classical sense data. Robinson(1994: ch. 1.4) describes Locke, Berkeley, and Hume as sense-datatheorists; so does Bennett (1971), but in ways that differ from theClassical Notion.

6. The question is debated of whether early moderns such as Descartesand Locke held that sensory ideas are the direct object of perceptionto the exclusion of direct perception of external objects (a versionofitem 1). Adriaenssen (2017: ch. 4.1) describes interpretations in whichDescartes makes ideas the exclusive object of sense perception andthose in which he does not, siding with the latter. He interpretspassages about immediate awareness as describing an immediateawareness of the very ideas that also are direct perceptions ofexternal objects. Rogers (2004) offers a reading of Locke as a directrealist. Newman (2009) argues that both Descartes and Locke adhere toindirect accounts of the perception of external objects.

7. On the contemporary notion of intentionality, which is related toDescartes’ notion, see Jacob (2003 [2019]: sec. 10). The notionof intentional content can include nonconceptual content. Thus, inDescartes, the intentional being of a sensory idea might presentobjects as being a certain way, without including the judgment thatthey are as they appear. This echoes Descartes’ conceptualdistinction between sensation and perception.

8. An adherent of the view that Berkeley attributes red as a property toideas might argue that this passage only indicates thatthemind is not extended and colored, not thatideas are notextended and colored. The point is made difficult because Berkeleynever fully articulates his notion of an idea, so that when he saysthat “qualities are in the mind ... by way of idea”, wecannot appeal to his theory of ideas to aid our interpretation. In thepresent entry, Berkeley is taken to treat ideas and sensations aspresenting appearances by way of intentional content, so that item 3is not ascribed to Berkeley. In virtue of having various contents,sensory ideas present a world as having shaped areas of extensionbearing color, but we need not think of these ideas as being literallyextended and colored. This interpretation of Berkeley is similar toYolton’s (1984: 134–136, 209–210).

9. Berkeley, in his discussions of the variability of sensory ideas,having noted that perceptions of heat and cold, or figure andextension, vary with the state and spatial position of the observerand, accordingly, having concluded that such perceptions exist only inthe mind, observed that, in fact, “this method of arguing dothnot so much prove that there is no extension or colour in an outwardobject as that we do not know which is the true extension orcolor” (Principles, pt 1, art. 15; see alsoThreeDialogues, First Dialogue [2008: 188]). Hume replied to thischallenge to arguments from variability atTreatise, I.4.4.4,arguing that if some impressions presented external things directlyand others through a mental variant, there should be some phenomenaldifference between the different types of perception; there beingnone, if some instances of sensory qualities are in the mind, all ofthose that are phenomenally similar should be as well. A relatedargument is found in Price (Sec. 2.2.3, below).

10. Interestingly, while affirming a material entity (the retinal image)as the perceptual datum, his position also preserved the idea thatperception of the distant material object requires a furtherpsychological act. In this sense, he does not violate the spirit ofitem 5 of the Classical Notion. But the retinal image, as a physical pattern of light, is notprivate, hence Hamilton does not endorseitem 7.

11. In fact, the term had appeared in British and American philosophy,e.g., Sidgwick 1883 and James 1887; see Hatfield 2013a:951–952.

12. The next three sections draw on research reported in Hatfield 2013aand 2013b.

13. Moore introduced the concept of sense data without the term in“The Nature and Reality of Objects of Perception”(1905–06). The paper offers a minimum characterization of whatis “actually observed” or “directly perceived”in experience, which includes color patches and their spatialrelations (1905–06: 101).

14. It differs from standard representative realism in not regarding therepresenting datum as mental.

15. In offering a fuller account of physical theory in theAnalysisof Matter, Russell did not alter his basic position (1927: 10,382), but he provided a finer-grained analysis of the unsensedmomentary particulars that occupy places without perceivers. Thesemomentary particulars, whose intrinsic properties are reached throughanalogy with perceived momentary particulars, are projected to exhibitstructures as described in physical theory—the hypotheticalentities of physics, such as electrons, being constructions from theseparticulars together with the sensed ones (1927: 227, 271, ch. 38).For additional discussion and references, see Banks 2014 (ch. 4).

16. Price (1932: 218–220) holds that many visual sense data arethree dimensional and he effectively endorses size and shape constancyfor objects near at hand, out to a “few feet”.

17. In his statement of the argument, Price (1932: 32) uses a cricketball as his example; I’ve altered it to a soccer ball toaccommodate a broader audience.

18. Price (1932: 30–32) also offers a simpler version of theargument (without continuity), which moves frompremise 4 to the assertion that non-illusory experiences, as perceptualexperiences, do not differ phenomenally from illusory experiences, andthen uses9 and 10 to reach11. This simpler formulation is closer to Hume’s version ofVariation (see note 9).

19. A good sense of the place of sense data in epistemology withattention to implications from psychology can be found in Firth(1949–50); Robinson (1994) also offers an historicaloverview.

20. Robinson (1994: 32) has labelled this the “PhenomenalPrinciple”, which he states as follows:

If there sensibly appears to a subject to be something which possessesa particular sensible quality then there is something of which thesubject is aware which does possess that sensible quality,

and ultimately endorses (1994: ch. 7).

21. Firth (1949–50 [1976: 219–222]) groups James and theGestalt psychologists with the American philosopher John Dewey asupholders of a “percept theory”, according to whichperceptual consciousness is unified in its awareness of an externalobject, rejecting on phenomenal grounds the splitting of sensoryconsciousness into sense data and material objects.

22. Note that in his investigation of the composite nature of whitelight, Newton was guided by the perceived qualities of light (red,yellow, etc.). Having separated white light into homogeneal lights ofvarious colors, he posited light rays differing in color andrefractive properties (Newton 1718: bk I, pt I, def. 8; prop. 2). Ashe explained, the rays themselves were not colored but were called“red-making” (etc.) because of the color experiences theycaused in observers (1718: bk I, pt II, prop. 2, Definition).Observations based on those experiences supported his findings aboutthe relations between colors and refractions; he had no access tospectrophotometers or the like.

23. Jackson 1977 (ch. 4) seeks to undermine appearance theories. If thatargument were successful, it would block the particular criticism ofJackson’s sense-data theory noted here.

24. Empirical support for Price’s claim for shape can be found inHoward et al. (2014), and, more generally, for size constancy, inGranrud (2012) and Hatfield (2016). Nonetheless, the interpretation ofphenomenal and cognitive factors in reports of shape and sizeconstancy remains contested (see Wagner 2012).