theory of appearing the theory that to perceive an object is simply for that object to appear (present itself) to one as being a certain way, e.g., looking round or like a rock, smelling vinegary, sounding raucous, or tasting bitter. Nearly everyone would accept this formulation on some interpretation. But the theory takes this to be a rock-bottom characterization of perception, and not further analyzable. It takes ‘appearing to subject S as so-and-so’ as a basic, irreducible relation, one readily identifiable in experience but not subject to definition in other terms. The theory preserves the idea that in normal perception we are directly aware of objects in the physical environment, not aware of them through non-physical sense-data, sensory impressions, or other intermediaries. When a tree looks to me a certain way, it is the tree and nothing else of which I am directly aware. That involves ‘having’ a sensory experience, but that experience just consists of the tree’s looking a certain way to me. After enjoying a certain currency early in this century the theory was largely abandoned under the impact of criticisms by Price, Broad, and Chisholm. The most widely advertised difficulty is this. What is it that appears to the subject in completely hallucinatory experience? Perhaps the greatest strength of the theory is its fidelity to what perceptual experience seems to be.
See also PERCEPTIO. W.P.A.