Direct and Indirect Realism - The Adverbial Theory

The Adverbial Theory

The above argument invites the conclusion of a perceptual dualism that raises the issue of how and whether the object can be known by experience. The adverbial theory is that this dualism is a dualism of objects, perceptual experience being a more direct experience of objects of a different sort; sense-data. Perceptual dualism implies "both an act of awareness (or apprehension) and an object of apprehension or awareness; the idea or sense-datum. The fundamental idea of the adverbial theory is that there is no need for such objects and the problems that they bring with them (such as whether they are physical or mental or somehow neither). Instead the occurrence of a mental act or mental state with its own intrinsic character is enough to account for the character of immediate experience."

According to the adverbial theory, when, for example, I experience a silver elliptical shape (as when viewing a coin from an angle) I am in a certain specific state of sensing or sensory awareness or of being appeared to: I sense in a certain manner or am appeared to in a certain way, and that specific manner of sensing or of being appeared to accounts for the content of my experience: I am in a certain distinctive sort of experiential state. There need be no object or entity of any sort that is literally silver and elliptical in the material world or in the mind. I experience a silver and elliptical shape because an object or entity that literally has that color and shape is directly before my mind. But the nature of these entities and the way in which they are related to the mind are difficult to understand. The adverbial theory has the advantage of being metaphysically simpler, avoiding issues about the nature of sense-data, but we gain no real understanding of the nature of the states in question or of how exactly they account for the character of immediate experience."