 In the second volume of the Nature of Existence, McTaggart endorsed the view that we never directly perceive material objects, but rather infer material objects from what we directly  perceive.[23] So, on McTaggart’s view, strictly speaking perception never represents objects as being material  objects.[24] Perception, however, does represent the existence of sense-data. But McTaggart also denies that anything is a  sense-datum.[25] However, apparent perceptions of sense-data are really perceptions of something, namely persons, parts of persons, or sums of person-parts. So my perceptions do succeed in correctly representing the existence of something other than myself, although my perceptions grossly misrepresent the nature of what is perceived.