 Because sense-datum theories are most plausible when applied to intransitive bodily sensations, many philosophers, who believe that a naturalist account of ordinary perception can be given without introducing sense-data, have attempted to understand pains and other bodily sensations as species of ordinary perception (exteroception). The so-called perceptual theories of pain are advanced and defended on the hope that pains and other intransitive bodily sensations, contrary to first appearances, are species of information gathering which work on the same principles that govern other sensory modalities for which a successful direct realist account can be given.