 Maclachlan’s story is noteworthy partly because he uses hearing and sounds to motivate a general claim about perception. He claims that what seems perfectly intuitive and obvious in the case of sounds and hearing—that something other than material objects are the direct objects of hearing; that the direct objects of audition are internal; and that we indirectly hear things in the world by hearing their sounds—helps us to discover what is true of all perception. According to Maclachlan, for instance, seeing involves direct awareness of sensations of patterns of light, while surfaces and ordinary objects figure only indirectly and thanks to inference among the intentional objects of sight. The case of sounds and audition is important because it reveals that perceiving involves awareness of sensations in the first instance, and of the external world only indirectly.