ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with epistemological issues concerning perception. It focuses on the "justified belief" side of the above disjunction, bringing in questions about perceptual knowledge only when dealing with a position that is specially concerned with knowledge. The epistemological literature mostly treats "justified" as an absolute term. Philosophers have been concerned both with the epistemology of perceptual belief and the nature of perception. A coherentist will have no use for the idea that perceptual beliefs can be justified by experience, whereas those who take a more "local" view of justification are free to allow this. This difference in general epistemology makes an enormous difference to the epistemology of perception. Some philosophers think that all cases of perceptual recognition exhibit this mixed character. The most important divergence between these orientations concerns certain truth-conducive conditions which a subject cannot be expected to ascertain just on reflection.
