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The University of Southampton
PhilosophyPart of Humanities

Justification - The veil of perception

You’ve claimed that our beliefs are ultimately justified by how things appear to us in perception.

One worry about this view is that it places a ‘veil of perception’ between us and the world.

It seems that we have no way of independently verifying that our perceptual appearances are accurate. But how can an appearance give you justification if you have no independent reason to think that it corresponds to how the world is?

 

For a more complete guide to this topic, you might consult the following entries from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
“Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic Justification”, by Richard Fumerton (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-foundational/)
“Coherentist Theories of Epistemic Justification”, by Erik Olsson (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-coherence/)
Also recommended are the following entries from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
“Foundationalism”, by Ted Poston (http://www.iep.utm.edu/found-ep/)
“Coherentism in Epistemology”, by Peter Murphy (http://www.iep.utm.edu/coherent/)
“Infinitism in Epistemology”, by Peter Klein and John Turri (http://www.iep.utm.edu/inf-epis/)
At Southampton, we run various modules that address these and similar issues, including Knowledge and Mind, Epistemology, Scepticism, and The Ethics of Belief. Many of our staff undertake research in this and related areas of epistemology, such as Dr. Kurt Sylvan, Dr. Genia Schönbaumsfeld, and Dr. Conor McHugh.
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