Perception as a Source of Justification of Belief

Abstract

Most contemporary theories of the justification of empirical belief have ruled out sensory perception as a source of justification. The arguments favoring this position, however, have not sufficiently addressed the central points that Husserl has made in support of his claim that sensory perception is a source of justification. Husserl’s discussion undermines one of the main arguments used to deny perception an originating role, namely the argument whose grounds are the epistemic regress problem. When the phenomenological analyses which Husserl uses to support his position are extended beyond the point to which he developed them in order to bring out the role of future time-consciousness in verification, as this article does, there results an approach to epistemic justification which has promise as a rival to the coherentist and naturalistic theories that have become prevalent in recent times.