This book grew out of the lectures that I prepared for my students in
epis- temology at SUNY College at Brockport beginning in 1974. The
conception of the problem of perception and the interpretation of the
sense-datum theory and its supporting arguments that are developed in
Chapters One through Four originated in these lectures. The rest of the
manuscript was first written during the 1975-1976 academic year, while I
held an NEH Fellowship in Residence for College Teachers at Brown
University, and during the ensuing summer, under a SUNY Faculty Research
Fellowship. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to the National
Endowment for the Humanities and to the Research Foundation of the State
University of New York for their support of my research. I am grateful
to many former students, colleagues, and friends for their stimulating,
constructive comments and criticisms. Among the former stu- dents whose
reactions and objections were most helpful are Richard Motroni, Donald
Callen, Hilary Porter, and Glenn Shaikun. Among my colleagues at
Brockport, I wish to thank Kevin Donaghy and Jack Glickman for their
comments and encouragement. I am indebted to Eli Hirsch for reading and
commenting most helpfully on the entire manuscript, to Peter M. Brown
for a useful correspondence concerning key arguments in Chapters Five
and Seven, to Keith Lehrer for a criticism of one of my arguments that
led me to make some important revisions, and to Roderick M.