Predictive processing and foundationalism about perception

Abstract Predictive processing accounts of perception (PP) assume that perception does not work in a purely bottom-up fashion but also uses acquired knowledge to make top-down predictions about the incoming sensory signals. This provides a challenge for foundationalist accounts of perception according to which perceptual beliefs are epistemically basic, that is, epistemically independent from other beliefs. If prior beliefs rationally influence which perceptual beliefs we come to accept, then foundationalism about perception appears untenable. I review several ways in which foundationalism might be reconciled with PP from both an internalist and externalist perspective, and argue that an externalist foundationalism provides the best match with PP.