This paper deals with one aspect of W. P. Alston's Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (199 1),1 viz. the role 'interpretation' is allowed to play in the different species of perception. Before addressing this topic directly, I will give a very rough overview of the project Alston has set himself. The central thesis of his book is that experiential awareness of God, or, as Alston prefers to say, the 'perception' of God, makes an important contribution to the grounds of religious belief. To be sure, there may be, and in fact are, various different grounds of religious belief, such as revelation or authority, but the perception of God is one among them. By virtue of perceiving God as being or doing so-and-so, a person can become justified in holding certain kinds of beliefs about God. Alston names these beliefs 'manifestation' beliefs (M-beliefs). They are to be distinguished from beliefs about God's actions in history, which occupy a central place in a historical religion like Christianity. So, the epistemology of religious beliefs encompasses more than the justification of M-beliefs that are based on the perception of God. But on the other hand, it encompasses that too. Alston speaks of the perception of God and he takes 'perception' to be a generic notion to which the non-sensory perception of God belongs, along with sense perception (seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching). And perhaps there are other species that fall under this generic concept of perception, maybe something like 'moral' perception (the non-sensory perception or apprehension of norms or values). Alston does not dwell on this point, but instead spells out at considerable length the analogies between the perception of God 'mystical perception', as he calls it on the one hand, and sense perception on the other. . Now, what is characteristic of this generic phenomenon of 'perceiving'? When does something count as a perception? Definitive of perception, says Alston, is 'that something (or so it seems to the subject) presents itself to the subject's awareness as so-and-so' (p. 36). The hallmark of perception is