Aesthetics is concerned with the nature of art (whether visual, literary, dramatic, or in some other medium) and the way in which art is experienced. Two principal related issues, therefore, are whether there is a distinctive form of aesthetic experience—to be contrasted with other forms of perceptual experience—and how our aesthetic judgments are to be distinguished from other forms of evaluation.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge, including its nature and its extent, and of justification (that is, whether a belief is formed in a valid way to justify its being deemed “knowledge”). Epistemology attempts to distinguish knowledge from merely true belief.