William P. Alston

Background

William P. Alston (1921–2009) was an American analytic philosopher, longest associated with Syracuse University, and a founder — with Plantinga — of the analytic renaissance in philosophy of religion. His signature contribution is doxastic-practice epistemology: belief-forming practices (sense perception, memory, and, he argues, the Christian mystical practice) "cannot be justified non-circularly"; our only warrant for trusting any of them is that they are "firmly established, interwoven with other practices... and have 'stood the test of time'" (SEP 'Religious Experience' §3). If that is all that can be said for perception, parity demands the same status for the Christian practice of forming beliefs from religious experience — the argument of Perceiving God (1991).

On religious diversity, Alston is candid where others bluster: diversity genuinely "diminishes justification." But absent any "commonly accepted procedure for settling disputes," it is not "irrational for one to remain an exclusivist"; indeed the "only rational course" is "to sit tight" with beliefs that have "served so well in guiding [one's] activity in the world" (Alston 1988, 442–446, quoted at SEP 'Religious Diversity' §4).

Positions held in this wiki

• Religious Pluralism — the doxastic-practice half of the Alston–Plantinga defense the article assesses as strong. Alston concedes the defense "might be equally available to other religious practices" (SEP 'Religious Experience' §3) — the exportability concession that keeps the debate live.
• He is also an early developer of the representativeness critique within skeptical theism (Alston 1991, 1996, at SEP 'Skeptical Theism' §2.2), noted in The Evidential Problem of Evil.

Key works in our corpus

Corpus gap: Perceiving God and the 1988 diversity paper are copyright-locked; the views are reconstructed from the SEP entries 'Religious Experience', 'Religious Diversity (Pluralism)', and 'Skeptical Theism' (all in corpus).

Principal critics

• John Hick — the pluralist hypothesis: rival practices are equally veridical responses to one Real, so "sitting tight" mistakes cultural conditioning for warrant.
• David Hume — the skeptical-parity ancestor: contrary religious testimonies mutually destroy.
• Philip Quinn — the weak-conciliatory reply: sitting tight is rational but so is revising toward a thinner, more pluralistic faith (Quinn 2000, at SEP 'Religious Diversity' §4).

See also

• Alvin Plantinga — the warrant-theoretic partner of the particularist defense.
• William James — the earlier experiential-parity tradition Alston's practice theory disciplines.
• Michael Bergmann — heir of Alston's skeptical-theist arguments.
• Paul K. Moser — an alternative, guidance-based model of religious experience.