Online research in philosophy

" In a book that seeks to shift the ground of debate within theory of knowledge, William P. Alston finds that the century-lo.

In this paper, William Alston's argument from religious experience in Perceiving God is characterized and assessed as an indirect analogy-argument. Such arguments, I propose, should establish two similarities between sense perception (SP) and religious experience (CMP): a structural and a functional. I argue that Alston neglects functional similarity, and that SP and CMP actually perform different functions within the practices they belong to. Alston's argument is therefore significantly weaker than generally assumed. Finally, I argue that regardless of whether an increased emphasis on fruits could strengthen indirect analogy-arguments or not, this is not a strategy available to Alston as long as he retains his commitments to religious exclusivism and a religious metaphysical realism. (Published Online July 10 2006).

Analogy arguments from religious experience attempt to establish a direct analogy between sense perception and certain kinds of religious experience construed in terms of a perceptual model. C. B. Martin challenges traditional analogy arguments from religious experience by contending that there is a disanalogy between both kinds of experience due to the fact that there is a society of testing and checkup procedures available to sense perception that is not available to religious experience. William P. Alston presents his own analogy argument from religious experience in Perceiving God. Alston establishes an analogy between sense perception and religious experience by arguing that certain kinds of religious experience can be construed in terms of a perceptual model. In doing so, Alston maintains that sense perception and certain kinds of religious experience that count as perception?mystical perception?produce justified beliefs in very similar ways. Thus, Alston defuses Martin's objection by arguing that both kinds of perception have testing and checkup procedures available to them, procedures which are necessary to defeat the prima facie justification of perceptual beliefs. However, I argue that because there are apparently inconsistent core beliefs in the practice of forming beliefs on the basis of Christian mystical perception, the analogy between sense perception and mystical perception is threatened. In order for Alston's analogy argument to be successful, he must address this problem.

William Alston’s argument against the deontological conception of epistemic justification is a classic—and much debated—piece of contemporary epistemology. At the heart of Alston’s argument, however, lies a very simple mistake which, surprisingly, appears to have gone unnoticed in the vast literature now devoted to the argument. After having shown why some of the standard responses to Alston’s argument don’t work, we elucidate the mistake and offer a hypothesis as to why it has escaped attention.

William Alston’s argument against Deontological Theories of Epistemic Justification constitutes a classic$and much debated$piece of contemporary epistemology. At the heart of Alston’s argument, however, lies a very simple mistake which, surprisingly, appears to have gone unnoticed in the vast literature now devoted to the argument. After having shown why the standard response to Alston’s argument doesn’t work, we diagnose the mistake and offer a plausible hypothesis as to why it has remained concealed for so long.

In this paper I examine William Alston's work on the epistemology of religious belief, focusing on the threat to the epistemic status of Christian belief presented by awareness of religious diversity. I argue that Alston appears to misunderstand the epistemic significance of the ‘practical rationality’ of the Christian mystical practice. I suggest that this error is due to a more fundamental misunderstanding, regarding the significance of practical rationality, in Alston's ‘doxastic practice’ approach to epistemology; an error that leads to arbitrariness among the class of rational doxastic practices. I suggest how one might remedy this weakness, with an additional, epistemic, criterion that rational doxastic practices must satisfy.

The paper aims to move the debate between Alston and critics of Perceiving God forward by asking if Alston’s book establishes a case for a realist interpretation of Christian mystical perception. It is argued that critical comments on Alston’s paper in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research by Richard Gale point, when reinterpreted, to a crucial disparity between mystical perception and sense perception. A realist interpretation of the former is not prima facie warranted but a realist interpretation of the latter is. Alston confuses the question of whether mystical perception yields true outputs with the question of its realist status.

William Alston has articulated a powerful defence of the claim that mystical perception generates prima facie justified beliefs about God. At the heart of his defence is the claim that mystical perception is 'innocent until proven guilty'; that is, Alston claims that the practice of forming beliefs on the basis of putative perceptions of God should be accorded the same presumptive innocence we accord to other standard ways of forming beliefs like sense perception, memory and introspection. But Alston employs a strategy for defending mystical perception that seems to obviate the possibility of criticizing mystical perception and thus that renders otiose Alston's claim that that practice is innocent only until proven guilty. I argue that this appearance is deceptive; Alston's strategy does not render effective criticism of mystical perception unreasonably difficult. I further argue that granting the legitimacy of Alston's strategy is essential to a fair, measured criticism of mystical perception.

John Turri claims to have refuted the main argument of William Alston’s Perceiving God. He contests Alston’s claim that “for any established doxastic practice it is rational to suppose that it is reliable.” I show that Turri has misinterpreted Alston at several key points, and that his refutation of Alston’s argument fails.

This paper clarifies and evaluates a premise of William Alston’s argument in Perceiving God. The premise in question: if it is practically rational to engage ina doxastic practice, then it is epistemically rational to suppose that said practice is reliable. I first provide the background needed to understand how thispremise fits into Alston’s main argument. I then present Alston’s main argument, and proceed to clarify, criticize, modify, and ultimately reject Alston’s argument for the premise in question. Without this premise, Alston’s main argument fails.