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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
William Alston's Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991) is a most significant contribution to the philosophy of religion. The product of 50 years' reflection on its topic (xi), this work provides a very thorough explication and defence of what Alston calls the ‘mystical perceptual practice’ (MP) – the practice of forming beliefs about the Ultimate on the basis of putative ‘direct experiential awareness’ thereof (pp. 103, 258). Alston argues, in particular, for the (epistemic) rationality of engaging in the Christian form of MP (CMP). On his view, those who participate in CMP are (in the absence of specific overriding considerations from within CMP) justified in forming beliefs as they do because their practice is ‘socially established’, has a ‘functioning overrider system’ and a ‘significant degree of self-support’; and because of the ‘lack of sufficient reasons to take the practice as unreliable’ (p. 224).
1 Further references to this book will be made parenthetically in the body of the paper.
2 A practice is socially established, for Alston, if it is ‘established by socially monitored learning and socially shared’ (p. 163). It has a functioning overrider system if there is a ‘background system of beliefs against which a particular perceptually supported belief [generated by that practice] can be checked for possible overriders’ (p. 79). It enjoys a significant degree of self-support if the results achieved by engaging in it and using its ‘fruits’ are best explained by supposing it to be reliable (p. 174). And it is reliable if it ‘will or would yield mostly true beliefs’ (p. 104).
3 Alston is, as he puts it (p. 270), carrying on this discussion on a ‘worst case scenario’, endeavouring to show that even if that scenario accurately represents the truth (which, he suggests, may not be the case), the problem of religious diversity this objection poses can be resolved.
4 It should be noted that Alston concedes in section vi of the chapter (for reasons that are not entirely clear) that religious diversity does to some extent reduce the epistemic status of beliefs in a given religion, but he claims that the reduction is not such as to render it irrational to engage in MP (p. 275).
5 Note that I am not suggesting that justification is closed under known entailment – that my being justified in believing some proposition p is sufficient for my being justified in believing those of p's entailments known to me. I am affirming, instead, the more modest claim that by being justified in believing p, I have a justification for believing its known entailments – where having a justification for believing a proposition q implies knowing (or justifiably believing) propositions that constitute (sufficient) support for q, but does not imply that any other condition necessary for being justified in believing q is satisfied. The stronger claim is perhaps questionable (could I not, for example, be justified in believing p, know that p entails q, and yet fail to believe q on the basis of p & (p → q)?), but surely the weaker one is not; and the weaker one is all we need for our purposes.
6 For a recent and interesting development of such a move, see Pollock, John L., Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (London: Hutchinson, 1986), pp. 4–6.Google Scholar
7 And in this it seems to beg the question.
8 I am grateful to Terence Penelhum, William Alston and Philip Quinn for their comments on a penultimate draft of this paper.
