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William Alston's epistemology of religious experience

A ‘reformed’ Reformed epistemology?

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Notes

  1. Eds. Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983). Hereafter,FR.

  2. For a representative collection of his work in these areas, seeEpistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge [Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1980]; hereafter,EJ.

  3. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1991). Hereafter,PG.

  4. ‐Jerusalem and Athens Revisited’, inFR, pp. 192–218. We should note that Plantinga and Wolterstorff do not advance their views without reference to current epistemological theories and developments. Their views are motivated particularly by the denouement of what they call ‘classical’ foundationalism.

  5. Ibid., pp. 199–200. This is not to claim thatanyone who holds that belief in God can be basic is also committed to the view that denying the existence of God is a rationalization or an indication of improper functioning. To reiterate the point, Mavrodes is simply pointing to certain consequences of the way some Reformed thinkers explicate their proposals.

  6. Mavrodes, ‘Jerusalem and Athens Revisited’, p. 198. Mavrodes gleans this particular suggestion from Wolterstorff.

  7. ‘Introduction’, inFR, pp. 7–8.

  8. ‘Reason and Belief in God’, inFR, p. 63.

  9. For an example of this kind of negative apologetics, see Alvin Plantinga,The Nature of Necessity (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1989), Ch. 9.

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  10. ‘Jerusalem and Athens Revisited’, pp. 200–201. Mavrodes does not claim that negative apologeticsis dispensable. His claim is rather a conditional one:if there is abundant evidence available proclaiming the existence of God andif people deny God's existence and ignore this evidence because of a rebellious attitude, then it seems thatboth demands for enough evidence and demands for answers to objections to theism would be rationalizations (and not reasons) for atheism and/or agnosticism.

  11. For a critique of Plantinga's approach to apologetics that highlights similar features, see Dewey Hoitenga, Jr.,Faith and Reason from Plato to Plantinga: An Introduction to Reformed Epistemology (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1991), especially Ch. 8.

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  12. Mavrodes, ‘Jerusalem and Athens Revisited’, p. 198.

  13. PG, p. 197.

  14. PG, p. 197.

  15. PG, p. 1.

  16. For Alston's arguments against deontological concepts of epistemic justification (where justification is viewed as a matter of duty, obligation, or some other similar concept), see ‘Concepts of Epistemic Justification’ and ‘The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification’, inEJ. For a critique of Alston's arguments, see Paul Moser,Knowledge and Evidence (New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 38–41.

  17. PG, p. 73.

  18. PG, p. 69.

  19. PG, p. 74. In other words, P(p/g) > 0.5 is a necessary condition for epistemic justification but not a sufficient one. To be sufficient, the value of P would have to be much higher than 0.5 — though it is difficult to specify how high it must be.

  20. PG, p. 71.

  21. PG, p. 1.

  22. PG, p. 102.

  23. PG, p. 103 (Alston's emphasis).

  24. PG, p. 108 (Alston's emphasis).

  25. Alston (‘Epistemic Circularity’, inEJ) gives the following definition for ‘basicness’: ‘O is an (epistemologically) basic source of belief =df Any (otherwise) cogent argument for the reliability of O will use premises drawn from O’ (p. 326).

  26. PG, p. 289.

  27. PG, pp. 306–307.

  28. ‘In Search of the Foundations of Theism’,Faith and Philosophy 2 (October 1985): 469–486.

  29. PG, p. 144.

  30. PG, p. 145.

  31. PG, pp. 168–177.

  32. PG, p. 178–180.

  33. PG, p. 181.

  34. PG, pp. 234–238.

  35. PG, 238–248.

  36. PG, p. 255.

  37. PG, pp. 264–266.

  38. PG, p. 270.

  39. PG, p. 276 (emphasis added).

  40. PG, p. 276.

  41. PG, p. 176, footnote 46 (Alston's emphasis).

  42. PG, p. 149 (Alston's emphasis).

  43. PG, p. 176, footnote 46. Presumably, we can make similar points about (2**)(a) and (2**)(b).

  44. PG, p. 252. Alston (PG, p. 304) also makes this comment: ‘The final test of the Christian scheme comes fromtrying it out in one's life, testing the promises the scheme tells us God has made, following the way enjoined on us by the Church and seeing whether it leads to the new life of the Spirit’ (emphasis added).

  45. PG, pp. 253–254 (emphasis added except where otherwise noted). For Alston, CMP's most prominent form of significant self-support is this sanctification that participants experience. Clearly it is this aspect of CMP that he cites as saving CMP from epistemic shipwreck in the vast sea of religious pluralism. The only other form of significant self-support that CMP receives (or at least the only other form Alston discusses) is the way in which (putative)perceptions of God conform to the background beliefs (PG, p. 251). But of course this too involvesemploying CMP, so all the points I will be making also apply to this form of significant self-support as well.

  46. PG, p. 283.

  47. PG, p. 283 (emphasis added). I assume that Alston is claiming that it is not rational for someone outside of a particular doxastic practice to accept the testimony from someone in that practice (i.e., presumably when the content of the testimony concerns matters internal to the practice) unless the outsider already (justifiably?) believes that it is rational to engage in that practice. (For the rest of the paper, I will ignore the possibility of determining the actualreliability of a practice because presumably this would be much more difficult.)

  48. PG, p. 108 (Alston's emphasis).

  49. PG, p. 254.

  50. PG, p. 270.

  51. PG, p. 148.

  52. PG, p. 177.

  53. PG, p. 1.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, 336 O'Shaugnessy Hall, 46556, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA

    Kevin Meeker

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Meeker, K. William Alston's epistemology of religious experience. Int J Philos Relig 35, 89–110 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01318327

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