Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience

by William P. Alston

Overview

In Perceiving God, William P. Alston offers a clear and provocative account of the epistemology of religious experience. He argues that the "perception of God"—his term for direct experiential awareness of God—makes a major contribution to the grounds of religious belief. Surveying the variety of reported direct experiences of God among laypersons and famous mystics, Alston demonstrates that a person can be justified in holding certain beliefs about God on the basis of mystical experience. Through the perception that God is sustaining one in being, for example, one can justifiably believe that God is indeed sustaining one in being.Alston offers a detailed discussion of our grounds for taking sense perception and other sources of belief—including introspection, memory, and mystical experience—to be reliable and to confer justification. He then uses this epistemic framework to explain how our perceptual beliefs about God can be justified. Alston carefully addresses objections to his chief claims, including problems posed by non-Christian religious traditions. He also examines the way in which mystical perception fits into the larger picture of grounds for religious belief.Suggesting that religious experience, rather than being a purely subjective phenomenon, has real cognitive value, Perceiving God will spark intense debate and will be indispensable reading for those interested in philosophy of religion, epistemology, and philosophy of mind, as well as for theologians.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801425974
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	12/12/1991
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile:	1450L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

The late William P. Alston was Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Syracuse University. His books include A Realist Conception of Truth, Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meanings, The Reliability of Sense Perception, and Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience, all from Cornell.

What People are Saying About This

Alvin Plantinga

This splendid book is the fruit of decades of mature and penetrating reflection. As you would expect, it takes discussion of the topics surrounding experience of God to a new level of insight and penetration.

Robert Audi

A first-rate and truly important piece of work, Perceiving God is both a signal contribution to the philosophy of religion and a powerful treatise in epistemology. The book is philosophically rigorous and admirably lucid. It is in my judgment the leading contemporary work on the epistemic status of religious experience.

Editorial Reviews

The elegant and comprehensive argument in this book is the definitive version of a position Alston has been developing over the past decade. It is arguably the most important investigation of the epistemology of mysticism from a sophisticated analytical-pragmatic perspective since James's Varieties.

Theological Studies

The elegant and comprehensive argument in this book is the definitive version of a position Alston has been developing over the past decade. It is arguably the most important investigation of the epistemology of mysticism from a sophisticated analytical-pragmatic perspective since James's Varieties.

-- "Theological Studies"

From the Publisher