Alston's Epistemology of Religious Belief and The

Religious Studies 37, 59–74 Printed in the United Kingdom # 2001 Cambridge University Press

Alston’s epistemology of religious belief and the problem of religious diversity

julian willard

Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS

Abstract: 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.

Introduction

In Perceiving God, William Alston sets out in comprehensive detail the results of his fifty years of thought on the topic of religious epistemology.1 He seeks to provide an explication and defence of the ‘mystical perceptual practice’ (MP) – the practice of forming beliefs about the Ultimate on the basis of putative ‘direct experiential awareness’ thereof. And he argues, in particular, for the 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 to be unreliable’. Alston recognizes that ‘the problem of religious diversity’ presents the sternest problem for his position; he devotes an entire chapter to addressing this difficulty. In this paper I suggest that Alston’s understanding of, and response to, the problem of religious diversity is inadequate: it misunderstands the epistemic significance of the ‘practical rationality’ of CMP. 59

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Alston’s approach to religious epistemology

Alston asks how we are to understand the notion of justiﬁcation as applied to our beliefs, and to our perceptual beliefs in particular. In the case of CMP, he understands the main problem to be whether the ways in which people typically form ‘M-beliefs’ on the basis of their experiences yield prima facie justiﬁed beliefs. Alston explains the notion of an ‘M-belief’:

…a person can become justiﬁed in holding certain kinds of beliefs about God by virtue of perceiving God as being or doing so-and-so. The kinds of beliefs that can be so justiﬁed I shall call ‘M-beliefs’ (‘M’ for manifestation). M-beliefs to the effect that God is doing something currently vis-a-vis the subject – comforting, strengthening, guiding, communicating a message, sustaining the subject in being – or to the effect that God has some (allegedly) perceivable property – goodness, power, lovingness.2

Since Alston is operating with a reliability constraint on justification, he is faced with the question whether this mode of forming M-beliefs is sufficiently reliable. He develops the notion of a ‘doxastic practice’, a way of forming beliefs and epistemically evaluating them. A doxastic practice is a system or constellation of dispositions or habits, each of which yields a belief as ‘output’ that is related in a certain way to an ‘input’. The sense-perceptual doxastic practice (SP), for example, is a constellation of habits of forming beliefs in certain ways on the basis of inputs consisting of sense experiences. Alston argues that it is rational to engage in any socially established doxastic practice that we do not have sufficient reason for regarding as unreliable. His defence of this principle is partly practical: given that there are no non-circular ways of distinguishing between reliable basic doxastic practices, it would be foolish to abstain from established practices, even if we could:

It is a kind of practical rationality that is in question here. In reflecting on our situation – what considerations are available to us, what we can and can’t know, can and can’t prove, what alternatives are open to us – we come to realize that we are proceeding rationally in forming and evaluating beliefs in ways that are socially established in our society and that are firmly embedded in our psyches. Or rather it is prima facie rational for us to proceed in this way…. I call this rationality ‘practical’ to differentiate it from the rationality we would show…to attach to a doxastic practice if sufficient reasons were given for regarding it as reliable.3, 4

Alston looks at the possibility of treating M-belief formation on the basis of mystical perception as a socially established doxastic practice.5 Although it is found to exhibit all the deﬁning features thereof, in one respect it is too rich. When we consider the background system of concepts and beliefs that furnish potential ‘overriders’ for M-beliefs, we ﬁnd markedly different mystical, perceptual belief- forming practices for the different major traditions.6

Alston’s understanding of the problem of religious diversity

According to Alston, even if Christian M-beliefs are not themselves incompatible with those of the Muslim or Hindu, just by virtue of engaging in CMP I am involved in conflict with analogous practices in other religions. This is because of the conflict between the belief-systems of these religions, and Alston’s conception of prima facie justification in CMP.7 The contradictions among reports of divine appearances, even in the same religion, entail that an apparent experiential presentation of God as X will provide only prima facie justification for the belief that God is X. But the concept of prima facie justification has application only where there is a system of background beliefs about the relevant subject matter against which a particular prima facie justified belief can be checked for correctness. So we can justifiably attribute prima facie justification to M-beliefs only if the practice of forming M-beliefs carries with it such a background system of beliefs.8 So even if M-beliefs themselves do not come into any sort of conflict with each other across religious boundaries, the practices of forming such beliefs would still come into conflict, by virtue of the associated belief-systems, provided that the latter come into conflict. Alston observes that, on the face of it, the belief-systems of the major world religions are, as wholes, fundamentally incompatible with each other. While a transcendent dimension of reality is recognized on all sides, it is characterized very differently in theistic and non-theistic religions. And when it comes to specific ideas about what is most unsatisfactory about the human condition, what the Ultimate (Alston adopts a wider conception of mystical perception here, in order to account for non-theistic religions) plans to do about it, what the Ultimate has laid down and is doing in history to achieve his purposes, on all these points we get very different accounts.9, 10 Since each from of MP is incompatible with all the others, not more than one can be sufficiently reliable as a way of forming beliefs about the Ultimate. Why should I suppose that CMP is the one that is reliable (if any are)? No doubt, within CMP there are good reasons for supposing it to be much more reliable than its rivals; in the practice of CMP we find God telling people things that imply this. It is claimed from within the Christian tradition that God has assured us that His holy spirit will guide the church in its decisions, will keep it from error, and so on. But, of course, each of the competing traditions can also produce conclusive internal reasons in support of its claims. Hence, if it is to be rational for me to take CMP to be reliable, I shall have to have sufficient independent reasons for supposing that CMP is reliable, or more reliable than its alternatives. But no such reasons are forthcoming.11

Alston’s response to the problem

So the problem of religious diversity that Alston addresses is as follows:

Problem of Religious Diversity (P): Since there is a plurality of mystical, perceptual doxastic practices, with mutually contradictory output and/or background belief systems, how can it be rational to accept one of these rather than any of the others (or none at all) without having sufficient external reason for regarding it as sufficiently reliable? And he addresses this problem on a worst-case scenario basis, according to which we have no such external reason. Alston argues that it is rational in this situation for one to continue to participate in the practice in which one is involved, hoping that the inter-practice contradictions will be resolved in due time.12 His primary response begins by drawing a distinction between the epistemic significance of conflicting claims in the sensory realm and the significance of such conflicts in the religious realm. Since each of the major world religions involves at least one distinct perceptual doxastic practice, with its own way of going from experiential input to beliefs formulated in terms of that scheme, and its own system of overriders, the com- petitors lack the kind of common procedure for settling disputes that is available to participants in a shared practice such as SP. Hence the sting is taken out of the inability of each one of us to show that he is in an epistemically superior position: ‘we have no idea what noncircular proof the reliability of CMP would look like, even if it is as reliable as you please. Hence why should we take the absence of such proof to nullify, or even sharply diminish, the justification I have for my Christian M-beliefs?’13 The second strand of Alston’s response to P consists of the claim that for both secular and religious practices there are significant forms of self-support that properly shore up the participants’ confidence that the practice gives them at least a good approximation to the truth. In the case of CMP this significant self-support amounts to ways in which the promises God is represented as making are fulfilled when the stipulated conditions are met, fulfilled in growth in sanctity, in serenity, peace, joy, fortitude, love, and other ‘fruits of the spirit’:

It is by no means guaranteed that a social establishment of a religious system for the sake of desirable social goals will bring in its train a fulﬁlment of putative divine promises in the spiritual life of the devotees…. Given the ‘payoffs’ of the Christian life of the sort just mentioned, one may quite reasonably continue to hold that CMP does serve as a reliable guide to that Reality’s relations to ourselves.14, 15

Practical rationality and arbitrariness

Introduction Alston’s response to philosophical scepticism concerning our familiar doxastic practices is to illustrate the epistemic significance of the practical rationality of those practices. It is not surprising, therefore, that when confronted with P, Alston ultimately relies on a vindication of the practical rationality of CMP. After presenting his primary response, Alston concedes that the problem still represents a potential overrider to CMP: ‘it is at least arguable that the most reasonable view…would be that the social establishment in each case reflects a culturally generated way of reinforcing socially desirable attitudes and practices, reinforcing these by inculcating a sense of the presence of a Supreme Reality’.16 And he then answers this potential overrider with his second strand of response, highlighting the significant self-support of CMP. And the crucial point is that his response is an attempt to vindicate no more than the practical rationality of CMP: ‘I am taking significant self-support to function as a way of strengthening the prima facie claim of a doxastic practice to a kind of practical rationality, rather than as something that confers probability on a claim to reliability.’17 So were it not for this dimension of practical rationality attaching to CMP, it would be in great danger of being overridden by the force of P.18 I propose that Alston may have reason to revise this judgement of the role of practical rationality in vindicating CMP, and MPs generally. My suggestion is that because Alston misunderstands the intellectual problem posed by religious diversity, he misunderstands what is required of a satisfactory response here: his response is directed towards the wrong end. It is no part of my examination of Alston to attack his exemplary discussion of philosophical scepticism in relation to our familiar beliefs. My chief concern relates to the detail of Alston’s procedure for bestowing the status of prima facie rationality on doxastic practices, and his understanding of significant self-support. I suggest that Alston’s work here may be inadequate, since it may lead to arbitrariness among the class of rational doxastic practices. To begin with, however, we should note some problems with Alston’s notion of practical rationality.

Practical rationality Alston claims that the term ‘practical’ may seem out of place here, since it appears that in many cases it is not possible for us to adopt any other course than to engage in the practice in question.19 It appears that many, if not all, of our beliefs are not within our direct voluntary control. And while I might be able to modify perceptual and other belief tendencies in the long run by a systematic programme of conditioning, this seems unfeasible, at least as far as large scale modiﬁcations are concerned. But Alston claims that it is enough to consider alternative modes

of belief formation and ask whether, if we had a choice, it would be more rational for us to stick with what we have.20 He claims that consideration of the social and psychological embeddedness of our familiar doxastic practices yields an affirm- ative answer to that question. I find this detail of Alston’s exposition puzzling. Why would the term ‘practical’ be out of place here, even if in many cases it is not possible for us to adopt any other course? There is no obvious answer. Moreover, in attempting to solve this ‘problem’ for his thesis about practical rationality, Alston appears to introduce complications into his account; since the very reason why a doxastic practice might be practically rational is precisely that we have little real choice about whether or not to engage in it. This seems to be Alston’s point when he mentions, in this context, the social and psychological embeddedness of our familiar doxastic practices. So when he urges that we consider whether it would be practically rational for us to stick with what we have if we had a choice, it is difficult to know what he means.21 So this appears to be a minor error in Alston’s account of practical rationality; but we have seen reason to believe that it is one that he could easily avoid (since a course of action’s being practical does not entail the existence of other possible courses of action). We need to be clearer about what ‘practical rationality ’ is. On a natural reading, it involves the rationality of acting in a certain way; a way that, one believes, is most likely to assist in the fulfilment of my goal. If I am thirsty and I want a drink of water, it will be rational, in this sense, for me to turn the tap and hold a glass of water under it – I believe that is a good way to get a drink of water. It would be irrational for me, in such a situation, to go for a walk in the desert instead – I know that water is hard to find there. What is the relevant goal in the case of engagement in doxastic practices, according to Alston? This is not made clear; but a plausible candidate for the relevant goal is that of getting in the right relation to the truth: balancing believing truth with avoiding error. In this case the practical rationality of SP (or CMP) turns on the question, Is participation in SP (CMP) a good way to get in the right relation to the truth? The problem is that it is not clear what the rational course here would be, given Alston’s claim that it is not possible to give good non-circular arguments for the reliability of the practice. Why would participation fit better with my aim to get at the truth than some other course? It is certainly not evident, as Alston needs it to be, that the reasonable course of action is to participate in this practice (subject to its being overridden).22 However, there is good reason to suppose that Alston cannot intend the relevant goal here to be that of getting in the right relation to the truth. For that goal is reserved, according to Alston, for the epistemic dimension of evaluation – a dimension that he explicitly contrasts with practical rationality in PG. While this means that he avoids the problems that we have highlighted with a truth con-

ducive interpretation of practical rationality here, we are still owed an account of the relevant goal of engagement in doxastic practices.

Social establishment Alston considers whether to extend his defence of socially established practices to all such practices, or restrict it to those that are common to all normal, adult human beings. He argues for the former option: there appears to be no a priori reason to suppose that truth is less likely to be available to only part of a population.23 He then considers whether he has been overpermissive: what about idiosyncratic practices such as Cedric’s practice of consulting sun-dried tomatoes to determine the future of the stock market – why not take this to be prima facie rational? Alston claims that, ‘When a doxastic practice has persisted over a number of generations, it has earned a right to be considered seriously in a way that Cedric’s consultation of sun-dried tomatoes has not’.24 That there may be arbitrariness endemic to Alston’s treatment here can be seen by looking at his justiﬁcation for excluding idiosyncratic practices from the class of prima facie rational practices:

It is a reasonable supposition that a practice would not have persisted over large segments of the population unless it was putting people into effective touch with some aspect(s) of reality and proving itself as such by its fruits. But there are no such grounds for presumption in the case of idiosyncratic practices.25 So a crucial difference between prima facie rational doxastic practices and idiosyncratic ones is that the former persist over a number of generations and over large segments of the population. It is these qualities that should lead one to presume that these practices are sufficiently reliable, according to Alston. There is an important lack of clarity over what Alston means by ‘a reasonable supposition’ here, given that he has explicated both an epistemic and a practical sense of ‘rational’. In the case of the practical interpretation, it is hard to understand how a claim like this could be assessed – is this supposition to be understood in the context of some socially established epistemological doxastic practice to which philosophers are committed? In the absence of further clarification, it is hard to make sense of this odd notion. In any case, can one not be firmly committed to a doxastic practice according to which the age and popularity of a practice betokens epistemic corruption and inferiority, rather than reliability? On the other – epistemic – interpretation of ‘a reasonable supposition’, Alston’s claim is question-begging: Why the extensive foray into philosophical scepticism, if he is going to just assume that long-standing and widespread practices have a (defeasible) presumption of reliability, whereas idiosyncratic ones do not?26 Moreover, arguing from the persistent social establishment, or the practical rationality, of a doxastic practice, to a (defeasible) presumption of its reliability, will often involve epistemic circularity. In the case of SP, observations as to the

social establishment or practical rationality of a practice are among the belief ‘outputs’ of that very practice, so it is strange to suppose that such observations could support SP. This last fact is especially important when assessing Alston’s work, since he introduces his study of the epistemic status of SP with the claim that, ‘Whatever results we attain here may throw light on the more obscure and controversial area of theistic perception.’27 Alston devotes an entire chapter of PG to such a consideration of SP, partly because our familiarity with that practice facilitates the clearest understanding of the epistemology of doxastic practices generally. In fact, the social establishment argument for presuming CMP to be reliable is not obviously epistemically circular, since we do not appear to rely on any products of that practice in determining that it is socially established.28 None- theless, I think that reﬂection on this epistemic circularity problem with other practices – and particularly with SP – reveals that something may have gone wrong with Alston’s approach to doxastic practices – an approach he applies to consideration of mystical experience. Alston emphasizes that a crucial difference between socially established and idiosyncratic practices is that only the former prove themselves to be reliable by their fruits.29 This brings us to the issue of signiﬁcant self-support.

Significant self-support Alston explains how ‘significant self-support’ can strengthen the claim of a socially established doxastic practice to the status of prima facie rationality.30 He appreciates, and stresses, that self-support is not straightforward evidence of the reliability of a practice, for it is epistemically circular. Any ‘fruits’ of a doxastic practice can only be determined to be such on the assumption that the practice is generally reliable, ‘Because self-support requires assuming the practice in question to be a reliable source of belief, it provides evidence for reliability only on the assumption of that reliability; and that is hardly evidence in any straightforward sense.’31 Nevertheless, there is an important distinction between trivial and significant self-support. Consider ways in which SP is self-supported: by engaging in SP and allied practices we are able to predict and control the course of events. And relying on SP and associated practices we can learn about the operation of sense perception, showing both that it is a reliable source of belief and why it is reliable. Both these forms of self-support are epistemically circular, but this is not the trivial self-support that necessarily extends to every practice: Since SP supports itself in ways it conceivably might not, and in ways that other practices do not, its claims to reliability are thereby strengthened… . Analogous points can be made concerning memory, introspection, rational intuition, and various kinds of reasoning. The results we achieve by engaging in these practices and by using their fruits are best explained by supposing these practices to be reliable.32

But what does Alston mean by ‘best explained’ here? Since he has forsworn any attempt to argue from self-support, in a non-circular fashion, to the reliability of our familiar doxastic practices, he can only understand this expression in terms of practical rationality (since he only explicates these two senses of ‘rational’ in PG). And once we see this, it appears doubtful whether ‘significant self-support’ can do the work that Alston requires of it; that is, this notion may fail to differentiate, in any epistemically significant way, between practices. Alston can show certain irrational practices – crystal-ball gazing, the reading of entrails, and Cedric’s reading of sun-dried tomatoes – to be irrational since, on their own terms (that is, efficacy in predicting physical events), these practices are overridden – their predictions are revealed to be generally inaccurate.33 But there are other, more subtle, examples where we are confident that the practice in question is irrational, and where it appears that Alston does not have the resources to account for this. I propose the following counter-example – an irrational practice that may not be irrational according to Alston’s account. Consider the Branch Davidian doxastic practice (BDP). The fanatical followers of David Koresh in the Waco religious community were in some degree intellectually culpable for participating in this doxastic practice, and ascribing to their leader the messianic properties that they did ascribe to him. Yet it is not hard to imagine Koresh devising ways in which this practice might yield significant self-support on Alston’s terms. The ridicule and hostility of those outside the community might ‘confirm’ Koresh’s predictions that the forces of evil will tempt the members of the community to give up the path to truth; those who commit themselves to obeying the teachings of Koresh may develop in the spiritual life – ‘spiritual development’ being defined in certain of Koresh’s teachings. And adherence to a strict fasting and meditation regimen under Koresh’s guidance might yield confirmatory ‘visions’ and a sense of deep wellbeing and inner peace. I think that Alston, in order to be consistent here, must grant that BDP is significantly self-supported – since these fruits are ‘best explained’ by supposing the practice to be reliable – and its status of prima facie rationality is thereby strengthened. Does this not suggest that Alston has failed to accurately characterize the epistemology of doxastic practices? Alston stresses that social establishment confers only prima facie rationality upon a doxastic practice, and whatever increment significant self-support makes to the prima facie acceptability of a doxastic practice can be overthrown by other considerations: a sufficient degree of internal inconsistency; or massive and persistent conflict with the outputs of a more firmly established practice, for example. In responding to the BDP example in personal correspondence, he claims that BDP is overridden since its products come into conflict with more firmly established practices.34 So he is not committed to the claim that this practice is ultima facie rational for its adherents.35

But the trouble here is that it is not at all clear that the outputs of practices like BDP do come into massive and persistent conflict with those of more firmly established practices. It is well known that adherents of bizarre belief systems can disarm cases of apparent conflict of this sort, reconciling their bizarre beliefs with other, firmer doxastic commitments in ways that, for adherents of the belief system in question, make perfect sense.36 And on the doxastic practice approach to epistemology, we will search in vain for a single ‘objective’ epistemic standpoint from which to judge the plausibility of such attempts at reconciliation. Without giving these potential overriders sharper teeth, or building in falsificationist constraints on prima facie rational practices (constraints alien to Alston’s approach to epistemology), cases like BDP may well survive disqualification from the class of rational doxastic practices, and thus constitute counter-examples to Alston’s thesis. In the light of the argument of this part of the paper, I submit that Alston’s criteria for determining whether a doxastic practice is prima facie rational, and for determining whether that rationality is overridden in a given case, fail to differentiate between doxastic practices in epistemically significant ways.

An epistemic criterion

I have attempted to clarify certain areas of ambiguity, concerning Alston’s understanding of criteria for the prima facie rationality of doxastic practices, and concerning significant self-support. Over against this approach, I suggest that an additional criterion is needed, for guarding against arbitrariness among rational doxastic practices. I suggest that in his response to P, Alston neglects the epistemic – as distinct from the practical – dimension of the intellectual threat posed by religious diversity. For religious believers, the practical rationality attaching to their MP is not sufficient to rebut the potential overrider posed by awareness of religious diversity. Even taking into account the significant self-support attendant on the MP, and the demands of faith, religious believers aware of such diversity need some other defence for their MP, else they ought to set about abandoning it. One point of clarification must be made immediately. In claiming that religious believers aware of the facts of religious diversity ought to set about abandoning their MP (if they do not have another, adequate, defence) I am clearly employing a deontological epistemic concept.37 Since I agree with Alston that we rarely, if ever, have direct voluntary control over our beliefs, I talk of an obligation to set about abandoning the MP in question.38 I may not be able to give up a belief at will, in the same way that I can answer a question or open a door, but I can indirectly set about altering my belief-forming and maintaining activities, just as I can indirectly influence my health, or my disposition, for example. How might I set about abandoning a religious doxastic practice? That depends, not just on what sort of MP I am engaged in, but on the way in which I myself

engage in it (for example, I might be most firmly committed to the doctrinal aspect of the religion, or the ritualistic aspect), and the nature of my own personality (it may be best to reason with myself, or to keep myself in relative social isolation, or to distract myself from thought). But Alston does not dispute that it is possible for religious believers to set about giving up their religious doxastic practice; rather, he disputes the claim that they are intellectually obliged to do so in the conditions in question. We saw that Alston believes that each of the major world religions is incompatible with each other, by virtue of the role of internal overrider systems in MPs, and the conflict between the belief-systems of these MPs. As Alston recognizes, this entails that not more than one major world religion can be (sufficiently) reliable as a way of forming beliefs about the Ultimate. Alston further stipulates a worst-case scenario, according to which I have no reason, independent of my own MP, for taking my MP to be more likely to be reliable than its rivals. Bearing all this in mind, let us consider the case of a participant in a major world religion who is aware of the fact and extent of religious diversity.39 Independently of engagement in his MP, it would appear to this religious believer that that MP is unlikely to be sufficiently reliable. Now as we have seen, at this point Alston’s defence of the epistemic status of M-beliefs takes the form of a defence of the practical rationality of the MP.40 This does not consist of simply claiming that the religious believer cannot form such reliability judgements independently of his MP. Rather, it consists of the claim that the crucial factor, determining the epistemic significance to the believer, of this independent judgement of his, is the degree of his social and psychological com- mitment to the MP. I suggest that there may be an epistemic criterion operative at the level of participation in doxastic practices. One – but not the only – plausible candidate for such a criterion is C below. In order for him not to be violating intellectual duties in engaging in a doxastic practice, it is necessary (though not sufficient) that a participant meet this criterion:

Criterion (C): A participant must be aware of no doxastic practice that fundamentally conﬂicts with his own, unless he has good reason for believing that his practice can be shown to be more reliable than its rival(s).

Fundamental conflict here has to do with fundamental conflict among beliefs (or the propositions believed); so in terms of doxastic practices, fundamental conflict exists if the belief outputs of the practices in question fundamentally conflict. A set of beliefs conflict just if, at a given time, only one of these beliefs can be correct.41 I understand person S as having a good reason for belief p just if S is not violating any relevant intellectual duties or obligations in forming and holding p in the way he does.42 C does not stipulate that the person must himself be able to show that his practice is more reliable – this appears to be too strict – but only that he has

good reason for believing that it can be shown to be more reliable. So it will suffice, for the satisfaction of C, if the subject has good reason for believing that certain others can demonstrate, will demonstrate, or have demonstrated, the greater reliability of his practice. This qualification is necessary in order to do justice to the social character of human belief-forming practices (note that the demon- stration at issue must not exhibit epistemic circularity).43 To call a doxastic practice reliable is to judge that it will or would yield mostly true beliefs. ‘More reliable’ in C means more reliable than any rivals, considered individually, as distinct from: more reliable than any of its rivals, considered disjunctively.44 Now for an important qualification of C: ‘can’ in ‘can be demonstrated’, only alleges a possibility in principle – that is, without contingent limitations on time, resources, patience, language barriers, and so on. I concede that it is difficult to evaluate a criterion with such a broad counterfactual scope: a world without contingent limitations on dialogue between adherents of rival beliefs is so foreign to our actual experience that it is hard to imagine it, let alone determine how intellectual behaviour ought to be regulated in such a world. However, it may be that careful consideration of analogy arguments (and there have been many in the literature concerning the problem of religious diversity) will render this counterfactual situation sufficiently clear.45 More precisely, such consideration may clarify our intuitions regarding proper intellectual behaviour in our world, revealing them to be such that it is evident that they would also have application in the counterfactual world.46 In spite of the difficulties that this introduces with regard to the evaluation (and application) of C, it is a necessary qualification. For C now strikes a plausible balance between, on the one hand, the overly harsh stipulation that one have justified confidence that one’s practice is, here and now, demonstrably epistemically superior to its rivals; and, on the other, an overreliance on practical rationality in vindicating the intellectual credentials of one’s practice.47, 48

Conclusion

C rules out a response to religious diversity that operates solely by empha- sizing the practical rationality (or the signiﬁcance of the practical rationality) of the doxastic practice in question. C demands, in cases of (awareness of) fundamental conﬂict, a response in terms of epistemic rationality: commending one’s doxastic practice from the standpoint of the aim of maximizing truth and mini- mizing falsity.49 I have suggested that Alston’s own approach to the prima and ultima facie acceptability of doxastic practices exaggerates the epistemic significance of practical rationality. C stipulates a further condition, involving an intellectual obligation in relation to participation in doxastic practices. I have argued elsewhere that, in cases of our participation in the vast majority of familiar doxastic practices – SP, rational intuition, memorial reasoning, intro-

spection, and many others – C is (generally) amply satisﬁed.50 So in participating in these practices we rarely fail to satisfy this particular criterion. The reason I contest Alston’s conclusions about the epistemic status of religious doxastic practices, given a worst-case scenario, is that it is not nearly so clear that C is satisﬁed there. I am aware that the epistemic credentials of C itself are, to say the least, open to question. Clearly Alston does not think that there is any such criterion as C legislating over the participation in religious doxastic practices (or any others). On a purely ad hominem note, I have argued elsewhere that Alston is actually committed – in virtue of his central epistemological claims – to accept C.51 In the light of the argument of this paper, I suggest that an assessment of Alston’s epistemology of religion may turn fundamentally on this question: the truth of C would threaten the very basis of his approach to the epistemology of religious belief.52

Notes

1. William Alston Perceiving God (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), henceforth PG. 2. Ibid., 1. 3. Ibid., 168. 4. Alston firmly distinguishes this ‘practical rationality’ from epistemic justification. In ‘Concepts of epistemic justification’, in Epistemic Justification (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 81–114,he considers in detail what it is for a belief to be justified, observing that, although there are several distinct concepts of epistemic justification, they all have to do with a specifically epistemic dimension of evaluation. This is to be contrasted with evaluation of a belief in terms of its prudence, or its faithfulness, for example. Epistemic justification is something that is desirable or commendable from the standpoint of the aim at maximizing truth and mimimizing falsity. 5. M-beliefs are sometimes also formed on the basis of background beliefs, within the MP: ‘Typic- ally…the predicates applied to God in M-beliefs possess a content that goes beyond what is explicitly displayed in the experience. And so it might appear that a typical M-belief is partly based on the belief that what is displayed in experience is a reliable indication of the applicability of the predicate involved’; Alston PG, 94. 6. For Alston, although a belief may be epistemically justified, since the grounds on the basis of which the belief is formed may be adequate, their adequacy may be overridden by the larger context in which they are set. For example, the evidence on the basis of which I came to believe that the butler committed the murder might strongly support that hypothesis, but if when arriving at that belief I ignored other things I know or justifiably believe that tend to exculpate the butler, then the belief is not justified, all things considered (ultima facie). An overrider of a given belief may be one of two kinds: a reason to believe the denial of that belief; or a reason not to hold that belief. The first sort of reason is often referred to as a ‘rebutter’, the second as an ‘undercutter’. 7. Alston PG, 261–262. 8. This system of background beliefs is used in CMP in identifying what is perceived as God – see note 5 above for explanation of this point. 9. Alston PG, 262–263. 10. Alston notes attempts to construe the various bodies of doctrine as mutually compatible – either by trimming each system of its ‘exclusivist’ claims, or by some more global reinterpretation of the religions’ truth claims. Both approaches lie beyond Alston’s purview in PG, ‘I take my task to be the analysis and evaluation of real life religious doxastic practices, not the reform, or degradation, thereof’: ibid., 266. 11. And by the same reasoning, it cannot be rational to engage in any other particular form of MP. 12. Alston PG, 270–278.

13. Ibid., 272. 14. Ibid., 276. 15. The third and final strand of Alston’s response to P consists of the claim that faith has a role in giving a participant of a particular religious practice confidence that his practice reliably describes the one religious reality in the face of rival practices: ‘There is still a need for faith, for trusting whatever we do have to go on as providing us with a picture of the situation that is close enough to the truth to be a reliable guide to our ultimate destiny. Since it is an essential part of the religious package that we hold beliefs that go beyond what is conclusively established by such objective indicators as are available to us…it should be the reverse of surprising that religious diversity should render us less than fully epistemically justified in the beliefs of a particular religion’; Alston PG, 277. 16. Ibid., 276. 17. Ibid., 174. 18. The third strand of Alston’s response to P, one based on the significance of faith, is also an attempted vindication of no more than the practical rationality of CMP – see note 15 above. 19. Alston PG, 168. 20. Ibid. 21. A further problem for Alston’s proposal is that certain people may not even be able to consider alternative doxastic practices to certain ones in which they engage. Can we consider an alternative doxastic practice to our practice of rational intuition? On Alston’s account it would appear that in such cases the practice in question is not practically rational for the people concerned, yet the opposite appears to be true. 22. For more detailed discussion of this matter, see Alvin Plantinga ‘What’s the question?’, Journal of Philosophical Research, 20 (1995), 19–43. I owe some of these points about practical rationality to this paper: but I think Plantinga errs in supposing that the relevant goal, for Alston, is that of getting in the right relation to the truth – see the main text for my argument here. 23. Alston PG, 169. 24. Ibid., 170. 25. Ibid. 26. Stephen Maitzen, in a review of PG, gives cautionary examples of practices such as seances, astrology, and the consulting of tribal oracles. These practices persist over a number of generations, and over considerable segments of populations, yet they appear to be irrational, on a truth-conducive understanding of this term. Maitzen’s review is in The Philosophical Review, 102 (1993), 430–432. Norman Kretzmann ‘Alston and the broadminded atheist’, in A. G. Padgett (ed.) Reason and the Christian Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), makes a similar point of criticism. 27. Alston PG, 102. 28. In fact, as Alston notes, since SP and other practices are involved in building up the background belief system of an MP, they are involved in that practice, and so the social establishment argument for MPs is epistemically circular after all – PG, 176, footnote 46. 29. And perhaps Alston might reply to Maitzen’s counter-examples by arguing that such practices, though prima facie rational, are overridden due to lack of appropriate ‘fruits’ – see note 26. 30. Alston PG, 173–175. 31. Ibid., 174. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid., 173–174. 34. He indicates what being ‘firmly established’ amounts to: ‘ … it involves such components as (a) being more widely accepted, (b) having a more definite structure, (c) being more important in our lives, (d) having more of an innate basis, (e) being more difficult to abstain from, and (f) its principles seeming more obviously true’; Alston PG, 171. 35. He also claims that he has become disenchanted with the emphasis on practical rationality in the last ditch defence of established doxastic practices, due largely to the epistemic circularity that is often involved in establishing practical rationality. 36. For example, one who is firmly committed to the belief that the world is 5,000 years old might respond to the evidence of fossil records with the claim that the world was created complete with such fossils, 5,000 years ago.

37. Note that this does not commit me to opposing Alston’s non-deontological choice for the concept of epistemic justification (see ‘Concepts of epistemic justification’, in Alston Epistemic Justification, 81–114) since I need only hold that there are intellectual or epistemic duties operative in this instance, whether or not we choose to understand justification in these terms. 38. Alston argues against direct doxastic voluntarism, ‘When I see a car coming down the street I am not capable of believing or disbelieving at will. In such familiar situations the belief-acquisition mechanism is isolated from the direct influence of the will’; Alston ‘Concepts of epistemic justification’, 91–92. 39. Of course the meaning of ‘major world religion’ is open to debate. It may be that the more we put the meaning of this expression into question, the greater the number of adherents of rival MPs there are, and the greater the force of the problem of religious diversity. 40. A vital, and often misunderstood, aspect of Alston’s epistemological work is his drawing of level distinctions – for a detailed explanation, see his ‘Level confusions in epistemology’, in Alston Epistemic Justification, 153–171. Although he sets out to establish only the practical rationality of CMP, in doing so, he claims, he is vindicating the practical rationality of beliefs as to the epistemic (truth-conducive) rationality of M-beliefs. Judging (at the higher level) CMP to be practically rational commits me to its being practically rational to suppose (at the lower level) that M-beliefs are reliable: ‘To engage in a certain doxastic practice and to accept the beliefs one thereby generates is to commit oneself to those beliefs being true (at least for the most part), and hence to commit oneself to the practice’s being reliable. It is irrational to engage in SP [or any other doxastic practice], to form beliefs in the ways constitutive of that practice, and refrain from acknowledging them as true, and hence the practice as reliable, if the question arises’; Alston PG, 179. 41. We must also ask whether a failure to be aware of rival practices is intellectually culpable – e.g., a result of deliberately ignoring such practices. 42. Again, note that this deontological thesis does note entail the controversial claim that forming and holding beliefs is (ever) under the direct control of the will: indirect control of the belief in question is sufficient. 43. We cannot but rely on others at every step in our cognitive endeavours: we generally trust our parents and teachers, experts in all reputable areas of enquiry, map-makers, journalists, and so on. And we judge that this is perfectly proper intellectual procedure. Of course, there are certain matters where we should be more sceptical of the testimony of our peers (political and aesthetic judgements, for example), and we learn what these matters are as we mature. Similarly, we learn that the testimony of certain people is not to be trusted, even in other matters (reports of the activities and conversations of others, for example), and that even ordinary people are less trustworthy in certain situations (e.g., when they are very tired, or when they have a strong personal interest in our being deceived); and we learn to identify what sort of people, and what sort of situations, these are. But certainly, in general,it is perfectly proper procedure – at least we take it to be so – to place a large measure of trust (prima facie trust, we might say) in one’s fellows, in terms of the reliability of their testimony, in all walks of life. 44. We need to specify carefully the range of employments of the practice that is relevant to judgements of its reliability: doxastic practice D has greater reliability than doxastic practice E just if it would yield a greater proportion of true beliefs in a sufficiently large and varied run of employments in situations of the sorts we typically encounter: Alston PG, 104–105. 45. In an analogy argument, one seeks to draw conclusions concerning the primary case in an indirect fashion, via a consideration of another situation, one that, it is claimed, is related to the primary case in relevant respects. Alston employs this method to help clarify our thinking regarding P: ‘To form a just assessment of the extent to which the argument under consideration diminishes the rationality of engaging in CMP, it will be useful to consider various analogues of the situation of religious diversity, analogues where we seem better able to find our way around’; Alston PG, 270. 46. This seems an odd claim – in order to see how it might be true, it is necessary to engage with the analogies themselves (a task for another occasion), so that any further attempt at clarification at this stage will be in vain. Alston presents his own analogy arguments in PG, 270–275. 47. One might object that the presentation of C above proceeds without attending to Alston’s argument that since we have no idea what an independent test of the reliability of a doxastic practice would look like, we cannot make proven reliability a condition, from which it follows that C must be unacceptable.

However, this objection misses the mark: C does not require, of a doxastic practice, that it satisfy an independent test of reliability. All that is required here is a reasonable confidence, on the part of a participant in the practice, in the relative reliability of one’s own practice, over that of rivals (and note the additional qualifications detailed in the text). This is very different from an independent test of reliability. One might argue for the superiority of one’s own faith-tradition on the basis of what is claimed to be divine action in history – Christians, for example, have often argued this way concerning the resurrection of Jesus. The case for one’s own belief being more likely to be true than its rivals may include arguments that conclude only that certain rival beliefs are false (or incoherent – a charge often laid against the monistic-pantheistic scheme of advaita), rather than that one’s own belief is more likely to be true. In this way one might seek to show that there are overriders to rival beliefs, overriders which do not apply to, or which can be adequately replied to in the case of, one’s own religious belief (see note 49 for further discussion here). I do not speculate as to whether anyone actually has good reason for believing that his religious beliefs can be demonstrated to be more likely to be true than rivals. 48. One might also object, against C, that it fails to meet Alston’s observation that since we cannot help but engage in socially established doxastic practices, we are permitted to engage in the one we have. However, it’s not the case that C fails to meet this observation, since, as Alston himself repeatedly insists, social establishment only helps to confer prima facie rationality upon a doxastic practice, and I have made clear that C is a potential overrider to doxastic practices. We have seen Alston insist that prima facie rational, socially established, doxastic practices, can be overriden by other considerations. His own examples of such overriders are a sufficient degree of internal inconsistency, and massive and persistent conflict with the outputs of a more firmly established practice. To be sure, if one abandoned a particular MP, one would be socially and psychologically compelled to participate in one or more alternative doxastic practices, but that is not the point here. If that is the objection, it doesn’t appear to count against C, since, as stated in the text, in the vast majority of familiar doxastic practices – SP, rational intuition, memorial reasoning, introspection, etc. – C is (generally) amply satisfied, so it is not as though the truth of C would commit us to a state of impossible doxastic limbo. I am simply arguing that Alston has underestimated the threat, to his case for the justification of MPs, of a particular sort of overrider. 49. There is a qualified sense in which natural theology is well suited to this role. Natural theology is the attempt to give proofs or arguments for the existence of God. In the case of non-theistic religions, something analogous to natural theology in this sense is required – non-circular argument for the truth of the religious beliefs concerned, whatever they are. And in the case of belief conflict between theistic religions, arguments of natural theology must be more fine-tuned, in the sense that, in order to enable the believer to satisfy C, they will need to be arguments for a certain specific sort of theism (for example, that God is triune), or for some specific associated religious beliefs (for example, that Mohammed is his prophet), rather than simply for theism. 50. Julian Willard An Examination of the Epistemology of William Alston and Alvin Plantinga, with Reference to Issues of Religious Belief (Ph.D. thesis: King’s College, London, 1998). 51. Ibid. 52. I would like to thank Paul Helm, Martin Stone, Mark Wynn and the Editor for helpful discussions of many of the key ideas of this paper.