Background

William Alston was born on November 29, 1921, in Shreveport, Louisiana, United States. He was the son of William Payne Alston and Eunice Schoolfield.

Education

William Alston graduated from high school when he was 15 and entered Centenary College of Louisiana where he received a Bachelor of Music degree in piano in 1942. During World War II, he served in a U.S. Army band stationed in California. At this time he became interested in philosophy.

After his discharge from the Army, Alston was admitted into the graduate program in philosophy at the University of Chicago. He studied under Richard McKeon and Charles Hartshorne and received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1951.

Career

William Alston started his career as an instructor at the University of Michigan in 1949. In 1952, he was appointed an assistant professor and in 1956 an associate professor. In 1961, Alston became a professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. He held this post until 1971 and then started to work as a professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. In 1976, he took up the same post at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he worked until 1980. Alston also served as a professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University from 1980 to 1992.

William Alston published his first book Philosophy of Language in 1964. Later he wrote such books as Perceiving God, The Reliability of Sense Perception, Epistemic Justification, Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning. His last book Beyond "Justification": Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation was published in 2005.

Alston also was a co-founder of the journal Faith and Philosophy and Journal of Philosophical Research. He also served, at various times, in editorial positions for Philosophy Research Archives, Nous, Monist, Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Journal of Critical Analysis.

Achievements

• William Alston was an American educator, philosopher, and writer who was famous for his books about the philosophy of language and epistemology. His most famous books are Epistemic Justification and Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning. Alston is known as one of the core figures in the late twentieth-century revival of the philosophy of religion. He also was responsible for the development of "Reformed epistemology".

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Reliability of Sense Perception

    (Why suppose that sense perception is an accurate source o...)

    1993
  • A Realist Conception of Truth

    (One of the most important Anglo-American philosophers of ...)

    1996
  • Beyond "Justification": Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation

    (Much of the writing in Anglo-American epistemology in the...)

    2005
  • Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge

    (Epistemic Justification collects twelve distinguished and...)

    1996
  • Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience

    (In this clear and provocative account of the epistemology...)

    1991
  • Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning

    (What is it for a sentence to have a certain meaning? This...)

    2000
  • Philosophy of Language 1964
  • A Sensible Metaphysical Realism 2001

Views

William Alston’s major interest has been in the philosophy of religion and in epistemology. He has worked towards qualified foundationalism and reliabilism. He argued that the direct experience of God can be regarded as a legitimate ground of belief.

Membership

William Alston was a member of the American Philosophical Association, Society for Philosophy and Psychology and the Society of Christian Philosophers.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Mark Brown: "Bill Alston was a major intellectual force in our department, in our college, in our university and in the world. He led the delegation of American philosophers on its visit to the USSR, at the invitation of Soviet scholars, in 1987. He participated in a symposium on Chinese-American Philosophy and Religious Studies at Beijing University in 1994. He was selected to participate in an eight-year project, sponsored by the Vatican Observatory, on ‘God’s Actions in the World in the Light of Modern Science."

Interests

• philosophical theology, epistemology; philosophy of language, philosophical psychology, early modern philosophy

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Reid, Hegel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin and Wilfrid Sellars

Connections

William Payne Alston married Mary Frances Collins on August 15, 1943. The marriage produced one daughter. Later William and Mary divorced. On July 3, 1963, Alston married Valerie Tibbetts Barnes.

Father:

William Payne Alston

Mother:

Eunice Schoolfield

Wife:

Valerie Tibbetts Barnes

Daughter:

Ellen Donnelly of Wayne

ex-wife:

Mary Frances Collins

References

• Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Philosophers This Biographical Dictionary provides detailed accounts of the lives, works, influence and reception of thinkers from all the major philosophical schools and traditions of the twentieth-century. This unique volume covers the lives and careers of thinkers from all areas of philosophy - from analytic philosophy to Zen and from formal logic to aesthetics.
  1996
• Rationality and Theistic Belief: An Essay on Reformed Epistemology Rationality and Theistic Belief offers a strong dissenting voice on the work of both Plantinga and Alston. Certain to provoke vigorous discussion, it makes a significant contribution to the contemporary discussion of the epistemology of religious belief.
  1993