William Alston
Born	(1921-11-29)November 29, 1921 Shreveport, Louisiana, U.S.
Died	September 13, 2009(2009-09-13) (aged 87) Jamesville, New York, U.S.
Education
Alma mater	University of Chicago
Philosophical work
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy
Notable ideas	Epistemic justification

William Payne Alston (November 29, 1921 – September 13, 2009) was an American philosopher. He is widely considered to be one of the most importantepistemologists andphilosophers of religion of the twentieth century,^[1] and is also known for his work inmetaphysics and thephilosophy of language.^[2] His views onfoundationalism,internalism and externalism,speech acts, and the epistemic value of mystical experience, among many other topics, have been very influential.^[3] He earned his PhD from theUniversity of Chicago and taught at theUniversity of Michigan,Rutgers University,University of Illinois, andSyracuse University.^[2]

Alston was born to Eunice Schoolfield and William Alston on November 29, 1921, inShreveport, Louisiana. He graduated from high school when he was 15 and went on toCentenary College of Louisiana, graduating in 1942 with aBachelor of Music in piano. DuringWorld War II, he playedclarinet andbass drum in amilitary band in California. During this time, he became interested in philosophy, sparked byW. Somerset Maugham's bookThe Razor's Edge, and read the works of well-known philosophers such asJacques Maritain,Mortimer J. Adler,Francis Bacon,Plato,René Descartes, andJohn Locke.^[4] Alston was honorably discharged from the US army in 1946,^[1] going on to enter a graduate program for philosophy at theUniversity of Chicago, even though he had never formally taken a class on the subject.^[5][6] While he was there, he learned more about philosophy fromRichard McKeon andCharles Hartshorne, and he received hisPhD in 1951.^[4] His dissertation was on the subject of the philosophy ofAlfred North Whitehead.^[1]

From 1949 until 1971, Alston was a professor at theUniversity of Michigan, and he became professor of philosophy in 1961.^[7] He then taught atRutgers University for five years, followed by theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 1976 to 1980 and thenSyracuse University from 1980 to 1992.^[4] Alston's early work was on thephilosophy of language, later going on to focus onepistemology and thephilosophy of religion from the early 1970s onwards.^[1]

Together withAlvin Plantinga,Nicholas Wolterstorff,Robert Adams, and Michael L. Peterson, Alston helped to found the journalFaith and Philosophy.^[8] With Plantinga, Wolterstorff, and others, Alston was also responsible for the development of "Reformed epistemology" (a term that Alston, anEpiscopalian, never fully endorsed), one of the most important contributions to Christian thought in the twentieth century.^[9] Alston was president of the Western Division (now the Central Division) of theAmerican Philosophical Association in 1979, theSociety for Philosophy and Psychology, and theSociety of Christian Philosophers, which he co-founded. He was widely recognized as one of the core figures in the late twentieth-century revival of thephilosophy of religion.^[10][11] He was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1990.^[12]

Alston died in a nursing home inJamesville, New York, on September 13, 2009, at the age of 87.^[5]

• Beyond "Justification": Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation,Ithaca, New York:Cornell University Press, 2005.ISBN 978-0-8014-7332-6
• A Sensible Metaphysical Realism (The Aquinas Lecture, 2001),Milwaukee, Wisconsin:Marquette University Press, 2001.ISBN 978-0-8746-2168-6
• Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2000.ISBN 978-0-8014-3669-7
• A Realist Conception of Truth, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996.ISBN 978-0-8014-8410-0
• Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996.ISBN 978-0-8014-9544-1
• The Reliability of Sense Perception, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1993.ISBN 978-0-8014-8101-7
• Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1991.ISBN 978-0-8014-8155-0
• Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1989.ISBN 978-0-8014-9545-8
• Philosophy of Language,Englewood Cliffs,Prentice Hall, 1964

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers

• 1921 births
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