Keith Yandell, in his "The Epistemology of Religious Experience", among other things, argues that Enlightenment religious experiences associated with the Jain and Buddhist religious traditions, do not provide any evidence at all in favor of Jain or Buddhist beliefs, or any religious doctrines at all. This conclusion in part follows from his admittedly plausible definition/analysis of 'evidence' he defends early on the book (working from memory here!), according to which some bit of evidence e that supports some belief that p must be disconfirmable and the evidential force of e must not 'seem the same' regardless of p's actual truth-value. Beliefs based on enlightenment experiences, failing these (and a few other) criteria, do not provide evidence in favor of the Jain View (J), namely, that "I am an eternal, enduring substance" and do not support the Buddhist View (B), that "I am impermanent, transitory, and non-substantial and composite entity", either.
In short, Yandell concludes that the nature of phenomenological reports and descriptions of the religious experiences is such that introspection on them does not and cannot provide any evidence at all in favor of either B or J (or whatever).
If Y is right about this, it seems to follow that antithetical disagreements between Jain's and Buddhists regarding the truth of J or B could not be reasonable. First, if allegedly introspective evidence based on their religious experiences isn't really evidence, then it will be arbitrary for anyone to accept J or B thus. Moreover, to accept J but not B here would be arbitrary. Since arbitrariness is not a mark of reasonability, disagreements between Jains and Buddhists cannot be reasonable. Also, it seems to follow that antithetical disagreements about whether or not introspection on Enlightenment experiences provides any evidence at all for or against J or B (or whatever) cannot be reasonable either.
My problem with all of this is that in my dissertation I am arguing that at least some antithetical disagreements about what ‘the evidence’ allegedly supports or does not support can be reasonable. I'm providing 'case study' arguments, i.e., considering cases of antithetical disagreement and showing why it is plausible to think that they are reasonable ones. But since picking difficult cases is more fun, and the pay off is better if you can pull it off, I'm making things hard for myself.
Specifically, in one section, I’m trying to show that:
(i) there are reasonable disagreements between Jains and Buddhists about whether Enlightenment experiences better support J or B, and
(ii) antithetical disagreement between Jains and Buddhists on the one hand, who affirm that Enlightenment experience evidentially support their characteristic beliefs, and those who accept something like Yandell’s view of the matter on the other, can be reasonable, and
(iii) moreover, in some instances of antithetical disagreement of the sort described in (ii), both parties can recognize that the other is being, equally reasonable in that evidential situation despite the nature of their antithetical disagreement.
This is more difficult than I had initially though.
Essentially, in favor of (i) – (iii), I’m arguing that all of the parties involved start out intellectual inquiry only after having accepted some ultimate starting points (endoxa and arche) about what is reasonable to believe and why. Thing is, that they end up with such different views of the matter From within each of these perspectives, it is possible for each party to manifest reasonability (roughly, one manifests the second-order cognitive virtue or of reasonability if one’s reasoning conforms to appropriate logical and epistemic standards and is moderately thoughtful and balanced, responsive to reasons, willing to correct one’s views in light of criticism, including self-criticism, and willing to provide others with and listen to the reasons of others) equally well, albeit in accordance with different particular standards of theoretical rationality (epistemic norms or principles that one reasons in accord with so as to get at true belief) in their shared evidential situation.
On that view (I know it’s just a sketch so far), it is possible for a Buddhist to read Yandell’s arguments and conclude: “No, I don’t think you have the correct view on the matter, and I still think I have reason to think that, ultimately, the assessment I’ve made about the evidential situation I’m in is correct, but, given where you’re coming from, and that ‘by your lights’ you don’t have good reasons to give up on these (at least not yet), I concede you’re being reasonable when you disagree with me about that.” Conversely, concerning who hold Yandell's view of the matter do, I contend, that they don’t have good reason to affirm that Buddhists cannot possibly be reasonable in reasoning as they do.
In my view, people here could say something like this: “Yes, our views are such that we’ve got a serious antithetical disagreement on our hands. However, given that our ultimate starting points are (so very) different than mine, and given that you belong to a different philosophical and religious traditions of inquiry than I, and especially since you’ve thought about the matter in light of internal and external criticism and maintain that you have satisfactory responses to these criticisms, I suppose I should concede that even if though I disagree with your verdict, it would implausible for me to deny that you are being reasonable all the same given ‘where you’re coming from and how you go about assessing these matters’ – even though I think you’ve started out in the wrong place.” (As a coda, note that only if philosophers are willing to grant that ‘the other’ reasonable, can serious dialogue about whether one party is getting at truth better than another take place.)
Hence, while antithetically disagreeing parties affirm different things to be factual and endorse different normative epistemic principles, it’s not as if one of them is necessarily ‘making some theoretical rationality mistake' when going about reasoning as they do, at least in accordance with those standards and principles each of them has reason to think are true. Of course, the goal of theoretical rationality is truth, but reasonability is not truth-entailing, thus, it is possible for people who accept different standards of theoretical rationality to manifest reasonability equally well - in that neither of them falls short of the constraints of reasonability - even though they do not get at truth equally well in reasoning as they do.
So, yeah, this is what I was thinking about today and yesterday.
