I've been reading a lot of Indian epistemology recently, mostly Buddhist, both early source material and more recent explication and commentary on it. I've also been reading a lot of Japanese Buddhist philosophy, mostly Kyoto school stuff, such as Nishida Kitaro and Masao Abe.
I know these matters more than most, but as I go over them again, I see things that I've missed or misunderstood. That's making it more difficult to explain what's going on, as well as making it harder for me to present cases of reasonable antithetical disagreement about what to believe on the basis of Buddhist and Jain religious experiences, not to mention casting some measure of doubt on how it is right to say that philosophers from different backgrounds, with different starting points (endoxa), and 'foreigner' or non-native understandings of the others point of view are or could be in the same evidential situations.
Perhaps I need to make more of MacIntyre's notion of doing philosophy in a 'boundary condition' and the ideal of knowing another philosophical system/starting point as if one were a native, taking it on as one would learn a second native-language.
And also perhaps I need to set in place more senses in which people are or could be in the same evidential situation.
The weakest would be merely to accept or grant or suppose that another is in the same (general) evidential situation as you given that you have no reason to suppose that is not the case, there is some evidence that generally, you form many beliefs on the basis of shared standards of rationality, and the other has testified to you that they are aware of other sorts of relevant evidential considerations, too. That is, each person is willing to extend the presumption that the other is, generally, in the same epistemic situation, has at hand or may access the same types of evidence as you.
Or one can treat the other as if he or she is in the same evidential situation, in the sense that one will not treat the other as if he or she has some glaring lack of awareness, some deficiency, or some lack of insight into the matter of which you are speaking about, even if the other does not understand the matter as well. This would be in the case of a mentor-student relationship, perhaps, or when, say, a philosopher from the Kyoto School is willing to speak with someone about how one sees that, ultimately, reality is Absolute Emptiness or Absolute Non-Being to one who is not so familar with the Zen Buddhist tradition, at least not from an insider point of view.
Or like a top-notch analytic epistemologist who interacts with a passable one who does not balk at a 'not so good question' and rather indulges the student and corrects some misunderstanding, etc.
This seems a good time to clarify that being in the same evidential situation is more of an equal capacity to grasp and appropriately respond to evidence, whereas knowing the ins and outs of a philosophical argument or being able to fully and accurately explain the notion of Absolute Non-Being or the Regress Argument and the various ways of responding to it are more like unto having and exercising a kind of skill. In other words, it seems that those 'more advanced on the path' - by it philosophy or some mode of religious practice or 'insight awareness' out not to presume that those who are less skilled than they are in an evidential situation are therefore barred from being in that same evidential situation. Sure, there are things the student will miss or not see as clearly; but again, it is not as if the student is 'somewhere else.'
Perhaps treating the other as if they are in the same evidential situation is some sort of extension of the principle of charity, or some sort of 'yes, for all our differences, it would be wrong to say you are in a different evidential situation than I, rather, we ought to say that each of us as a more or less similar grasp or understanding of the evidence in our shared evidential situation.'
And perhaps you need to make more of the idea that what is essential here is that both parties are being equally reasonable in that same shared evidential situation even though they have an antithetical disagreement about which standards of theoretical rationality are 'in play' in that situation.
OK, now I'm just rambling, and I need more coffee. That's all for now.
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