Forgive me if this is old news and I am the last to learn about it, but anyone interested in Buddhism and Bayes’ Theorem as a tool for evaluating the historical status of the Buddha in a way somewhat comparable to what Richard Carrier has done with Jesus will want to read
- Kingsley, John. “A Bayesian Analysis of Early Śramaṇic Origin Stories Part I: Historicity of the Buddha.” Master of Arts, Loyola Marymount University, 2022. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/etd/1256/.
From the Introduction:
Because of the depth and time needed to complete a full Bayesian analysis of both the Buddha and Mahāvīra, this paper will focus mostly on the historicity of the Buddha, and offer further research suggestions for that of Mahāvīra. However, the main objective of this paper is not necessarily to prove, one way or another, that these figures did or did not exist. It is to simply provide a framework for the methodology that I think is most effective at forcing historians – and theologians – to deductively and empirically analyze the questions in their respective fields.
Neil Godfrey
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Kingsley was explicitly inspired by Carrier, who’s mentioned 44 times.
I hope this doesn’t become a trend, but it may be too late. At least Kingsley doesn’t seem to have lost his head.
Indeed, Carrier is Kingsley’s Muse. I have no problem applying Bayesian processes to hypotheses. So long as the conclusion itself remains in the realm of hypothesis and does not leap into “therefore…. (probable/likely) historical fact”.
Yes, it seems like a worthwhile endeavor – except that history is much more complicated than the laboratory scenarios statistics has evolved to handle. I once mentioned Carrier’s project to a friend, who like me has a PhD in math. She laughed out loud. It seems to math geeks sort of … adolescent, as in an attempt to bulldoze readers with pseudo-technical jargon.
But it’s worth exploring, maybe some good will come of it. At least Carrier’s OHJ contained a lot of interesting information for a history amateur like me. Even Detering said he liked it.
But let’s start it out with something simple – the Historical Jesus is too huge and fraught a topic for an initial experiment. Maybe the JFK assassination? 🙂
Historical events and persons cannot be established by probabilistic reasoning. Carrier’s effort wrt Jesus falls over at the first hurdle: assigning Jesus to the Rank-Raglan hero class. He concludes that Jesus position in this class puts him among figures who are fictional. But that has nothing to do with the question of whether Jesus existed or not. It only tells us that if he existed then he had more mythical stories told about him than other historical persons.
I’m confused about your attitude to applying Bayes’ to history. You said
‘I have no problem applying Bayesian processes to hypotheses. So long as the conclusion itself remains in the realm of hypothesis and does not leap into “therefore…. (probable/likely) historical fact”.’
But the whole point of Bayes’ theorem is to calculate probabilities. So should I understand you to mean that it’s OK to consider the likelihood of alternate historical timelines as long as we don’t try to quantify them?
I should apologize for leaving a confusing remark. The discussion in the thesis opens up a range of interesting insights into the sources to which I would never object.
We can conclude that the evidence we have for X is what we would expect given a certain hypothesis.
But that kind of statement does not allow us to make predictions about what we will find in the historical record.
If Buddha existed historically he existed historically. It could not be said of a historical figure that they exist “with a probability of close to 1”. The converse applies, too, of course.