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The problem with ‘Buddhist epistemology’ is that there’s not just one POV. Depending on the tradition, especially in relation to the Abidhammic corpus of those traditions, you’re going to get slightly different answers. And the individual points and distinctions between them are no longer my focus, to be honest. I’ve long since taken Ajahn Thanissaro’s advice about keeping the goal of the path at the forefront—the cessation of suffering. And the most important question in that regard is, what when I do it will be for my long-term welfare and happiness?

There are many answers to what constitutes a valid cognition, as well as what makes for a valid cognition starting from the verification of healthy functioning sense organs onwards. And I’m not sure what answer would satisfy everyone considering the inherent difficulty of trying to categorize and verify someone’s subjective experience. The term used in the Pali Canon, panna, essentially means wisdom or knowledge that’s gained from our sense awareness (which includes congnition) and contemplation. This type of knowledge is broken down in many ways in the Pali Canon, often in terms of the three characteristics of inconstancy (annica), stessfulness/unsatisfactoriness (dukkha) and not-self (anatta). But there are other frameworks and perceptions, such as the knowledge of meditative absorptions through direct experience (e.g., DN 34. So throughout the Pali Canon, what’s often translated as insight, knowledge, understanding, wisdom, etc. is always associated with some aspect the four noble truths—dukkha, the cause of dukkha, the cessation of dukkha, and the path leading to the cessation of dukkha. Then, of course, later Abhidhammists and sects and traditions started creating epistemological structures and having debates with one another about who had it right.

Ah, yes, it should have been: “Buddhism, on the other hand, is very much about empiricism, [first-person], and third party verification on the mental [and psychosocial] level and in terms of things that can be tested through mental processes via subjective experience.”

So you’re verifying things subjectively and often with an experienced teacher who can help to verify your progress from their own experience (and even possibly through supranormal ways (psychic powers). But even there, the Buddha gives guidelines on what to look for and how to judge a good teacher from bad, which again is very empirical. The only issue is, the primary focus of the path is something immaterial, our conscious experience of the world, and there’s no real way to test consciousness. One can only see corollary physical phenomena associated with consciousness and its effects on the body and vice versa, never the subject itself. That said, the Buddha did advocate a healthy skepticism in places like the aforementioned Kalama Sutta and Canki Sutta. But again, the heart of those is testing things out for yourself to see the results.

Whereas the knowledge of science is the physics of the material world, Buddhist knowledge is physics of the inner world of our mind—one that has a very specific purpose, liberation from suffering. Even if one doesn’t believe in or have any experience with some of the more metaphysical aspects like rebirth, one can still put the teachings into practice and see what the results are if they so choose. I don’t know how to tell someone when their subjective experience is ‘valid,’ as I think they’re all valid. But if you mean conform to some objective truth or reality, that’s not something I think anyone can do, which is why the Buddha gives so many guidelines—the most basic being observing the results of our actions and the intentions underlying them.