scholarly journals Reconsidering the Rule of Consideration: Probabilistic Knowledge and Legal Proof

Episteme ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Tim Smartt
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Racial Profiling ◽  
Statistical Evidence ◽  
Moral Norm ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Probabilistic Knowledge ◽  
The Law ◽  
Legal Proof ◽  
Recent Account

Abstract In this paper, I provide an argument for rejecting Sarah Moss's recent account of legal proof. Moss's account is attractive in a number of ways. It provides a new version of a knowledge-based theory of legal proof that elegantly resolves a number of puzzles about mere statistical evidence in the law. Moreover, the account promises to have attractive implications for social and moral philosophy, in particular about the impermissibility of racial profiling and other harmful kinds of statistical generalisation. In this paper, I show that Moss's account of legal proof crucially depends on a moral norm called the rule of consideration. I argue that we have a number of reasons to be sceptical of this rule. Once we reject the rule, it is not clear that Moss's account of legal proof is either plausible or attractive.

Knowledge and persons

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Moss
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Statistical Evidence ◽  
Reasonable Doubt ◽  
Ordinary Objects ◽  
Legal Standards ◽  
Administrative Assistant ◽  
Probabilistic Knowledge ◽  
Standards Of Proof ◽  
Legal Proof

This chapter applies probabilistic knowledge to problems in legal and moral philosophy. It is argued that legal standards of proof require factfinders to know probabilistic contents. For instance, proof by a preponderance of the evidence requires knowledge that the defendant is at least .5 likely to be liable, whereas proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt requires knowledge of a significantly stronger content. The fact that legal proof requires knowledge explains why merely statistical evidence is insufficient to license a legal verdict of liability or guilt. In addition to explaining the limited value of statistical evidence, probabilistic knowledge is useful in spelling out norms violated by acts of racial and other profiling. It can be epistemically wrong to infer from statistics that a woman is probably an administrative assistant, for instance, even when inferring facts about ordinary objects from similar statistics is perfectly okay.

Probabilistic Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Moss
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Racial Profiling ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Transformative Experience ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Probabilistic Knowledge ◽  
Female Speech ◽  
Legal Proof ◽  
Philosophical Debates

Traditional philosophical discussions of knowledge have focused on the epistemic status of full beliefs. This book argues that in addition to full beliefs, credences can constitute knowledge. For instance, your .4 credence that it is raining outside can constitute knowledge, in just the same way that your full beliefs can. In addition, you can know that it might be raining, and that if it is raining then it is probably cloudy, where this knowledge is not knowledge of propositions, but of probabilistic contents. The notion of probabilistic content introduced in this book plays a central role not only in epistemology, but in the philosophy of mind and language as well. Just as tradition holds that you believe and assert propositions, you can believe and assert probabilistic contents. Accepting that we can believe, assert, and know probabilistic contents has significant consequences for many philosophical debates, including debates about the relationship between full belief and credence, the semantics of epistemic modals and conditionals, the contents of perceptual experience, peer disagreement, pragmatic encroachment, perceptual dogmatism, and transformative experience. In addition, accepting probabilistic knowledge can help us discredit negative evaluations of female speech, explain why merely statistical evidence is insufficient for legal proof, and identify epistemic norms violated by acts of racial profiling. Hence the central theses of this book not only help us better understand the nature of our own mental states, but also help us better understand the nature of our responsibilities to each other.

scholarly journals ProCAVIAR: Hybrid Data-Driven and Probabilistic Knowledge-Based Activity Recognition

IEEE Access ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 146876-146886
Author(s):  
Claudio Bettini ◽  
Gabriele Civitarese ◽  
Davide Giancane ◽  
Riccardo Presotto
Keyword(s):  
Activity Recognition ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Probabilistic Knowledge ◽  
Hybrid Data

Ethics in Community in the Gospel and Letters of John

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan van der Watt
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ethical Thinking ◽  
The Law ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Significant Data

At the beginning of the twenty-first century the question of ethics in John came under renewed consideration. As scholars applied more comprehensive analytical categories to the Gospel and Letters of John significant data became available related to the ethical dynamics of the Gospel. Reading the Gospel as narrative and reflecting on certain socio-historical and theological realities, scholars discovered that the interrelatedness between identity and behaviour is basic to the ethical thinking of John. This identity is expressed in metaphorical terms derived from familial, juridical, friendship, and royal language. The importance of ancient ethically related features, common to ordinary popular moral philosophy, like mimesis or reciprocity, are also highlighted as being part of the ethical dynamics in John. Obviously, the two major foci remain the Law and the love commandment.

Law as Text

2019 ◽  
pp. 69-102
Author(s):  
Thomas J. McSweeney
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Knowledge Based ◽  
Textual Practice ◽  
Royal Courts ◽  
The Law

Roman and canon law were fields of knowledge based on the interpretation of authoritative texts. In their study of Roman and canon law, the authors of Bracton would have begun to think about the practice of law as a textual practice. This was not an obvious way to think about law in the thirteenth century. In England’s county and manor courts, much of the law was contained in the collective memory of the suitors of the court, not in authoritative texts. Thus, the fact that Bracton’s authors studied Roman and canon law would have led them to think about law in a different manner from many of their colleagues in the central royal courts.

The distribution of Greek loan–words in Terence

1985 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Maltby
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Statistical Evidence ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Social Standing ◽  
Loan Words ◽  
Comprehensive List ◽  
Previous Note ◽  
The Law ◽  
Linguistic Means

The aim of this paper is to discuss Terence's use of Greek loan-words and to examine their distribution by plays and by characters. How far are they used for stylistic effect and what relationship do they have to the themes of different plays? Is there any evidence for the concentration of these words, which often tend to be colloquial in tone, in the mouths of slaves and characters of low social status for the purposes of linguistic characterisation? Finally, does Terence's use of these words develop in the course of his short career? The usefuleness of a previous note on this subject by J. N. Hough is limited by the absence of any comprehensive list of occurrences, so that its objectivity is difficult to check. A more helpful discussion by P. Oksala gives a fuller list, but concentrates mainly on a comparison with Plautine usage in the type and frequency of these words and does not discuss their distribution within the Terentian corpus.The question of characterisation by linguistic means, particularly in the field of New Comedy, has received considerable attention in recent years. The doctrine that a character's speech should be appropriate to his or her age, sex or social status, is well attested in the ancient world, with reference both to the theatre and to the law-courts. The ancient scholia on Aristophanes, as well as the fourth-century commentary on Terence that goes under the name of Donatus, contain comments on the appropriateness of particular words and phrases to particular character types. Leo, commenting long ago on the distribution of Greek words in Plautus, observed that they were used predominantly by slaves and characters of low social standing, a point made earlier by N. Tuchhaendler. More recently M. E. Gilleland has produced detailed statistical evidence for both Plautus and Terence which tends to back up these observations.

scholarly journals Truth, knowledge, and the standard of proof in criminal law

Synthese ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 197 (12) ◽  
pp. 5253-5286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clayton Littlejohn
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Expected Value ◽  
Statistical Evidence ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Decision Under Risk ◽  
Standard Of Proof ◽  
The Law ◽  
Practical Question ◽  
As If

AbstractCould it be right to convict and punish defendants using only statistical evidence? In this paper, I argue that it is not and explain why it would be wrong. This is difficult to do because there is a powerful argument for thinking that we should convict and punish defendants using statistical evidence. It looks as if the relevant cases are cases of decision under risk and it seems we know what we should do in such cases (i.e., maximize expected value). Given some standard assumptions about the values at stake, the case for convicting and punishing using statistical evidence seems solid. In trying to show where this argument goes wrong, I shall argue (against Lockeans, reliabilists, and others) that beliefs supported only by statistical evidence are epistemically defective and (against Enoch, Fisher, and Spectre) that these epistemic considerations should matter to the law. To solve the puzzle about the role of statistical evidence in the law, we need to revise some commonly held assumptions about epistemic value and defend the relevance of epistemology to this practical question.

scholarly journals Recent Work on the Proof Paradox

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis Ross
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
New Work ◽  
Dna Evidence ◽  
Proper Role ◽  
The Law ◽  
Legal Proof ◽  
Fresh Impetus

Recent years have seen fresh impetus brought to debates about the proper role ofstatistical evidence in the law. This work largely centres on a set of puzzles known asthe ‘proof paradox’. While these puzzles may initially seem academic, they haveimportant ramifications for the law: raising key conceptual questions about legal proof,and practical questions about DNA evidence. This article introduces the proof paradox,why we should care about it, and new work attempting to resolve it.

The Theory of “Efficient Breach”: A Jewish Law Perspective

2010 ◽  
pp. 339-360
Author(s):  
Ronald Warburg
Keyword(s):  
Economic Efficiency ◽  
Law And Economics ◽  
Moral Norm ◽  
Legal Norm ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Distinguishing Characteristic ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Inside Information ◽  
Human Organs ◽  
The Law

This article focuses on the theory of efficient breach from the perspective of the Jewish law. The law and economics schools of thought have advanced a number of controversial claims in the name of economic efficiency—from promoting trading on inside information to providing markets for the sale of human organs—but none may be as provocative and challenging as the argument of entitlement and economic efficiency underlying the theory of “efficient breach.” This article explains various Jewish laws such as halakhah. Halakhah distinguishes between legal and moral norms. The distinguishing characteristic between them is enforceability. Whereas a halakhic-legal norm is enforceable by a bet din, compliance with a halakhic moral norm is dependent upon individual volition. There are two components required in the undertaking of an obligation: effectuating a kinyan and gemirat da'at. This article further elaborates upon every other clause pertaining to Jewish law and Judaism which concludes this article.

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