Citation

Johnson King ZA. Synthese 2022; 200(6): e511.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s11229-022-03972-9

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper concerns recent attempts to use the epistemological notions of sensitivity and safety to shed light on legal debates about so-called "bare" statistical evidence. These notions might be thought to explain either the outright inadmissibility of such evidence or its inadequacy for a finding of fact--two different phenomena that are often discussed in tandem, but that, I insist, we do better to keep separate. I argue that neither sensitivity nor safety can hope to explain statistical evidence's inadmissibility, since neither offers a plausible criterion of admissibility that would exclude such evidence; both are subject to copious counterexamples, especially given their factivity, and it is difficult even to state a coherent criterion of admissibility in terms of either sensitivity or safety. The possibility remains, though, that either notion might explain statistical evidence's inadequacy for a finding of fact; I express some doubts about this possibility but do not rule it out.

Language: en

Keywords

Admissibility; Factivity; Legal epistemology; Legal proof; Legal theory; Safety; Sensitivity; Statistical evidence