Abstract
This is a comment on a paper by Ronald Allen, in which he criticizes my earlier work on statistical evidence, and the entire philosophical discussion of which it is a part. In response I make several broad methodological points - about the point of theorizing, about the use of intuitions about hypothetical cases, and about idealizations - and point out some more specific mistakes in Allen's discussion of statistical evidence.
Highlights
SEVERAL ISSUES SET ASIDEI will not be using the phrase «naturalizing epistemology». This phrase—as Allen notes—has come to mean different things, perhaps (he doesn’t say that) to the
Revisiting the central theme from Allen and Leiter (2001), Allen insists that internalizing the lessons from naturalized epistemology—presumably, primarily against a priori reasoning and for more empirically minded research of, well, everything—undermines a whole body of literature in the theory of evidence law: discussions of statistical evidence, and what, if anything, makes this kind of evidence more suspicious than other, direct, non-statistical evidence
Allen is strongly critical of a priori reasoning about this and related problems, the kind of reasoning that is not sensitive to the dynamic and complex nature of the American legal system, and that is of no help to the jurist
Summary
I will not be using the phrase «naturalizing epistemology». This phrase—as Allen notes—has come to mean different things, perhaps (he doesn’t say that) to the. When he explains what he has in mind with that phrase he mentions two central commitments: first, a commitment to something like «ought-implies-can», the relation of which to standard philosophical discussions of naturalizing epistemology I do not see (and a commitment which, for the most part, and after suitable qualifications, I share); and second, something about «the difference between a priori conceptual/normative analysis on the one hand and on the other empirical inquiry into the actual state of some phenomena». Allen is out to reject a probabilistic conception of legal evidence (though he seems to think it’s a dead horse he’s beating, talking of «the demise of the probabilistic explanation»). I will not be commenting here on «relative plausibility theory», the alternative view of legal evidence that Allen sketches here (and develops in detail elsewhere). While I have some worries about it 3, I don’t know it well enough to comment seriously about it, and my focus in this comment lies elsewhere
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