The notion of risk plays a central role in economics, finance, health, psychology, law and elsewhere, and is prevalent in managing challenges and resources in day-to-day life. In recent work, Duncan Pritchard (2015, 2016) has argued against the orthodox probabilistic conception of risk on which the risk of a hypothetical scenario is determined by how probable it is, and in favour of a modal conception on which the risk of a hypothetical scenario is determined by how modally close it is. (...) In this article, we use Pritchard’s discussion as a springboard for a more wide-ranging discussion of the notion of risk. We introduce three different conceptions of risk: the standard probabilistic conception, Pritchard’s modal conception, and a normalcy conception that is new (though it has some precursors in the psychological literature on risk perception). Ultimately, we argue that the modal conception is ill-suited to the roles that a notion of risk is required to play and explore the prospects for a form of pluralism about risk, embracing both the probabilistic and the normalcy conceptions. (shrink)

It is argued that the standard way that the criminal justice debate regarding the permissible extent of wrongful convictions is cast is fundamentally flawed. In particular, it is claimed that there is an inherent danger in focussing our attention in this debate on different ways of measuring the probabilistic likelihood of wrongful conviction and then evaluating whether these probabilities are unacceptably high. This is because such probabilistic measures are clumsy ways of capturing the level of risk involved, to the extent (...) that a defendant can be subject to an unacceptably high level of legal risk in this regard even where the relevant probabilities are very low. An alternative conception of legal risk – one that is primarily cast along modal rather than probabilistic lines – is set out which offers a much better way of framing the debate regarding what would be an acceptable level of wrongful conviction. It is further argued that with this modal conception of legal risk in play we can capture an important necessary condition that should be imposed on legal evidence, one that has application beyond the context of the criminal trial. (shrink)

There is something puzzling about statistical evidence. One place this manifests is in the law, where courts are reluctant to base affirmative verdicts on evidence that is purely statistical, in spite of the fact that it is perfectly capable of meeting the standards of proof enshrined in legal doctrine. After surveying some proposed explanations for this, I shall outline a new approach – one that makes use of a notion of normalcy that is distinct from the idea of statistical frequency. (...) The puzzle is not, however, merely a legal one. Our unwillingness to base beliefs on statistical evidence is by no means limited to the courtroom, and is at odds with almost every general principle that epistemologists have proposed as to how we ought to manage our beliefs. (shrink)

Could 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. (shrink)

Recent attempts to resolve the Paradox of the Gatecrasher rest on a now familiar distinction between individual and bare statistical evidence. This paper investigates two such approaches, the causal approach to individual evidence and a recently influential (and award-winning) modal account that explicates individual evidence in terms of Nozick's notion of sensitivity. This paper offers counterexamples to both approaches, explicates a problem concerning necessary truths for the sensitivity account, and argues that either view is implausibly committed to the impossibility of (...) no-fault wrongful convictions. The paper finally concludes that the distinction between individual and bare statistical evidence cannot be maintained in terms of causation or sensitivity. We have to look elsewhere for a solution of the Paradox of the Gatecrasher. (shrink)

This paper propounds the following theses: 1). that the traditional focus on the Blackstone ratio of errors as a device for setting the criminal standard of proof is ill-conceived, 2). that the preoccupation with the rate of false convictions in criminal trials is myopic, and 3). that the key ratio of interest, in judging the political morality of a system of criminal justice, involves the relation between the risk that an innocent person runs of being falsely convicted of a serious (...) crime and the risk of being criminally victimized by someone who was falsely acquitted. (shrink)

The law views with suspicion statistical evidence, even evidence that is probabilistically on a par with direct, individual evidence that the law is in no way suspicious of. But it has proved remarkably hard to either justify this suspicion, or to debunk it. In this paper, we connect the discussion of statistical evidence to broader epistemological discussions of similar phenomena. We highlight Sensitivity – the requirement that a belief be counterfactually sensitive to the truth in a specific way – as (...) a way of epistemically explaining the legal suspicion towards statistical evidence. Still, we do not think of this as a satisfactory vindication of the reluctance to rely on statistical evidence. Knowledge – and Sensitivity, and indeed epistemology in general – are of little, if any, legal value. Instead, we tell an incentive-based story vindicating the suspicion towards statistical evidence. We conclude by showing that the epistemological story and the incentive-based story are closely and interestingly related, and by offering initial thoughts about the role of statistical evidence in morality. (shrink)

This article explores a long-running debate in evidence theory about the significance of certain puzzling cases where there is reluctance to ascribe liability despite a high probability of liability. It focuses on certain analyses of these puzzles, distinguishing between inferential, moral, and knowledge-based analyses. The article emphasizes the richness and complexity of the puzzle cases and suggests why they are difficult to resolve.

Knowledge and its Limits presents a systematic new conception of knowledge as a kind of mental stage sensitive to the knower's environment. It makes a major contribution to the debate between externalist and internalist philosophies of mind, and breaks radically with the epistemological tradition of analyzing knowledge in terms of true belief. The theory casts new light on such philosophical problems as scepticism, evidence, probability and assertion, realism and anti-realism, and the limits of what can be known. The arguments are (...) illustrated by rigorous models based on epistemic logic and probability theory. The result is a new way of doing epistemology and a notable contribution to the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

What modal relation must a fact bear to a belief in order for this belief to constitute knowledge of that fact? Externalists have proposed various answers, including some that combine externalism with contextualism. We shall find that various forms of externalism share a modal conception of “sensitivity” open to serious objections. Fortunately, the undeniable intuitive attractiveness of this conception can be explained through an easily confused but far preferable notion of “safety.” The denouement of our reflections, finally, will be to (...) show how replacing sensitivity with safety makes it possible to defend plain Moorean common sense against the spurious advantages over it claimed by skeptical, tracking, relevant-alternative, and contextualist accounts. (shrink)

Why can testimony alone be enough for findings of liability? Why statistical evidence alone can’t? These questions underpin the “Proof Paradox” (Redmayne 2008, Enoch et al. 2012). Many epistemologists have attempted to explain this paradox from a purely epistemic perspective. I call it the “Epistemic Project”. In this paper, I take a step back from this recent trend. Stemming from considerations about the nature and role of standards of proof, I define three requirements that any successful account in line with (...) the Epistemic Project should meet. I then consider three recent epistemic accounts on which the standard is met when the evidence rules out modal risk (Pritchard 2018), normic risk (Ebert et al. 2020), or relevant alternatives (Gardiner 2019 2020). I argue that none of these accounts meets all the requirements. Finally, I offer reasons to be pessimistic about the prospects of having a successful epistemic explanation of the paradox. I suggest the discussion on the proof paradox would benefit from undergoing a ‘value-turn’. (shrink)

The epistemology of risk examines how risks bear on epistemic properties. A common framework for examining the epistemology of risk holds that strength of evidential support is best modelled as numerical probability given the available evidence. In this essay I develop and motivate a rival ‘relevant alternatives’ framework for theorising about the epistemology of risk. I describe three loci for thinking about the epistemology of risk. The first locus concerns consequences of relying on a belief for action, where those consequences (...) are significant if the belief is false. The second locus concerns whether beliefs themselves—regardless of action—can be risky, costly, or harmful. The third locus concerns epistemic risks we confront as social epistemic agents. I aim to motivate the relevant alternatives framework as a fruitful approach to the epistemology of risk. I first articulate a ‘relevant alternatives’ model of the relationship between stakes, evidence, and action. I then employ the relevant alternatives framework to undermine the motivation for moral encroachment. Finally, I argue the relevant alternatives framework illuminates epistemic phenomena such as gaslighting, conspiracy theories, and crying wolf, and I draw on the framework to diagnose the undue skepticism endemic to rape accusations. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article defends the importance of epistemic safety for legal evidence. Drawing on discussions of sensitivity and safety in epistemology, the article explores how similar considerations apply to legal proof. In the legal context, sensitivity concerns whether a factual finding would be made if it were false, and safety concerns how easily a factual finding could be false. The article critiques recent claims about the importance of sensitivity for the law of evidence. In particular, this critique argues that sensitivity does (...) not have much of an effect on the value of legal evidence and that it fails to explain legal doctrine. By contrast, safety affects the quality of legal evidence, and safety better explains central features of the law of evidence, including probative value, admissibility rules, and standards of proof. (shrink)

Artists often emphasize the importance of risk to their work. But this raises a puzzle, as on a standard probabilistic account of risk we are obliged to treat some of these cases as not involving genuine risk at all. It is argued that the way to resolve this puzzle is to recognize a crucial shortcoming in the probabilistic account of risk. With this shortcoming rectified, and hence with a revised modal account of risk in place, we are able to treat (...) the relevant cases of putative aesthetic risk as entirely genuine. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to mark the transition from an anti-luck epistemology to an anti-risk epistemology, and to explain in the process how the latter has advantages over the former. We begin with an account of anti-luck epistemology and the modal account of luck that underpins it. Then we consider the close inter-relationships between luck and risk, and in the process set out the modal account of risk that is a natural extension of the modal account of luck. (...) Finally, we apply the modal account of risk to epistemology in order to develop an anti-risk epistemology, and then explore the merits of this proposal. In particular, it is shown that this account can avoid a theoretical lacuna in anti-luck epistemology, and there is a stronger theoretical motivation for anti-risk epistemology compared with anti-luck epistemology, especially when it comes to explaining why environmental epistemic luck is incompatible with knowledge. (shrink)

This essay offers a rearticulation and defence of the modal account of luck that the author developed in earlier work . In particular, the proposal is situated within a certain methodology, a component of which is paying due attention to the cognitive science literature on luck ascriptions. It is shown that with the modal account of luck properly articulated it can adequately deal with some of the problems that have recently been offered against it, and that the view has a (...) number of attractions over competing proposals, such as the lack of control account. (shrink)

The book was planned and written as a single, sustained argument. But earlier versions of a few parts of it have appeared separately. The object of this book is both to establish the existence of the paradoxes, and also to describe a non-Pascalian concept of probability in terms of which one can analyse the structure of forensic proof without giving rise to such typical signs of theoretical misfit. Neither the complementational principle for negation nor the multiplicative principle for conjunction applies (...) to the central core of any forensic proof in the Anglo-American legal system. There are four parts included in this book. Accordingly, these parts have been written in such a way that they may be read in different orders by different kinds of reader. (shrink)

In this article it is argued that the standard theoretical account of risk in the contemporary literature, which is cast along probabilistic lines, is flawed, in that it is unable to account for a particular kind of risk. In its place a modal account of risk is offered. Two applications of the modal account of risk are then explored. First, to epistemology, via the defence of an anti-risk condition on knowledge in place of the normal anti-luck condition. Second, to legal (...) theory, where it is shown that this account of risk can cast light on the debate regarding the extent to which a criminal justice system can countenance the possibility of wrongful convictions. (shrink)

In this paper, I do three things. First, I offer an overview of an anti- luck epistemology, as set out in my book, Epistemic Luck. Second, I attempt to meet some of the main criticisms that one might level against the key theses that I propose in this work. And finally, third, I sketch some of the ways in which the strategy of anti- luck epistemology can be developed in new directions.

My interest is in how shifting from an anti-luck epistemology to an anti-risk epistemology can enable us to make sense of some important epistemic phenomena. After rehearsing the more general arguments for preferring anti-risk epistemology over its anti-luck cousin, I argue that a further advantage of this transition lies in how it puts us in a better position to understand certain trade-offs with regard to epistemic risk. In particular, there can be ways of forming beliefs that are epistemically low risk (...) along one axis of evaluation while being epistemically high risk along another axis of evaluation. I further show how this idea plays out in terms of collaborative inquiries, where the framework provided by anti-risk epistemology enables us to understand how epistemic risk can be distributed across such a collective enterprise and thereby effectively managed. (shrink)