The Generation of Probable Facts from Testimonies in Jurisprudence and Historiography (original) (raw)
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The Generation of Knowledge from Multiple Testimonies
Social Epistemology, 2016
This article argues for, develops, and defends a non-reductionist model of the generation of knowledge from multiple testimonies. By knowledge I mean propositions with sufficiently high probability in a context of inquiry. In different contexts institutions and people demand different probabilistic thresholds to consider propositions true, for example, civil law requires lower “preponderance of (testimonial) evidence” threshold than criminal law that requires “beyond reasonable doubt” threshold. (Ho 2008) I explain how testimonies generate knowledge that is not reducible to the other sources of knowledge, empirical, a-priori, from memory or from introspection. Multiple testimonies can generate knowledge with considerably higher probability than the reliability of each testimony. Individual testimonies can at most transmit their own reliabilities. Testimonial knowledge relies trivially on inference, perception and memory—and vice versa. (Strawson 1994) For example, the generation of knowledge from testimonies involves inferences, the subject of this article. But inference is not a basic source of testimonial knowledge. Likewise, we must use our senses to read or hear testimonies; but perceptions convey the testimonies; they are not their basic source. The inference of knowledge exclusively from multiple testimonies as basic sources allows a non-reductionist epistemology of testimonial knowledge. (Strawson 1994, 25) I open the discussion with an analysis of the best formal epistemic modelling of the inference of knowledge from multiple testimonies. I criticize their conceptual analyses of coherence between testimonies, the independence of testimonies, and their reliability. I argue that instead of assuming independence by fiat, formal models should explain how to prove it. Instead of conditional and causal interpretations, I argue for tracing information flows. Then, I present a new alternative Bayesian three stages modular model that I argue fits the actual veritistic best practices of institutionally embedded experts who infer knowledge from multiple testimonies. Finally, I consider some of the broader implications of my epistemology of testimony for understanding social knowledge and the relations between social and individual epistemologies. I endorse Goldman’s (1999) designation of the epistemology of testimony as a vital link between individualist and social epistemologies to argue that much of social knowledge supervenes on multiple individual testimonies. Institutional expert knowledge follows implicitly or explicitly the use of the reliable methods of inference from multiple testimonies that I outline. The institutions that habitually infer knowledge mostly or even exclusively from multiple testimonies are intelligence agencies such as the CIA, police detective departments, the judicial system, investigative journalism, and the historical research institutions. Since the results of inferences from multiple testimonies are literally matters of life and death, war or peace, the conviction or acquittal of the guilty and innocent, the exposure of corruption and crime, and our knowledge of the past, the significance of the questions I attempt to answer here exceeds that of abstract issues in epistemology. The answers I propose, can serve as a normative regulative standard for best epistemic practices that can measure, criticize, and regulate the institutional practices that attempt to generate knowledge from multiple testimonies. The main current methodologies of the epistemology of testimony are conceptual-using thought experiments to explicate concepts (e.g. Lackey 2008; Goldberg 2010, cf. Tucker 2012b) and formal—applying probabilistic methods to build models (Bovens and Hartmann 2003; Olsson 2005; Shogenji 2007). The absence of fruitful communications between conceptual and formal epistemology is lamentable (cf. Hendricks 2006, 151-165) particularly because the conceptual and formal approaches have reached inconsistent conclusions. Conceptual thought experiments focus on the transmission of epistemic properties by single testimonies, ignoring or even denying that multiple testimonies can generate more reliable beliefs, knowledge, than any single testimony. Most formal models show that multiple testimonies can generate knowledge that is more reliable than any single testimony and attempt to model formally this inference, but the models make often unjustified and unrealistic assumptions and their conceptual interpretations are weak. Bovens and Hartmann (2003, 129-130), for example, recognized the weakness of making implausible assumptions to facilitate model building. My alternative methodology is to model the best practices of the experts who specialize in inferring knowledge from testimonies, following Goldman’s (1999) recommendation that social epistemology and the epistemology of testimony model veritistic, truth conducive, institutional epistemic practices because the institutionalized best practices of experts are probably close to the best possible practices. The institutional experts who generate knowledge mostly, if not exclusively, from multiple testimonies are detectives, intelligence analysts, historians, and investigative journalists. Goldman (2004) considered the institutional and epistemic practices of the FBI. Brittan (1994) and Tucker (2004), moreover, noted the close relation between the epistemology of testimony and the philosophy of historiography. Detectives as historians have been considered by philosophers at least since Collingwood. (1956, 266-274)
Narration in judiciary fact-finding: a probabilistic explication
Legal probabilism is the view that juridical fact-finding should be modeled using Bayesian methods. One of the alternatives to it is the narration view, according to which instead we should conceptualize the process in terms of competing narrations of what (allegedly) happened. The goal of this paper is to develop a reconciliatory account, on which the narration view is construed from the Baye-sian perspective within the framework of formal Bayesian epistemology.
Historical truth, narrative truth, and expert testimony
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A number of remarkable issues are illuminated when a psychologist or psychiatrist is invited to testify in a legal proceeding. Some of these issues have commanded a great deal of scholarly and judicial attention. There is, for example, the way in which such expert ...
The epistemic and moral role of testimony in the constitution of the representation of recent past
abSTracT my aim in this article is to provide a critical-productive appreciation of witness testimony that avoids the false and crooked dichotomies that pervade contemporary philosophy of history and historical theory. My specific, pragmatist approach combines the recent accounts of Hayden White about " witness literature " with the " generative-performative " consideration of testimony by martin Kusch. The purpose is to appreciate, in a non-foun-dationalist way, the epistemic and moral role of testimony in the constitution of the representation of the recent past. To achieve this I examine the assumed epistemic and political privilege of the testimonies of survivors of state terrorism from the recent past, and I draw on insights of three of the most relevant survivor witnesses: Primo Levi, Victor Klemperer, and pilar calveiro. The essay tries to avoid both an epistemic and a moral posture based on something like " the privileged victim's perspective, " and instead approaches the specific analysis of production and circulation of witness discourse in terms of its contribution to the constitution of the past. That is, it recommends that one look at witness testimony not as an attempt to return to the past but as an action in the present. The result in so doing is to follow some recent results discussed in the new epistemology of witness testimony, which insist that: first, trust in testimony is an irreducible function of the acceptance of knowledge (this means that testimonies should not be treated as secondary sources of knowledge or as parasitical on experience and reason); and second, the production-circulation of testimonies does not function only in the context of justification but is also legitimately constitu-tive of knowledge.
The paper argues against Hume's account of testimony, and claims that trust in testimony is an autonomous source of knowledge, when the testimony believed is an honest report of something known by the person asserting it. Such trust is the exercise of an intellectual virtue.
Reconsidering the Role of Inference to the Best Explanation in the Epistemology of Testimony
In his work on the epistemology of testimony, Peter Lipton developed an account of testimonial inference that aimed at descriptive adequacy as well as justificatory sophistication. According to ‘testimonial inference to the best explanation’ (TIBE), we accept what a speaker tells us because the truth of her claim figures in the best explanation of the fact that she made it. In the present paper, I argue for a modification of this picture. In particular, I argue that IBE plays a dual role in the management and justification of testimony. On the one hand, the coherence and success of our testimony-based projects provides general abductive support for a default stance of testimonial acceptance; on the other hand, we are justified in rejecting specific testimonial claims whenever the best explanation of the instances of testimony we encounter entails, or makes probable, the falsity or unreliability of the testimony in question.