The future of trial lies in customization. Throughout the Anglo-American world, the public model of criminal and civil procedure is gradually giving way to a private contractual paradigm, one which allows the litigating parties to tailor the evidentiary and procedural landscape of trial to fit their specific needs and preferences. Procedural and evidence rules are shifting from mandatory safeguards of public values to default rules and bargaining chips within the hands of the litigating parties. There is growing recognition in the (...) ability of litigating parties in civil trials and of defendants in criminal trials to waive evidentiary and procedural rights, such as the right of cross-examination, the right to trial by jury, or the right to appeal. Courts are exhibiting a willingness to enforce choice of procedure and choice of evidence agreements, such as agreements to restrict the presentation of otherwise admissible evidence or to allow for presentation of otherwise inadmissible evidence. (shrink)

Corroborating evidence supports a proposition that is already supported by other initial evidence. It bolsters or confirms the original body of evidence. Corroboration has striking psychological and epistemic force: It potently affects how people do and should assess the target proposition. This essay investigates the distinctive powers of corroborating evidence. Corroboration does not simply increase the quantifiable probability of the adjudicated claim. Drawing on the relevant alternatives framework, I argue that corroboration winnows remaining uneliminated error possibilities. This illuminates the independence, (...) weight, and non-fungibility of corroborating evidence. I compare corroborating evidence to prudential safeguards, like fire doors, that forfend against non-epistemic harms. I thereby sketch a general, non-quantificational model of risk management. Finally, I turn to legal corroboration requirements and the epistemic significance of corroboration for legal proof. (shrink)

A criminal conviction can trigger numerous burdensome legal consequences beyond the formal sentence. Some charge that these “collateral” legal consequences (CLCs) constitute additional measures of punishment, which raises the further question of whether judges should consider these CLCs when making sentencing decisions, reducing the formal sentence in proportion to the severity of the CLCs the defendant will face. The idea that all CLCs constitute forms of punishment reflects a particular conception of punishment, which I call the “minimalist view.” In this (...) paper, I argue against the minimalist view. I contend that on a more adequate conception of punishment, some but not all CLCs constitute punishment. I also argue that whether judges should consider CLCs in sentencing decisions depends on whether the relevant CLCs constitute punishment. (shrink)

Recent studies have shown that recidivism scoring algorithms like COMPAS have significant racial bias: Black defendants are roughly twice as likely as white defendants to be mistakenly classified as medium- or high-risk. This has led some to call for abolishing COMPAS. But many others have argued that algorithms should instead be given access to a defendant's race, which, perhaps counterintuitively, is likely to improve outcomes. This approach can involve either establishing race-sensitive risk thresholds, or distinct racial ‘tracks’. Is there a (...) moral difference between these two approaches? We first consider Deborah Hellman's view that the use of distinct racial tracks (but not distinct thresholds) does not constitute disparate treatment since the effects on individuals are indirect and does not rely on a racial generalization. We argue that this is mistaken: the use of different racial tracks seems both to have direct effects on and to rely on a racial generalization. We then offer an alternative understanding of the distinction between these two approaches—namely, that the use of different cut points is to the counterfactual comparative disadvantage, ex ante, of all white defendants, while the use of different racial tracks can in principle be to the advantage of all groups, though some defendants in both groups will fare worse. Does this mean that the use of cut points is impermissible? Ultimately, we argue, while there are reasons to be skeptical of the use of distinct cut points, it is an open question whether these reasons suffice to make a difference to their moral permissibility. (shrink)

Introduction and Discussion of a Special Issue in philosophy of law "Philosophical Dimensions of the Trial" -/- .

* Special Issue on the Philosophical Dimensions of the Trial* This summarises and discusses the contributions.

Content note: This paper discusses rape throughout.Abstract. In this paper, I consider arguments in favor of jury trials. While I find these generally persuasive, I argue that there can be cases where juries are not fit for purpose. In those cases, I argue that they should be replaced by judge-only trials. In doing so, I propose a framework for determining whether a type of case is unsuitable for jury trials. Partly in response to low conviction rates, there have been recent (...) suggestions that rape trials should be conducted without juries. I suggest that there is strong evidence that these offences qualify under the criteria I have described. As a result, I argue that judge-only trials should be adopted for trying rape cases. (shrink)

This paper considers challenges resulting from the use of advanced artificial judicial intelligence (AAJI). We argue that these challenges should be considered through the lens of value alignment. Instead of discussing why specific goals and values, such as fairness and nondiscrimination, ought to be implemented, we consider the question of how AAJI can be aligned with goals and values more generally, in order to be reliably integrated into legal and judicial systems. This value alignment framing draws on AI safety and (...) alignment literature to introduce two otherwise neglected considerations for AAJI safety: specification and assurance. We outline diverse research directions and suggest the adoption of assurance and specification mechanisms as the use of AI in the judiciary progresses. While we focus on specification and assurance to illustrate the value of the AI safety and alignment literature, we encourage researchers in law and philosophy to consider what other lessons may be drawn. (shrink)

Despite the alleged roles played by structures, substances, and facts in mathematical and metaphysical theorizing, in this paper I provide a strategy to dispense with them. It is argued that one need not be committed to the existence of these posits nor with the metaphysically inflationary interpretations that support them. An alternative, deflationary approach is then sketched.

Van Inwagen's General Composition Question (GCQ) asks what conditions on an object and its constituents make the object a whole that these constituents compose, as opposed to an object linked to the constituents by a relation other than composition. The answer is traditionally expected to cite no mereological terms, to hold of metaphysical necessity and to be such that no defeating scenarios can be conceived (e.g., a scenario in which the conditions are met but the constituents fail to genuinely compose (...) the object). While not all writers agree on setting these high expectations on the principles that constitute answers to the GCQ (Hawley 2006), there is a yet unsettled issue concerning the principles’ naturalistic accreditation: Could putative principles be constrained and informed by advanced physical knowledge? Arguing positively, we outline two styles of principles worthy of naturalistic authority. In an explorative spirit, we notice that each style incurs certain costs. First, the principle in question may fail some of the above expectations set in an aprioristic context. Second, it may require a specific meta-theoretic understanding of what it takes to achieve naturalistic accreditation. Finally, it may address the GCQ “piecemeal” and fail to generalize to objects of all physical sorts.1. (shrink)

Traditionally, accounts of natural kinds have run the gamut from strongly conventionalist to strongly realist views. Recently, however, there has been a significant shift toward more conventionalist-sounding positions, even (perhaps especially) among philosophers interested in scientific classification. The impetus for this is a trend toward making anthropocentric features of categories, namely, capacities to facilitate human epistemic (and other) interests via inductive inference, central to an account of kinds. I argue that taking these features seriously is both defensible and compatible with (...) conventionalism, but not compatible with a traditional realism about kinds specifically. Moreover, hopes of achieving compatibility by revising and extending kind realism—into what I call “hyperrealism”—face an insuperable dilemma. The news for realists is not all bad, however: though kind realism proves untenable, closely associated realisms underlying the objectivity of kind discourse may be viable nonetheless. (shrink)

What is the so-called “question of ontology?” Is the question of ontology genuinely a question about “categories” (Lowe 2006), “structure” (Sider 2011), “existence” (Thomasson 2015), or rather “reality” (Fine 2009)? In this article, I defend the neo-Sellarsian approach to the question of ontology, a novel, naturalistic approach according to which the foundational question of ontology is about “understanding the manifest and the scientific images of the world, and their multiple relationships.” First, I argue for the thesis of Impure Eliminativism, a (...) form of constructive pluralism about the question of ontology by which the substantivity of questions of ontology which are not the neo-Sellarsian one is to be built upon certain relations with the neo-Sellarsian question of ontology. Second, I argue for the categorial plasticity of the two images and their relations in connection with the hypothesis of Weak Epistemic Factualism. Third, and lastly, I argue for a person-based ontology framed in terms of the crucial notions of “fact” and “understanding” in response to the eliminativist categorizations of the two images and their relationships proposed by substantialism and structuralism. (shrink)

Naturalism, as I understand it, includes cosmological naturalism, ontological naturalism and methodological naturalism. After clarifying these three theses I argue that the combination of ontological with methodological naturalism is untenable. I do so by providing a pro tanto case against ontological naturalism and show that it can be resisted, but only by abandoning methodological naturalism. The pro tanto case is that ontological naturalism requires a version of what I call Redundancy Nominalism, but methodological naturalists should either reject it or at (...) very least treat it, and hence ontological naturalism, as a speculation. (shrink)

I explore the view that metaphysics is essentially imaginative. I argue that the central goal of metaphysics on this view is understanding, not truth. Metaphysics-as-essentially-imaginative provides novel answers to challenges to both the value and epistemic status of metaphysics.

Ladyman and Ross argue that analytic metaphysics is a misguided enterprise that should give way to a naturalized metaphysics that aims to reconcile everyday and special-scientific ontologies with fundamental physics as the authoritative source of knowledge on the general structure of the universe. Le Bihan and Barton (argue, as against this, that analytic metaphysics remains useful as a basis for the body of work in AI known as “applied ontology.” They stop short of claiming, however, that analytic metaphysics is useful (...) as metaphysics. I consider a basis for making the stronger claim: Smith's project for building what he claims to be metaphysical foundations for applied ontology (and for AI generally). Ultimately, the stronger claim is rejected; but in the course of this dialectic new aspects of the naturalistic metaphysical project come to light, including relationships between it and the traditional metaphysical project of providing foundations for philosophical semantics of truth and reference. (shrink)

Obviously, science matters to philosophy. But is philosophy also constrained by science? Naturalism is roughly the view that answers positively. However, even among proponents of naturalism, how science constrains philosophy has always been (and still is) a subject of debate. There are two basic dimensions in which the debate takes place, which give rise to two different kinds of naturalism: ontological and methodological. The former concerns what there is, while the latter deals with the methods whereby we acquire knowledge and (...) beliefs. Ontological Naturalism is loosely the view that all of what there is belongs to the natural world, where the natural world is the world described by the natural sciences. By maintaining, in turn, that the ultimate structure of the world is what the natural sciences say it to be, it is to some extent close to Physicalism, according to which what most fundamentally exist are the entities and properties posited by basic physics. On the other hand, methodological naturalism is often thought of as making an epistemological claim akin to scientism—the claim that the best (perhaps the unique) approach to acquiring knowledge is that of natural sciences. Accordingly, it holds that the very same methods used to arrive at scientific theories are the only legitimate ones to be employed by philosophy.Each of these horns of naturalism implies important consequences for our understanding of the relationship between science and many areas of philosophy, including metaphysics. From the methodological point of view, naturalism might be said to entail the denial that our conception of reality needs to include whatever is exclusively accessible to metaphysical theorizing (or to “first philosophy”), understood as a distinct mode of inquiry that lacks ties to the results and practices of the sciences. Indeed, methodological naturalism is usually assumed to reject the project of a priori theorizing, and it is perhaps hard to see how the traditional metaphysics, as well as current analytical metaphysics, might be in the business of developing and assessing synthetic theories of the world supported by a posteriori evidence. From the ontological point of view, naturalism sees science as already giving us a full account of everything, including our place within that picture. Despite this, the debate around the nature of metaphysics remains very much alive (and complex), spreading its influence all across philosophy and our view of the world. The upshot is that much of metaphysical work is nowadays motivated by the naturalist desire to accommodate what the natural sciences have taught us about the world. This special issue stems exactly from the ongoing debate between naturalist and non-naturalist metaphysicians and aims to assess the prospects of naturalized projects in metaphysics and their relationships to traditional metaphysics.Are science and metaphysics separable enterprises? Should allowable metaphysical theories be constrained by and continuous with natural sciences? Does successful scientific research presuppose metaphysics? These are some of the questions addressed in the contributions comprising this special issue. In response, most of them undertake theoretical commitments of a general naturalist stamp, others challenge their philosophical cogency, while still others discuss and contrast the various versions of naturalism that are currently at the center of many metaphysical debates—which often involve some mixture of the two above-mentioned ones, in different proportions. As a result, this special issue hopes to represent the state of the art drawn from different perspectives, helping somehow to clarify extent and ongoing work in metaphysics with respect to the challenges posed by naturalist thinking and eventually to pave the way for future developments and discussions.The issue opens with Don Ross's paper “A flexible, sloppy blob? Ontology, AI, and the role of metaphysics.” In it, Ross defends a naturalized metaphysics that, in contrast with traditional metaphysical projects, is driven directly by fundamental physics. Therefore, since fundamental physics is taken to be the authoritative source of knowledge on the general structure of the universe, metaphysics should neither be separated from nor transcend it. In particular, he rejects more recent works on building metaphysical foundations for applied ontology—e.g., metaphysics for the foundations of AI—as somehow apt to vindicate the value of analytic metaphysics for the edifice of human knowledge. At the same time, however, he points out how his naturalist (methodological) naturalist approach neither incorporates nor implies a physicalistic reduction.Ferdinando Ceravolo and Steven French, in their contribution “What is a Naturalized Principle of Composition?” also support the project of a methodologically naturalized metaphysics. They focus on Van Inwagen's General Composition Question (GCQ). Specifically, they address the issue concerning whether GCQ could be underpinned by principles that are found to be naturalistically acceptable—that is, constrained and informed by advanced physical knowledge. Arguing positively, they outline two candidates for naturalistically accredited principles of composition and explore the various costs of choosing between them.Along the same lines, in his essay “Naturalism and the Question of Ontology,” Javier Cumpa argues for a naturalistic approach in metaontology based on the project of Wilfrid Sellars. He proposes a naturalistic criterion of relational substantivity for ontological questions, which is held to be naturalistic insofar as it relies on the epistemic value and the degree of understanding of the world in line with science that those questions provide us. Cumpa's view is certainly methodologically naturalist, however, although ontologically he does not seem to be committed to metaphysical notions such as ontological categories, he endorses what he calls an “Impure Eliminativism about Categories.”A more straightforward version of eliminativism is advocated by Otávio Bueno in his chapter “Dispensing with Facts, Substances, and Structures.” He contends that, even though ontological categories (i.e., structures, substances, and facts) play a central role in metaphysical theorizing, we do not need to be committed to their existence. Unlike metaphysical realists – who see true thought or assertion as adequately shaped in terms of the correct representation of completely thought and/or language independent bits of reality – he accounts for metaphysical discourse by offering a naturalist account of the linguistic practice that govern it, but without the ontological commitments that realism recommends. Nevertheless, by dropping realism he does not aim to drop metaphysics as an important form of understanding the world. In order to qualify metaphysical judgements as meaningful, he explores and invokes a distinctive deflationary strategy. The result is a view that takes metaphysical discourse literally but without ontologically inflationary maneuvers.The same deflationary strategy is pursued by Anjan Chakravartty in his piece “Last Chance Saloons for Natural Kind Realism.” But rather than on ontological categories in general, he focuses on natural kinds, arguing against realist views that contend for their mind-independent existence. Nevertheless, he shows how a deflationary approach to kinds, while rejecting kind realism, can be integrated with broader realist doctrines such as scientific realism. That is, we need not be committed to either the existence of these posits or with the metaphysically inflationary interpretations that support them in order to invoke these items in scientific theorizing and to vindicate as objective or mind-independent the truth or falsity of scientific as well as everyday claims about natural kinds.In contrast to the previous standpoints, in her article “Metaphysics as Essentially Imaginative and Aiming at Understanding,” Michaela M. McSweeney defends a non-naturalist view of metaphysics. She explores the idea that metaphysics is essentially imaginative and (at least in part) “up to us.” But treating metaphysics as essentially imaginative makes metaphysics methodologically different from scientific inquiry and more akin to art. Nevertheless, she maintains, it can still be deemed epistemologically valuable to the extent that imagination can lead to understanding. On her view, the central goal of the metaphysical project thus turns out to be understanding rather than truth.The closing paper of the issue investigates precisely the relationship between methodological naturalism and ontological naturalism. In “Methodological naturalism undercuts ontological naturalism,” Peter Forrest argues that the combination of ontological with methodological naturalism is untenable. According to his view, one way to defend ontological naturalism is to retain a version of nominalism: specifically, what he calls Redundancy Nominalism (a kind of deflationary nominalism). On the other hand, methodological naturalism requires adopting Categorial Realism. This means being a realist about universals in at least a minimal way. As a result, the fundamental description that methodological naturalism requires proves be contrary to ontological naturalism, whose precondition, in turn, is not available to methodological naturalists. This leads him to criticize ontological naturalism as a belief but, at the same time, to vindicate it as a speculation. (shrink)