Jury theorems are mathematical theorems about the ability of collectives to make correct decisions. Several jury theorems carry the optimistic message that, in suitable circumstances, ‘crowds are wise’: many individuals together (using, for instance, majority voting) tend to make good decisions, outperforming fewer or just one individual. Jury theorems form the technical core of epistemic arguments for democracy, and provide probabilistic tools for reasoning about the epistemic quality of collective decisions. The popularity of jury theorems spans across various disciplines such (...) as economics, political science, philosophy, and computer science. This entry reviews and critically assesses a variety of jury theorems. It first discusses Condorcet's initial jury theorem, and then progressively introduces jury theorems with more appropriate premises and conclusions. It explains the philosophical foundations, and relates jury theorems to diversity, deliberation, shared evidence, shared perspectives, and other phenomena. It finally connects jury theorems to their historical background and to democratic theory, social epistemology, and social choice theory. (shrink)

We give a review and critique of jury theorems from a social-epistemology perspective, covering Condorcet’s (1785) classic theorem and several later refinements and departures. We assess the plausibility of the conclusions and premises featuring in jury theorems and evaluate the potential of such theorems to serve as formal arguments for the ‘wisdom of crowds’. In particular, we argue (i) that there is a fundamental tension between voters’ independence and voters’ competence, hence between the two premises of most jury theorems; (ii) (...) that the (asymptotic) conclusion that ‘huge groups are infallible’, reached by many jury theorems, is an artifact of unjustified premises; and (iii) that the (nonasymptotic) conclusion that ‘larger groups are more reliable’, also reached by many jury theorems, is not an artifact and should be regarded as the more adequate formal rendition of the ‘wisdom of crowds’. (shrink)

In a homogeneous jury, in which each vote is correct with the same probability, and each pair of votes correlates with the same correlation coefficient, there exists a correlation-robust voting quota, such that the probability of a correct verdict is independent of the correlation coefficient. For positive correlation, an increase in the correlation coefficient decreases the probability of a correct verdict for any voting rule below the correlation-robust quota, and increases that probability for any above the correlation-robust quota. The jury (...) may be less competent under the correlation-robust rule than under simple majority rule and less competent under simple majority rule than a single juror alone. The jury is always less competent than a single juror under unanimity rule. (shrink)

Under the independence and competence assumptions of Condorcet’s classical jury model, the probability of a correct majority decision converges to certainty as the jury size increases, a seemingly unrealistic result. Using Bayesian networks, we argue that the model’s independence assumption requires that the state of the world (guilty or not guilty) is the latest common cause of all jurors’ votes. But often – arguably in all courtroom cases and in many expert panels – the latest such common cause is a (...) shared ‘body of evidence’ observed by the jurors. In the corresponding Bayesian network, the votes are direct descendants not of the state of the world, but of the body of evidence, which in turn is a direct descendant of the state of the world. We develop a model of jury decisions based on this Bayesian network. Our model permits the possibility of misleading evidence, even for a maximally competent observer, which cannot easily be accommodated in the classical model. We prove that (i) the probability of a correct majority verdict converges to the probability that the body of evidence is not misleading, a value typically below 1; (ii) depending on the required threshold of ‘no reasonable doubt’, it may be impossible, even in an arbitrarily large jury, to establish guilt of a defendant ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’. (shrink)

Trial by jury is a fundamental feature of democratic governance. But what form should jury decision-making take? I argue against the status quo system in which juries are encouraged and even required to engage in group deliberation as a means to reaching a decision. Jury deliberation is problematic for both theoretical and empirical reasons. On the theoretical front, deliberation destroys the independence of jurors’ judgments that is needed for certain attractive theoretical results. On the empirical front, we have evidence from (...) both legal and non-legal contexts that group deliberation often leads to group judgments that are worse in a number of respects than judgments generated by non-interactional methods of judgment aggregation. Finally, I examine some possible alternatives to free-wheeling jury deliberation, including the constrained and structured deliberation embodied in the DELPHI method, voting, and averaging of probabilistic judgments. (shrink)

El presente trabajo esboza la doctrina suareciana sobre el ejercicio del poder soberano en el contexto ideológico de la llamada Escuela de Salamanca, haciendo foco en la factibilidad de la resistencia al mismo, en los casos de tiranía y vinculando tal resistencia a la clave fundamental de la comunidad política que es el bien común, al cual está ordenada la potestad soberana. Nos interesa confrontar esta doctrina con la de un autor contemporáneo a Suárez y clásico por sus aportes a (...) la noción de soberanía de la República como lo fue Jean Bodin, con sus Seis Libros de la República. (shrink)

The institution of trial-by-jury is a puzzle in the modern criminal justice system. It has dubious merits as a mechanism for applying facts to law. If anything, it represents a challenge to the very idea that decision-making should be consistent and transparent. Yet the emphasis on the relative ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the jury as a trier of fact may miss the point. The jury does not function merely as a verdict-generating machine, or as a procedural safeguard for individual defendants. (...) It ensures that the local community, with its customs, norms, and ways of life, is not simply trampled upon by a remote federal legislature. The legitimizing significance of the jury, in other words, arguably lies in its role as a kind of law-finder. With this in mind, we may do better to view it, not principally as a liberal institution, but as a manifestation of the principle of subsidiarity. (shrink)

This article, first published in Russian in 1984 in Sign Systems Studies, introduces the concept of semiosphere and describes its principal attributes. Semiosphere is the semiotic space, outside of which semiosis cannot exist. The ensemble of semiotic formations functionally precedes the singular isolated language and becomes a condition for the existence of the latter. Without the semiosphere, language not only does not function, it does not exist. The division between the core and the periphery is a law of the internal (...) organisation of the semiosphere. There exists boundary between the semiosphere and the non- or extra-semiotic space that surrounds it. The semiotic border is represented by the sum of bilingual translatable “filters”, passing through which the text is translated into another language (or languages), situated outside the given semiosphere. The levels of the semiosphere comprise an inter-connected group of semiospheres, each of them being simultaneously both participant in the dialogue (as part of the semiosphere) and the space of dialogue (the semiosphere as a whole). (shrink)

This article by Juri Lotman from the third volume of Trudy po znakovym sistemam (Sign Systems Studies) in 1967, deals with the problem of artistic modelling. The general working questions are whether art displays any characteristic traits that are common for all modelling systems and which could be the specific traits that can distinguish art from other modelling systems. Art is seen as a secondary modelling system, more precisely, as a play-type model, which is characterised simultaneously by practical and conventional (...) behaviour and constant awareness of the possibility of alternate meanings to the one that is currently being perceived. At the same time art has play-like elements but is not the same as play, since play is inherently rule-bound, whereas art is a more flexible model thepurpose of which is truth. Art is a special type of modelling system, since it is on one hand suitable for storing very large amount of complex information, but onthe other hand it can increase the stored information and transform the consumer. (shrink)

Proceeding from the insights of Petrażycki, Polish-Russian legal realists distinguished legal theory, legal dogmatics, and legal policy. Legal theory describes legal phenomena in a value-free way and formulates causal laws concerning those phenomena. Legal dogmatics and legal policy are, by contrast, value-laden sciences involving the subject's—i.e., the scientist's—own attitudes toward existing or imagined phenomena: Dogmatics evaluates behaviors based on the subject's adoption of given normative sources as binding, while legal policy evaluates the effects produced by given NSs based on causal (...) laws and on the subject's goals. PRRs then conceptualize custom as a representation of people behaving in a certain way : We have a custom on the threefold condition that Rc is believed true by a given X, Rc causes the existence of a given normative psychical experience in X, and X expressly refers to—or would refer—to Rc in justifying an NPE. PRRs use the term customary law to refer to legal experiences caused and justified by an Rc. From a theoretical perspective, both the subject's adoption of custom as a binding NS and its truth are irrelevant. It is only the presence of a customary NPE in the X under study that matters. From a dogmatic perspective, by contrast, what matters is whether the dogmatician—qua subject—adopts custom as a binding NS, whether it is true that people behave in a given way bw, and whether bw resembles the behavior that is deontically qualified in the norm under dogmatic evaluation. Finally, from a legal-political viewpoint, PRRs hold that customary law in modern societies, owing to its conservative nature, should be eradicated for the goal of removing inequalities and fostering benevolence. (shrink)

Proceeding from the insights of Petrażycki, Polish-Russian legal realists distinguished legal theory, legal dogmatics, and legal policy. Legal theory describes legal phenomena in a value-free way and formulates causal laws concerning those phenomena. Legal dogmatics and legal policy are, by contrast, value-laden sciences involving the subject's—i.e., the scientist's—own attitudes toward existing or imagined phenomena: Dogmatics evaluates behaviors based on the subject's adoption of given normative sources as binding, while legal policy evaluates the effects produced by given NSs based on causal (...) laws and on the subject's goals. PRRs then conceptualize custom as a representation of people behaving in a certain way : We have a custom on the threefold condition that Rc is believed true by a given X, Rc causes the existence of a given normative psychical experience in X, and X expressly refers to—or would refer—to Rc in justifying an NPE. PRRs use the term customary law to refer to legal experiences caused and justified by an Rc. From a theoretical perspective, both the subject's adoption of custom as a binding NS and its truth are irrelevant. It is only the presence of a customary NPE in the X under study that matters. From a dogmatic perspective, by contrast, what matters is whether the dogmatician—qua subject—adopts custom as a binding NS, whether it is true that people behave in a given way bw, and whether bw resembles the behavior that is deontically qualified in the norm under dogmatic evaluation. Finally, from a legal-political viewpoint, PRRs hold that customary law in modern societies, owing to its conservative nature, should be eradicated for the goal of removing inequalities and fostering benevolence. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft Jahrgang: 25 Heft: 1 Seiten: 90-131.

We show that under the assumption of the existence of the canonical inner model with one Woodin cardinal $M_1$, there is a model of $\mathsf {ZFC}$ in which $\mbox {NS}_{\omega _{1}}$ is $\aleph _2$ -saturated and ${\Delta }_{1}$ -definable with $\omega _1$ as a parameter which answers a question of S. D. Friedman and L. Wu. We also show that starting from an arbitrary universe with a Woodin cardinal, there is a model with $\mbox {NS}_{\omega _{1}}$ saturated and ${\Delta }_{1}$ (...) -definable with a ladder system $\vec {C}$ and a full Suslin tree T as parameters. Both results rely on a new coding technique whose presentation is the main goal of this article. (shrink)

There is widespread agreement that the European Union is presently suffering from a lack of social justice. Yet there is significant disagreement about what the relevant injustice consists in: Federalists believe the EU can only remedy its justice deficit through the introduction of direct interpersonal transfers between people living in separate states. Intergovernmentalists believe the justice-related purpose of the EU is to enable states to cooperate fairly, and to remain internally just and democratic in the face of increased global pressure (...) on welfare states. I suggest that despite their fundamental differences, many of the most reasonable and prominent philosophical accounts of social justice in the EU nonetheless converge in their institutional prescriptions. In particular, they may each serve as a justificatory basis for introducing the European social minimum, an EU-wide income support scheme. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate, formally, an ambiguity in the exercise of political influence. To wit: A voter might exert influence with an eye toward maximizing the probability that the political system (1) obtains the correct (e.g. just) outcome, or (2) obtains the outcome that he judges to be correct (just). And these are two very different things. A variant of Condorcet's Jury Theorem which incorporates the effect of influence on group competence and interdependence is developed. Analytic (...) and numerical results are obtained, the most important of which is that it is never optimal--from the point-of-view of collective accuracy--for a voter to exert influence without limit. He ought to either refrain from influencing other voters or else exert a finite amount of influence, depending on circumstance. Philosophical lessons are drawn from the model, to include a solution to Wollheim's "Paradox in the Theory of Democracy". (shrink)

The bibliography provides a list of all known English-language publications by Juri M. Lotman, in chronologicalorder, described de visu. The first English translation of J. Lotman’s work appeared in 1973, altogether there is 109 entries in the list. The bibliography demonstrates that in the 1970s and 1980s, most of the translations were published in the context of slavistics, whereas after 2000 Lotman’s work starts to appear in the anthologies of general semiotics.

Peer review is often taken to be the main form of quality control on academic research. Usually journals carry this out. However, parts of maths and physics appear to have a parallel, crowd-sourced model of peer review, where papers are posted on the arXiv to be publicly discussed. In this paper we argue that crowd-sourced peer review is likely to do better than journal-solicited peer review at sorting papers by quality. Our argument rests on two key claims. First, crowd-sourced peer (...) review will lead on average to more reviewers per paper than journal-solicited peer review. Second, due to the wisdom of the crowds, more reviewers will tend to make better judgments than fewer. We make the second claim precise by looking at the Condorcet Jury Theorem as well as two related jury theorems developed specifically to apply to peer review. (shrink)

Background Outbreaks of infectious disease cause serious and costly health and social problems. Two new technologies – pathogen whole genome sequencing and Big Data analytics – promise to improve our capacity to detect and control outbreaks earlier, saving lives and resources. However, routinely using these technologies to capture more detailed and specific personal information could be perceived as intrusive and a threat to privacy. Method Four community juries were convened in two demographically different Sydney municipalities and two regional cities in (...) New South Wales, Australia to elicit the views of well-informed community members on the acceptability and legitimacy of: making pathogen WGS and linked administrative data available for public health researchusing this information in concert with data linkage and machine learning to enhance communicable disease surveillance systems Fifty participants of diverse backgrounds, mixed genders and ages were recruited by random-digit-dialling and topic-blinded social-media advertising. Each jury was presented with balanced factual evidence supporting different expert perspectives on the potential benefits and costs of technologically enhanced public health research and communicable disease surveillance and given the opportunity to question experts. Results Almost all jurors supported data linkage and WGS on routinely collected patient isolates for the purposes of public health research, provided standard de-identification practices were applied. However, allowing this information to be operationalised as a syndromic surveillance system was highly contentious with three juries voting in favour, and one against by narrow margins. For those in favour, support depended on several conditions related to system oversight and security being met. Those against were concerned about loss of privacy and did not trust Australian governments to run secure and effective systems. Conclusions Participants across all four events strongly supported the introduction of data linkage and pathogenomics to public health research under current research governance structures. Combining pathogen WGS with event-based data surveillance systems, however, is likely to be controversial because of a lack of public trust, even when the potential public health benefits are clear. Any suggestion of private sector involvement or commercialisation of WGS or surveillance data was unanimously rejected. (shrink)

In 1963 the American journalist Betty Friedan published her book The Feminine Mystique, in which she identified, on the basis of an analysis of women's magazines and surveys of women, a paradox in the self- awareness of American women: in striving to achieve the ideal of femininity, they devote themselves zealously to serving the family, and at the same time they feel they are "different" human beings from men, who have access to the world at large. Friedan compared the situation (...) of the housewife with the situation of a prisoner in a concentration camp. In both, a person is deprived of self-identity, of self-respect, and of manifesting one's individuality and is isolated from the large world of ideas and events. Friedan's general conclusion was that the ideal of "femininity" that guides women is not a natural bent of their natures but an inhumane stereotype that is imposed by advertising, business, and government because it is useful to society. (shrink)

This paper generalises the classical Condorcet jury theorem from majority voting over two options to plurality voting over multiple options. The paper further discusses the debate between epistemic and procedural democracy and situates its formal results in that debate. The paper finally compares a number of different social choice procedures for many-option choices in terms of their epistemic merits. An appendix explores the implications of some of the present mathematical results for the question of how probable majority cycles (as in (...) Condorcet's paradox) are in large electorates. (shrink)

In both Great Britain and the United States there has been a growing debate about the modern acceptability of jury nullification. Properly understood, juries do not have any constitutional right to ignore the law, but they do have the power to do so nevertheless. Juries that nullify may be motivated by a variety of concerns: too harsh sentences, improper government action, racism, etc. In this article, I shall attempt to defend jury nullification on a number of grounds. First, I discuss (...) the use of general verdicts and reject their replacement in criminal trials by special verdicts. Second, I examine verdicts based upon mistakes and racial prejudice, turning my attention to perverse verdicts and the question of whether or not juries are guilty of legislating when nullifying the law. Finally, I look at the problem of the awarding of excessive damages by juries. My goal will be to provide a sound theoretical defence of the practice of jury nullification. (shrink)

Engaging with the methods of studying contemporary digital audiovisual art is a dominant topic in contemporary theories of art. Against this background, the article offers a view onto some aspects of Juri Lotman’s and Gilles Deleuze’s studies on the cinema. As a rule, contemporary studies of digital audiovisual art take place in the context of interdisciplinary studies. One of the methodological principles of such studies consists in adopting a structural and semiotic approach. As of today, this methodological approach to studying (...) audio-visual art is most developed in semiotics of the cinema, which is why in this article visual semiotics in general is viewed through semiotics of the cinema. Also, the philosophical understanding of the nature of the cinema offered by Gilles Deleuze has proven fundamental for the study of contemporary audio-visual art. The two authors were contemporaries, but represented different scholarly paradigms: while Juri Lotman was an adherent of structuralism, Gilles Deleuze was a poststructuralist who criticized the structuralist approach. Yet despite this principal difference, both scholars still arrived at similar conclusions as concerns several questions regarding the understanding of the cinema and its very nature. In the present paper I focus on the features of these authors’ approach to spatial and temporal relations in the cinema, audiovisual relations in film as a heterogeneous form of the work of art, virtuality and mythologism in the viewer’s perception of cinema. The differences and similarities in academic approaches to cinema, developed by Lotman and Deleuze, indicate a common direction in the development of the cinema and visual arts theory, which seems relevant for the study of contemporary audio-visual arts. (shrink)

This paper discusses Juri Lotman’s concept of autocommunication and explores its applicability by referring to Roland Barthes’s representations of Self and Other. The texts to be discussed include Barthes’s writings on Japan and China, an excerpt from his rewriting of Balzac’s “Sarrasine” in S/Z, and his autobiography and Rousseau’s Confessions. The paper contrasts two cultural communication cases in terms of analysing two kinds of a-semantic codes: the positive a-semantic code of Japan, and the negative a-semantic code of China. With reference (...) to “Sarrasine” and S/Z, the paper discusses two specific codes, cultural memory and imagination, which lead to the addressee’s reformulations. Finally, the paper examines how different modes of autocommunication are put into practice in Barthes’s autobiographical and Rousseau’s confessional writings. (shrink)

What is the Quid Juris in Kant's Deduction? Chapter 3 from my book on the Deduction (Kant's Deduction From Apperception) provides an answer to that question, and also contains an extensive discussion of the relevant literature on this topic (Henrich, Proops, Seeberg & Longuenesse).

Anglo-American theories of criminal responsibility require scholars to grapple with, inter alia, the relationship between the formal rule of law and the powers of the lay jury as well as two inherent ideas of freedom: freedom of the will and political liberty. Here, by way of canvassing my past work and prefiguring future work, I sketch some elements of the history of the Anglo-American jury and offer some glimpses of commentary on the interplay between the jury—particularly its application of conventional (...) morality to criminal judgments—and the formal rule of law of the state. My central intent is to pose questions for further study regarding the historical behavior of the jury, the jury’s role in reinforcing notions of political liberty and free will, and, primarily, how scholarly conceptions of the jury’s role and behavior have informed elite theory regarding the justifications for imposing criminal responsibility. (shrink)

The scientificity of the research should be evaluated according to the methodology used in the study. However, these are usually the research areas or the institutions that are classified as scientific or non-scientific. Because of various reasons, it may turn out that the scientific institutions are not producing science, while the “non-scientists” are doing real science. In the extreme case, the official science system is entirely corrupt, consisting of fraudsters, while the real scientists have been expelled from academic institutions. Since (...) 2016-2017, there has been much talk about the “post-truth era” and the politicians who are “denying science”. However, simultaneously, many complaints about the corruption of science appeared. The outsider cannot tell who is telling the truth as it may be the case that the science fraudsters are defending themselves and these politicians are aware of the corruption. It is also untrue that the censoring or suppression of science started from 2016-2017. Suppression of science because of political and ideological reasons was present already long ago, and during the last few years, it has been increasing. The picture is highly complicated as there are many pretenders, false accusations, etc. For example, because of political reasons, someone may be set up as a pseudoscientist, the real scientist may be expelled using political accusations, justified criticism may be labelled as political pressure, etc. There is something like an inner information war ongoing in and around science. The classical philosophy of science seems unable to handle it because every formal rule can be misapplied. Science, as a whole, may be unable to persist. (shrink)

Despite an intractable judiciary, there is widespread consensus within the legal academy that jury nullification is compatible with the rule of law. This proposition is most strongly tested by where a jury nullifies simply because it disagrees with the law itself. While some substantive nullifications can comport with the rule of law, most commentatorsjustice,vely undifferentiated view of a morality (even though jurisdictional and vicinage morality can diverge). In doing so, a healthy vision of antityrannical nullifications is presented, but this leaves (...) out many problematic cases. Once these errors are rectified, a more nuanced picture emerges, and it becomes apparent that localism will often disrupt the congruence feature of the rule of law. (shrink)

This article comprises two case studies of a ``problem'' within the Anglo-Welsh legal process of jury trial. In that tradition, the judge not only instructs on the law to be applied by the jury, s/he also ``summarises'' the evidence after counsel have already done so. This summarising is largely unconstrained by appellate control. The ``problem'' that the two cases present is that they were trials of ``civil'' issues in which the subject matter is also categorised as ``criminal''. Where such overlaps (...) occur the relevant law is not easy nor clear. This can present difficulties for the judge, which may and in these cases were transmitted and amplified to the jury. In the first case study, the rhetorical direction of the judge's language are analysed. In the second, the language is analysed as a generator of confusion rather than direction. In both cases the outcome in the jury's verdict reflect the judicial language. Under current British law, investigation of the conversion process from judicial ``Summing-up'' through collective jury deliberation to verdict is illegal. (shrink)