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2 results

  • Chapter 1 - Laws of Nature and Their Modal Surface Structure

  • Andreas Hüttemann
  • Book:
    A Minimal Metaphysics for Scientific Practice
    Published online:
    04 August 2021
    Print publication:
    01 July 2021, pp 11-37
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  • Summary

    In Chapter 1, I start by analysing the role of generalisations in scientific practice. Law statements or generalisations are involved in one way or another in explanation, confirmation, manipulation or prediction. I argue that these practices require a particular reading of the generalisations involved, namely, as making claims about the behaviour of systems. These practices therefore presuppose the existence of systems or things. Next, I look at the modal surface structure associated with laws. I use the term ‘surface structure’ to indicate that this structure may or may not be reduced to non-modal facts – as the Humean has it. I will sideline the debate about whether Humeanism is a tenable philosophical position. The positive claim I advance is that the modal surface structure can be explicated in terms of invariance relations – where I take invariance to be a modal notion.

  • The probable and the nonarbitrary: evidential foundations for a finding of guilt

  • Liat Levanon
  • Journal:
    Legal Studies / Volume 41 / Issue 2 / June 2021
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    22 February 2021, pp. 294-310
    Print publication:
    June 2021

  • The paper explores the use of statistical data and statistical assumptions as evidence in criminal trials. It is suggested that a finding of guilt includes not only its main factual proposition but also additional propositions that support and affirm it. Specifically, it includes not only the proposition that the defendant committed the offence but also the additional affirming proposition that it is this defendant rather than any other potential defendant who committed the offence (the ‘D rather than A’ proposition). Some statistical generalisations provide reasons in defence of the main proposition but not in defence of the affirming proposition, which then remains random or arbitrary. Yet since criminal convictions include a moral judgement, they cannot be justified where some of their propositions are arbitrary. Accordingly, such statistical generalisations cannot justify a criminal conviction.