Conference on Proposed Amendments: Experts, the Rules of Completeness, and Sequestration of Witnesses

This conference was held on October 19, 2018, at University of Denver Sturm College of Law under the sponsorship of the Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules. The transcript has been lightly edited. It represents the panelists’ individual views only and in no way reflects those of their affiliated firms, organizations, law schools, or the judiciary

The Arts of Persuasion in Science and Law: Conflicting Norms in the Courtroom

Epistemology is important in the debate about science and technology in the courtroom. The epistemological issues and the arguments about them in the context of scientific and technical evidence are now well developed. Of equal importance, though, is an understanding of norms of persuasion and how those norms may differ across disciplines and groups. Norms of persuasion in the courtroom and in legal briefs differ from norms at a scientific conference and in scientific journals. Here, Kritzer examines the disconnect between science and the courtroom in terms of the differing norms of persuasion found within the scientific community and within the legal community

You Will Respect My Authoritah!? A Reply to Botting

In a paper and a reply to critics published in _Informal Logic_, I argue that arguments from expert opinion are weak arguments. To appeal to expert opinion is to take an expert’s judgment that _p_ is the case as evidence for _p_. Such appeals to expert opinion are weak, I argue, because the fact that an expert judges that _p_ does not make it significantly more likely that _p_ is true or probable, as evidence from empirical studies on expert performance suggests. Unlike other critics of this argument, who take issue with the empirical evidence on expert performance, David Botting says that he wants to take issue with the premise that reliability is a necessary condition for the strength of appeals to expert opinion. I respond to Botting’s objections and argue that they miss their intended target. I also argue that his attempt to show that arguments from expert opinion are strong is unsuccessful

Overcoming Expert Disagreement In A Delphi Process. An Exercise In Reverse Epistemology

Disagreement among experts is a central topic in social epistemology. What should an expert do when confronted with the different opinion of an epistemic peer? Possible answers include the steadfast view (holding to one’s belief), the abstemious view (suspending one’s judgment), and moderate conciliatory views, which specify criteria for belief change when a peer’s different opinion is encountered. The practice of Delphi techniques in healthcare, medicine, and social sciences provides a real-life case study of expert disagreement, where disagreement is gradually transformed into consensus. An analysis of Delphi shows that moderate conciliatory views are descriptively more adequate than rival views. However, it also casts doubt on whether the debate in social epistemology is explanatory relevant vis-à-vis real life cases of expert disagreement, where consensus replaces truth, and acceptance is more explanatorily relevant than belief

Belief dependence: How do the numbers count?

This paper is about how to aggregate outside opinion. If two experts are on one side of an issue, while three experts are on the other side, what should a non-expert believe? Certainly, the non-expert should take into account more than just the numbers. But which other factors are relevant, and why? According to the view developed here, one important factor is whether the experts should have been expected, in advance, to reach the same conclusion. When the agreement of two (or of twenty) thinkers can be predicted with certainty in advance, their shared belief is worth only as much as one of their beliefs would be worth alone. This expectational model of belief dependence can be applied whether we think in terms of credences or in terms of all-or-nothing beliefs

Irrelevant Cultural Influences on Belief

Recent work in psychology on ‘cultural cognition’ suggests that our cultural background drives our attitudes towards a range of politically contentious issues in science such as global warming. This work is part of a more general attempt to investigate the ways in which our wants, wishes and desires impact on our assessments of information, events and theories. Put crudely, the idea is that we conform our assessments of the evidence for and against scientific theories with clear political relevance to our pre-existing political beliefs and convictions. In this paper I explore the epistemological consequences of cultural cognition. What does it mean for the rationality of our beliefs about issues such as global warming? I argue for an unsettling conclusion. Not only are those on the ‘political right’ who reject the scientific consensus on issues like global warming unjustified in doing so, some of those on the ‘political left’ who accept the consensus are also unjustified in doing so. I finish by addressing the practical implications of my conclusions