Larry Laudan

The chapter argues: (1) that Achinstein's construal of theory testing requires both an enumeration, and a systematic refutation, of all possible alternatives to a hypothesis ostensibly under test. Such a demand is generally unrealizable; (2) that his epistemic dismissal of the corroboratory power of confirmed, surprising predictions is at odds with the methods advocated and utilized by most of the principal actors in the wave-particle debates of the nineteenth century; and (3) that his postulate of a shared methodological (and Bayesian) consensus between corpuscularians and undulationists ignores the fact that the wave–particle debate was simultaneously an epistemic controversy about the virtues that an acceptable theory should exhibit.

Philosophical dialogue is a curious activity. Arguments are expected to be rigorous, but no demand is made that there must be evidence for the premisses. Terminology is expected to be precise, but its appropriateness to the subject matter under discussion can be left unexplored. Officially, nothing is conceded; but, in fact, a great deal is taken for granted. Ad argumentum mingles indiscriminately with ad hominem; and, above all, the evidential warrant for one’s philosophical claims is, like the topics of sex and religion to the less enlightened, one of those delicate issues never to be discussed in mixed company.Such conventions as these that are associated with contemporary philosophical exchange make it difficult to have a balanced discussion about Progress and Its Problems. That work is, in the first instance, a descriptive model of theory change in science. It purports to establish what sorts of factors have in fact influenced scientific decision-making.

In this short essay the author deals with the fundamental question of whether the Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) model has sufficient grounds to be considered as a substitute of the current criminal standard of proof (proof Beyond All Reasonable Doubt). After giving an overview of the IBE model as proposed in more general fields such as epistemology and the philosophy of science, and after concluding that the IBE has failed as a model of the acceptance and rejection of scientific theories, the author analysis its plausibility when applied as a decision rule for inferring if the accused is guilty or not.Resumen:En este artículo, el autor aborda la cuestión fundamental de si el modelo de la Inferencia a la Mejor Explicación (IME) es adecuado o no para fungir como sustituto del Estándar de Prueba (E de P) actual que rige en materia penal en los Estados Unidos de América (prueba más allá de toda duda razonable). Luego de una breve exposición del esquema general de la IME propuesto en los terrenos de la epistemología y la filosofía de la ciencia, y luego de concluir que se trata de un modelo deficiente para explicar la actividad consistente en la aceptación y rechazo de teorías científicas, el autor procede al análisis específico de su aplicación en el campo de la decisión (de un juez o jurado) relativa a la culpabilidad o inocencia del penalmente inculpado.

This chapter explores the thesis that the use of the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt for trying those accused of violent crimes — especially if such defendants already have a history of serial offending — is an inappropriately exacting standard. The reason, in brief, is that such a standard fails to reckon with the very high costs and risks imposed on innocent citizens by the non‐conviction and release of falsely acquitted, serial felons. It argues further that those who hold that political morality demands that no defendant should ever be judged by a standard less rigorous than proof beyond reasonable doubt fail to grasp that the function of a standard of proof is to embody our best guesses about the respective costs of error. It goes on to show that familiar deontological theories utterly lack the conceptual resources for non‐arbitrarily defining any standard of proof, since such theories fail to comes to terms with the problems posed by factoring the risks of error into decisions about which actions are justified and which are not.

This paper propounds the following theses: 1). that the traditional focus on the Blackstone ratio of errors as a device for setting the criminal standard of proof is ill-conceived, 2). that the preoccupation with the rate of false convictions in criminal trials is myopic, and 3). that the key ratio of interest, in judging the political morality of a system of criminal justice, involves the relation between the risk that an innocent person runs of being falsely convicted of a serious crime and the risk of being criminally victimized by someone who was falsely acquitted.

It is widely supposed that the scientists in any field use identical standards for evaluating theories. Without such unity of standards, consensus about scientific theories is supposedly unintelligible. However, the hypothesis of uniform standards can explain neither scientific disagreement nor scientific innovation. This paper seeks to show how the presumption of divergent standards (when linked to a hypothesis of dominance) can explain agreement, disagreement and innovation. By way of illustrating how a rational community with divergent standards can encourage innovation and eventually reach consensus, recent developments in geophysics are discussed at some length

For positivists and post-positivists alike, methodology had a decidedly suspect status. Positivists saw methodological rules as stipulative conventions, void of any empirical content. Post-positivists (especially naturalistic ones) see such rules as mere descriptions of how research is conducted, carrying no normative force. It is argued here that methodological rules are fundamentally empirical claims, but ones which have significant normative bite. Methodology is thus divorced both from foundationalism and conventionalism.