Eleanor Gordon-Smith

A recent view in legal epistemology holds that since knowledge is the standard for proof of criminal guilt, and since there is pragmatic encroachment on knowledge, contrary to current trial practice juries should be told the sentence a defendant would receive if convicted. We argue against this view. First, pragmatic encroachment on legal proof would produce distorted and unjust trial practice. Second, even granting pragmatic encroachment on legal proof would not of itself undermine the basic justification for withholding sentencing evidence from juries. We close on the false allure of epistemology-first arguments for legal reform.

Journalists face decisions about which true stories to publish and how to frame the facts in the stories they select. How should they make these decisions? According to what I call the civic attitudes proposal, they should aim to promote civically useful attitudes in their audience. This is a surprisingly popular default view. I argue we should reject it. It imposes informational risks, is anti-egalitarian, and undermines one source of the civic value in civically valuable attitudes. Instead, I suggest, journalists best contribute to democracy by playing a dedicatedly skeptical role in a zetetic division of labour.

Morality seems to object when we believe insulting things of one another. Some worry that admitting this means allowing that morality could ask us to believe what evidence would not ordinarily allow. Can we hold that beliefs can wrong, and that this affects what we should believe, without yielding that result? According to the position I call asymmetrical moralism, we can. Morality gives reason against particular beliefs, never for others. I argue this position is not viable. Anyone who thinks we can wrong each other with our beliefs should agree we can wrong each other by withholding belief, so there is no principled way to constrain morality’s influence on doxastic states to a prohibition on insulting beliefs. If the moral costs of some doxastic state are reason not to hold it, there can be moral reasons for belief.

A recent view in legal epistemology holds that since knowledge is the standard for proof of criminal guilt, and since there is pragmatic encroachment on knowledge, contrary to current trial practice juries should be told the sentence a defendant would receive if convicted. We argue against this view. First, pragmatic encroachment on legal proof would produce distorted and unjust trial practice. Second, even granting pragmatic encroachment on legal proof would not of itself undermine the basic justification for withholding sentencing evidence from juries. We close on the false allure of epistemology-first arguments for legal reform.

Sometimes the fact that A is inquiring into some question q can strike B as reason for her also to inquire into q. What explains this phenomenon, and is it good epistemic practice? I distinguish between two versions of this phenomenon. In one, B treats A’s inquiry as a peer-disagreement style reason to doubt her existing answer to q. In the other, B adopts an attachment to figuring q out because A has an attachment to figuring out q. I defend the former and argue we should resist the latter. By analogy to the ways it is problematic to get our moral judgments by deferring to others, I argue that we perform sub-optimally qua inquirers by forming attachments to particular questions simply because others have.