Next LLC Seminar

Alexander Gebharter and Michal Sikorski (Marche Polytechnic University): Exploring the consequences of the limits of the principle of total evidence  

Thursday 28 November, 16-18h, Meeting Room 1, Philosophy Library, Palazzo Nuovo (basement)

The principle of total evidence says that all relevant information should be considered when making an inference about a hypothesis. In the first part of our talk, we argue that the criminalist’s paradox from the literature on the methodology of forensic science constitutes a counterexample against the principle of total evidence. The paradox arises, for example, if forensic scientists consider results from other forensic procedures for their own results. In such cases, their own results can become more reliable, but at the same time also dependent on those other forensic results and therefore less useful for decisions in court cases. We argue that structurally similar problems can also be found in other sciences. In forensic science, the problem is usually avoided by relying on the relevance principle which excludes the problematic information. In the second part we explore the relevance principle from a causal perspective. We walk through the most basic causal structures and show that following the relevance principle leads to the double-counting fallacy in most structures. We then propose an alternative causal version of the relevance principle that returns the correct results regardless of the causal setting. If time allows it, we finally propose a new normative model for scientific practice on the basis of these results.