“Analytic Epistemology and Criminal Justice”: Sarah Moss (University of Michigan)

Date
Mar 6, 2025, 4:30 pm6:00 pm
Location
Wooten Hall, Room 301 (Kerstetter Room)
Audience
Open to Princeton University ID Holders and Other Academic Affiliates

Details

Event Description

Recent developments in epistemology have surprising consequences for the administration of criminal justice. This talk will defend two claims about knowledge and then use those claims to identify a significant problem for contemporary American trial procedure. The first claim is that legal proof requires knowledge. At a first pass, the defendant in a jury trial is proven guilty only if the jury knows that the defendant is guilty. The second claim is that knowledge is subject to pragmatic encroachment. Whether a jury knows that a defendant is guilty may depend on what’s at stake in their decision to convict, including the consequences that the defendant may face if convicted. Hence in order to know whether a defendant has been proven guilty, jurors may need to know something about the potential consequences of conviction. But in nearly every American criminal trial, this information is withheld from jurors. Recent work in epistemology can shed light on the reasoning that has led courts to withhold sentencing information from jurors, helping us diagnose the flaw in this reasoning. Having identified that flaw, we will end by considering relevant strategies for criminal justice reform.

About the Speaker

Sarah Moss is the William Wilhartz Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Probabilistic Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 2018), in which she argues that partial beliefs can constitute knowledge in just the same way that full beliefs can. Her theory of probabilistic knowledge has consequences for the relationship between probability and legal evidence, the interpretation of legal standards of proof, and moral and epistemic critiques of racial profiling. Further information about her research can be found at her website.