Research

An overview of philosophical issues involved in legal adjudication: standards of proof, verdicts, judicial versus jury decision-making, the proof paradox, the social role of legal decisions. Suitable for teaching. Link.

New work in legal philosophy. A special issue edited with Lisa Bastian (VU Amsterdam) and Miguel Egler (Tilburg) (Open Access Link)

A collection of research papers to celebrate the Imre Lakatos Centenary. Co-edited with Roman Frigg, Miklos Redei, John Worrall, Jason Alexander (LSE)

Defends a new method for researching jury performance, in light of the legal prohibition on researching live jury deliberation. (Open Access)

A brief summary of two ideas to fix current issues with jury research. (Manuscript)

Argues that we should use different standards of proof for different crimes, depending on how serious the crime is. (Manuscript)

Argues that current jury science is unsatisfactory and that there is moral imperative to allow the study of live jury deliberation. (Open Access)

Provides an account of why criminal law should care about the norms of individual epistemology. (Open Access Link)

Provides a new account of what is intellectually wrong with demographic profiling and proposes a response that avoids blurring epistemic and ethical norms: namely, to suspend judgement when faced with profiles. (Open Access Link)

Defends the heretical view that we can permissibly assign legal liability based on statistical evidence alone. I show that capitulating in response to ‘epistemic gaps’—cases where there is a group of potential harmers but an absence of individuating evidence—can amount to a serious injustice against victims of harm. (PDF) (Publisher Link)

Argues that strictly factive theories of understanding are consistent with the apparent role of false beliefs in improving our scientific understanding of the world. (Open Access Link)

Examines the permissibility of deciding a legal case using only different types of statistical evidence. (Open Access Link)

Argues that purely statistical evidence can be a respectable basis for legal verdicts, argues against a popular analogy drawn between individual beliefs and court decisions, and corrects some misconceptions about evidence law found in recent literature.
(PDF) (Publisher Link)

A survey of recent work in philosophy and legal theory attempting to resolve the proof paradox. (Pre-print) (Publisher Link)

Develops a theory of collective inquiry and uses it to provide a cautiously optimistic perspective on progress in philosophy. (PDF) (Publisher Link)

Provides a new perspective on expertise in philosophy, and argues that recent experimental data might provide good news for traditional methods. (Co-authored with Miguel Egler). (Open Access link)

Develops the first theory of curiosity as an intellectual virtue, considering what this topic tells us about broader issues in virtue epistemology.
(PDF) (Publisher Link)

Develops a novel framework for testing ‘reductionist’ views of understanding and rejects the idea that understanding reduces to a body of knowledge.
(PDF) (Publisher Link)