We revisit Naturalized Epistemology and the Law of Evidence, published twenty years ago. The evolution of the relative plausibility theory of juridical proof is offered as evidence of the advantage of a naturalized approach to the study of the field and law evidence. Various alternative explanations of aspects of juridical proof from other disciplines are examined and their shortcomings described. These competing explanations are similar in their reductive, a priori approaches that are at odds with an empirically oriented naturalized approach. (...) The shortcomings of the various a priori approaches are driven by their common methodological commitments to employing weird hypotheticals to engage in intuition mining about the American legal systems that in turn ignore important aspects of the actual legal systems and consistently make impossible epistemological demands. As a result, both their descriptions of and prescriptions for American legal systems are implausible, unlike the relative plausibility theory. (shrink)

In «Naturalized Epistemology and the Law of Evidence Revisited», the original target article for the various refutations that I comment on here, I revisited through a slightly different lens the subject of the article that I coauthored with Brian Leiter close to twenty years ago. That article has prompted four responses from Professors Pardo, Spellman, Muffato, and Enoch. Professors Pardo and Spellman basically accept the implications of the original article and offer useful but friendly amendments. Prof. Muffato apparently does not (...) want to dispute over my ground and so changes the subject, and in doing so offers a number of interesting points. Only the fourth, Prof. Enoch, has the same doubts about the utility of my original article as I do of the genre that gave rise to it. I can thus be quite brief in discussing professors Pardo, Spellman, and Muffato, but it will take bit more effort to lay out the limits of Prof. Enoch’s analysis. (shrink)

To find more information about Rowman and Littlefield titles, please visit www.rowmanlittlefield.com.

C. Cornelius Gallus requires brief introduction or none at all. A poet in his own right, the friend of Virgil and of Pollio, Gallus is enshrined for ever in literature—and in literary legend, for the inept fictions of Servius and his tribe will survive the most damaging of revelations, remembered even when refuted. Not only that—Gallus is a conspicuous figure in the social and political history of the revolutionary age.

An absorbing introductory treatment of logic, ranging from classic philosophy to the fundamental building blocks of modern electronics.

This book reviews the spectrum of economic methods that have been developed from themid-1970s to the mid-1980s to analyze the feasibility of solar systems and shows how the use ofthese techniques has influenced federally sponsored research, development, and demonstrationprograms.

Many scholars believe “On a New List of Categories” is a metaphysical or transcendental deduction. The present essay will argue that Peirce derives the categories by induction and validates their order by prescision. Then the article shall solicit aid from Peirce’s early and later writings to explain how the new way to list the categories can serve as a genealogy of signification: how the different types of term, proposition, and argument emerge in the process of reasoning as the different types (...) of signs. Thus, the genealogy of signification would then qualify as a phenomenology of logic as a science of semiotics. Such a science of semiotics will have three types of comparison corresponding to the sign-relation in illation: namely, uniparance, diaparance, and comparance. Then the three types of comparison will occasion three types of relative in different types of propositions: namely, concurrents, disquiparants, and equiparants. Finally, the three types of relative will occasion the different types of sign corresponding to the different types of term: namely, icons, indices, and symbols. With this classification, there is then an explanation of how the process of reasoning is a semiotic process with three forms of valid argument: namely, hypothesis, induction, and deduction. (shrink)

This collection of essays focuses on Weber's political ideology as well as his political sociology. This interdisciplinary work draws upon the expertise of a number of writers and challenges major schools of thought on Weber. In the first section on ideology, scholars question whether Weber's political predictions were based on a realistic appraisal of social development or if his objectivity was compromised by events in Weimar Germany. They then address Weber's attitudes toward socialism in light of contemporary sociology and his (...) early writings. Part two examines Weber's theory: the concept of rationalization; ideas about charisma; and the decline of charisma in light of the growing role of the media. A study of Weber's analysis of the 1917 events in Russia concludes the volume. (shrink)

The treatise was in origin a polemic against the Erasistrateans in Rome whom Galen found to be in opposition to his own views. It is of interest not only for Galen's views on venesection but also for the fragments of the writings of Erastistratus contained in it. The text has not yet appeared in a modern critical edition. The Kühn edition of 1826 is the most recent, but Kühn did not go beyond the work of the Renaissance editors in dealing (...) with the numerous corruptions of the text. The emendations proposed below are occasioned by the want of a satisfactory reading anywhere in the tradition. (shrink)

In this article I present a positive ontology of 'race'. Toward this end, I discuss metaphysical pluralism and review the theories of Ian Hacking, John Dupre and Root. Working within Root's framework, I describe the conditions under which a constructed kind like 'race' would be real. I contend these conditions are currently satisfied in the United States. Given the social presence and impact of 'race' and the unique way 'race' operates at differing sites, I will argue that it is site-specific, (...) it is socially constructed, and it is real. Key Words: human kinds • metaphysical pluralism • philosophy of race • promiscuous realism • race • race theory • racial realism. (shrink)

Fourteen contributions from international academics examine the themes of judgment, imagination, and politics in the philosophy of Hannah Arendt and Immanuel Kant. In the introduction, Beiner and Nedelsky (both political science, U. of Toronto) discuss the problem of political judgment and the recognition of subjectivity. Other topics include the challenges of diversity to the law, the public use of reason, and Arendt's lectures on Kant. c. Book News Inc.

The probabilistic account of juridical proof meets insurmountable problems. A better explanation of juridical proof is that it is a form of inference to the best explanation that involves the comparative plausibility of the parties’ stories. In addition, discrete evidentiary matters such as relevance and probative value are also best understood as involving inference to the best explanation rather than being probabilistic.

It is a rather remarkable fact that in most discussions of Aquinas’s ethics, Q. 21 of the De Veritate which deals with Aquinas’s notion of Good, is almost entirely overlooked. For example D. J. O’Connor’s book Aquinas and Natural Law refers only once to the De Veritate and that is not a reference to Q. 21. Even the massive work of Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, in the entire third section which deals with Aquinas’s moral theory has (...) only six references to the De Veritate and again none are to Q. 21. H. J. McCloskey in Meta-Ethics and Normative Ethics, provides what he considers two definitive repudiations of Aquinas’s theory but there is no mention or reference to the De Veritate. There may be a reason for this. Thomists like Gilson may not be attuned to or interested in answering the specific problems which contemporary ethical theorists address themselves to, while ethical theorists like O’Connor seem to depend upon traditional Thomistic accounts to locate the pertinent passages in Aquinas’s ethical writings, accounts which follow the order of one or other of the Summas. Be that as it may, some of the most illuminating sections of Aquinas dealing with ethical-theoretical issues are to be found in Question 21 of the De Veritate, for in this question is found a definition of the good as well as explanations of this definition. Consider the following passages where Aquinas lists what seem to be necessary conditions for calling something good. (shrink)

A vast literature has developed probing the law's aversion to statistical/probability evidence in general and its rejection of naked statistical evidence in particular. This literature rests on false premises. At least so far as US law is concerned, there is no general aversion to statistical forms of proof and even naked statistics are admissible and sufficient for a verdict when the evidentiary proffer meets the normal standards of admissibility, the most important of which is reliability. The belief to the contrary (...) rests upon a series of mistakes: most importantly, mismodeling of the structure of legal systems and the nature of common law decision making. Contributing to these mistakes is the common methodology in this literature of relying on weird hypotheticals that mismodel the underlying legal relations and contain impossible epistemological demands. Collectively, these phenomena have distracted attention from issues that actually affect real legal systems. (shrink)

This brief essay explores how understanding the treatment of expert evidence requires engaging with its legal and political contexts, and not just focusing on its epistemological aspects. Although the law of evidence and thus its treatment of experts is significantly informed by epistemological considerations, it is also informed by concerns over the organization of trials, larger issues of intelligent governance, social concerns, and enforcement issues. These five aspects to the law of evidence give rise to principles to guide the explicit (...) structuring of the law of evidence that are identified here as well. This complexity helps to explain why the central issue of expert testimony is not the epistemological one of knowledge and belief but instead the conflict between educational and deferential modes of trial. (shrink)