Abstract
This chapter examines how the burden of proof can be discharged. It is argued that evidence in support of a questioned hypothesis is persuasively useless if it differs in kind from that hypothesis (e.g. descriptive evidence in support of a normative hypothesis), because the inferential premise stating that such evidence supports the given hypothesis would itself be entirely unsupportable. The crossing of such inference barriers between divergent kinds must therefore prudently be avoided in analytic philosophical dialogue.
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Notes
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We could further distinguish between E:H and the stronger claim E::H, with the latter implying that there is no evidence EX non-identical with E such that it is true that EX:¬H is stronger than E:H. As such, E:H amounts to the claim that E prima facie supports H (or simply that E supports H), while E::H amounts to the claim that E ultima facie supports H (or simply that E proves H). E::H plays no role in my subsequent considerations, as the latter only concern the claim that E:H.
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The formulations chosen here illustrate that Hume’s Second Law is but a special case of (Bertrand) Russell’s Law (cf. (Gillian) Russell 2010: 156). Historically more faithful formulations would concern inferences from propositions about the past to propositions about the future (Hume’s Second Law) and inferences from particular propositions to general propositions (Russell’s Law). Note that the person-specific labels for the foregoing implication barrier theses are drawn from Gillian Russell (2010).
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Note that the employment of conceptual analysis may in fact be imprudent here, as will become clear in the next chapter.
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The provision of support should not be confused with the attempted insulation from any need for support, as may be pursued by appeals to authority or by appeals to putative obviousness. Either of these responses would implicitly allege that it is inappropriate to question D1:D2 and would thus presume dialogical foundationalism.
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Baier also held that this burden could be satisfied, e.g. by citing accepted social conventions – a possibility I will address in the following section.
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John Searle’s (1964) counter-example is more complex than but parallel to Rosen’s (and is therefore only footnoted here). In essence, Searle invokes the social institution of promising in order to materially validly deduce the obligation to act according to one’s promise from the description of the utterance of this promise. Like Rosen’s, Searle’s counter-example would be undermined by making its implicit definition of ‘promising’ explicit, as this would amount to adding the normative premise that Anyone who utters (or: credibly utters) a promise to perform some action is obligated to perform that action.
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I assume that it is logically possible that P iff P is not a contradiction according to the rules of the language of P.
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For an outstanding examination of its status as a logical barrier, see Pigden (2010b).
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Insofar as the conduct of philosophical thought is considered to be dependent upon the conduct of philosophical dialogue, my empiricist thesis may of course have consequences for the former. Such consequences, however, are not my concern here. Cf. the discussion of attitudinal goals in Chap. 1, Sect. 1.3.
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If other forms of dialogical empiricism are distinguished in the future (e.g. dialogical empiricism applying to social history) then my thesis would have to be renamed, in accordance with its other restrictions, as prudential metaphilosophical dialogical empiricism – a label I choose to avoid here for obvious reasons of economy.
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Rhode, C. (2023). Evidence, Inference, and Empiricism. In: The Burden of Proof upon Metaphysical Methods. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27777-1_3
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