Abstract
Using pure statistical evidence about a group to judge a particular member of that group is often found objectionable. One natural explanation of why this is objectionable appeals to the moral notion of respecting individuality: to properly respect individuality, we need individualized evidence, not pure statistical evidence. However, this explanation has been criticized on the ground that there is no fundamental difference between the so-called “individualized evidence” and “pure statistical evidence”. This paper defends the respecting-individuality explanation by developing an account of what it means to respect individuality. It combines an idealistic account of respecting individuality and a prioritization account of respecting individuality, and offers a principled way to distinguish individualized evidence from non-individualized evidence.
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Notes
For the sake of argument, let's assume that the situation is such that any bystander in the peddler's position would easily perceive Austin as talking to the woman standing next to him and that this is apparent to Austin upon reflection.
Smith v. Rapid Transit, 317 Mass. 469, 470, 58 N.E.2d 754, 755 (1945).
United States v. Montero-Camargo, 208 F.3d 1122, 1134 (9th Cir. 2000), emphasis in original.
Some recent epistemically based accounts for distinguishing between individualized and pure statistical evidence, such as Enoch et al. (2012), seem to hold this “yes-or-no” view too.
Whether a piece of evidence e confirms or disconfirms a belief B is understood in the Bayesian way: e confirms B if the probability of B being true given e is greater than that without e; e disconfirms B if the probability of B being true given e is smaller than that without e; e neither confirms nor disconfirms B if the probability of B being true given e is equal to that without e.
O(e) is not modified by I(y) because only when the information is not yet considered, the significance of the impact that the formed belief has on Y increases the importance to obtain that information and thus the threshold of unavailability.
The problem underlying these two cases is often referred to as the “reference class problem”.
This is, of course, not suggesting that the prior information (or base rate, as it is often called) does not count at all. Informative prior distributions (based on the base rate) are used to lower the posterior variation if the data are considered inaccurate or highly uncertain; non-informative prior distributions are used when the data are highly certain. In other words, high-quality individualized evidence is prioritized in Bayesian practices. In Disease, since the accuracy of the medical test is relatively high, the prior probability is weighed lightly; were the accuracy of the medical test sufficiently low, the prior probability would be weighed more heavily. Di Bello (2019) gives a detailed discussion of the application of Bayesian theory in statistically grounded beliefs..
Respecting individuality is best understood as a subjective moral duty, and thus it does not require our justification to be grounded on something that is objectively true of Y.
This echoes Moss's point that “in many situations where you are forming beliefs about a person, you morally should keep in mind the possibility that they might be an exception to statistical generalizations”, which Moss calls the “rule of consideration”. See Moss (2018a, p. 221).
We would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for this journal for raising this objection.
What is at issue here is whether a belief is subjectively justified, not whether it constitutes knowledge. Thus, those well-known counterexamples, such as the Fake-Barn cases, should not concern us.
One may worry that the “social meaning” of a mechanism can be morally problematic. For example, there might exist a mechanism of racialization that determines how much money people of different race earn, and we can reasonably believe that this mechanism operates on everybody. It follows that, on our account, “race” qualifies as individualized evidence for how much money one earns. We think, if there indeed exists such a mechanism, “race” does count as individualized evidence. In reality, race does not count precisely because we cannot reasonably believe such a universal mechanism exists. Moreover, calling “race” individualized evidence in this case does not suggest that the mechanism itself is morally justified. The latter is a completely different issue.
As we discussed in the previous section, the possibility that the observation is incorrect is a flaw internal to the observational model, not one pertaining to respecting individuality.
This explains, in the famous Blue Bus Case, why a witness’s testimony of seeing a blue bus passing through the area should be treated differently from the pure statistical evidence that a bus from the blue bus company has a high probability of passing through that area during that specific time. Even though a witness’s testimony can be mistaken, it is formed through an epistemic process that respects the defendant’s individuality. Consequently, insofar as the testimony’s reliability is not much lower than that of non-individualized counterevidence, using that testimony properly respects the defendant’s individuality.
Lippert-Rasmussen raised a similar worry by using cases involving “non-autonomous minors” (2011: 53). It is debatable whether minors are truly “non-autonomous”. But the general point behind his worry is valid.
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Acknowledgements
We want to thank Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Peter Vallentyne, Eddy Keming Chen, Wilfried Hinsch, Ryan Hornbeck, and one anonymous reviewer for this journal and one anonymous reviewer for another journal for very helpful criticisms and suggestions on earlier drafts. This work was presented at the Philosophy Departments of Xiamen University and Nanjing University, and we want to thank the participants, especially Andrea Strollo, for helpful comments. We are also indebted to the “Principles of Cultural Dynamics” program at Free University of Berlin, which funded the research leave that enabled the writing of this paper.
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Liu, X., Liang, Y. What it means to respect individuality. Philos Stud 178, 2579–2598 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01563-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-020-01563-3