Peter Tillers

There is a longstanding philosophical debate about the relationship between "facts" and "values." This philosophical chestnut takes a particularly interesting form in the context of evidence and inference. Some theorists insist on a sharp distinction between descriptive theories of inference and prescriptive or normative theories of inference. This distinction, however, may be difficult to sustain if one thinks that whenever one describes a form of inference one describes a form of reasoning or logic. Furthermore, close study of inferential argument suggests that the source of many of the principles or generalizations on which people rely when they draw inferences is as likely to be culture as it is to be personal or scientific experience. Students of probability, induction, and inference must in the future think more carefully than they have in the past about the relationship between "rational inference" and matters such as culture and "values." While I am no great fan of movements such as deconstruction, there may be more than is generally acknowledged to the Hegelian idea than that human societies and communities are grand experiments, tests, or wagers of the viability or validity of particular "world views," views of the world that may prove to be right (or wrong) but whose accuracy or adequacy cannot be demonstrated while they are being tested. I hope to examine this matter -- the relationship between "rational inference" and matters such as culture, cultural values, prejudice, personal values, and personal beliefs -- in more detail in the years to come.

A conference:

Dates: January 28-29, 2007.

Venue: Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University, 55 Fifth Avenue (5th Ave. & 12th St.), New York (Manhattan), New York
 

Drafts and abstracts of some of the papers and comments are available online at http://tillers.net/conference.html.

Final versions of many of the conference papers as well as some additional related papers are available at Law, Probability and Risk.