Demographic statistics in defensive decisions

Renée Jorgensen Bolinger

doi:10.1007/s11229-019-02372-w

Demographic statistics in defensive decisions

Renée Jorgensen Bolinger^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A popular informal argument suggests that statistics about the preponderance of criminal involvement among particular demographic groups partially justify others in making defensive mistakes against members of the group. One could worry that evidence-relative accounts of moral rights vindicate this argument. After constructing the strongest form of this objection, I offer several replies: (i) most demographic statistics face an unmet challenge from reference class problems, (ii) even those that meet it fail to ground non-negligible conditional probabilities, (iii) even if they did, they introduce new costs likely to cancel out any justificatory contribution of the statistic, but (iv) even if they didn’t, demographic facts are the wrong sort to make a moral difference to agents’ negative rights. I conclude that the popular argument should be rejected, and evidence-relative theories do not have the worrisome implication.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	4833-4850
Number of pages	18
Journal	Synthese
Volume	198
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02372-w
Publication status	Published - May 2021

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title = "Demographic statistics in defensive decisions",

abstract = "A popular informal argument suggests that statistics about the preponderance of criminal involvement among particular demographic groups partially justify others in making defensive mistakes against members of the group. One could worry that evidence-relative accounts of moral rights vindicate this argument. After constructing the strongest form of this objection, I offer several replies: (i) most demographic statistics face an unmet challenge from reference class problems, (ii) even those that meet it fail to ground non-negligible conditional probabilities, (iii) even if they did, they introduce new costs likely to cancel out any justificatory contribution of the statistic, but (iv) even if they didn{\textquoteright}t, demographic facts are the wrong sort to make a moral difference to agents{\textquoteright} negative rights. I conclude that the popular argument should be rejected, and evidence-relative theories do not have the worrisome implication.",

keywords = "Demographic statistics, Moral encroachment, Racial profiling, Risk, Self-defense, Social inference, Statistical evidence",

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N2 - A popular informal argument suggests that statistics about the preponderance of criminal involvement among particular demographic groups partially justify others in making defensive mistakes against members of the group. One could worry that evidence-relative accounts of moral rights vindicate this argument. After constructing the strongest form of this objection, I offer several replies: (i) most demographic statistics face an unmet challenge from reference class problems, (ii) even those that meet it fail to ground non-negligible conditional probabilities, (iii) even if they did, they introduce new costs likely to cancel out any justificatory contribution of the statistic, but (iv) even if they didn’t, demographic facts are the wrong sort to make a moral difference to agents’ negative rights. I conclude that the popular argument should be rejected, and evidence-relative theories do not have the worrisome implication.

AB - A popular informal argument suggests that statistics about the preponderance of criminal involvement among particular demographic groups partially justify others in making defensive mistakes against members of the group. One could worry that evidence-relative accounts of moral rights vindicate this argument. After constructing the strongest form of this objection, I offer several replies: (i) most demographic statistics face an unmet challenge from reference class problems, (ii) even those that meet it fail to ground non-negligible conditional probabilities, (iii) even if they did, they introduce new costs likely to cancel out any justificatory contribution of the statistic, but (iv) even if they didn’t, demographic facts are the wrong sort to make a moral difference to agents’ negative rights. I conclude that the popular argument should be rejected, and evidence-relative theories do not have the worrisome implication.

KW - Demographic statistics

KW - Moral encroachment

KW - Racial profiling

KW - Risk

KW - Self-defense

KW - Social inference

KW - Statistical evidence

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DO - 10.1007/s11229-019-02372-w

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Demographic statistics in defensive decisions

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