On the discomfort with the accuracy criterion. Reassessing Puddifoot’s criticism against the Dual Factor view

FEDERICO ARENA

European journal of analytic philosophy

University of Rijeka, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Año: 2023

1845-8475

Focus on stereotypes and their negative effects has increased in the legal domain in recent years. In the legal context stereotypes may produce their negative effects in several ways and given this pervasive presence of stereotypes’ negative effects, there is a widely shared view according to which almost all stereotypes are harmful and must be fought with the available legal instruments. However, some scholars have claimed that we should learn from the empirical sciences and use the developments of statistics to distinguish between different kinds of stereotypes: those with and those without statistical support. Even though legal scholars seem to agree that the accuracy or statistical criterion improves our understanding of how stereotypes work, there is growing discomfort with some of its applications. In this text I discuss some of Katherine Puddifoot’s arguments in support of this discomfort with the accuracy criterion.