Chapter Five
5.1 What is reasonable doubt?
Chapter Five: Reasonable Doubt
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Most people are familiar with the term ‘reasonable doubt’ from watching courtroom dramas on television or in film. It is an important legal concept which judges and juries use to help them decide whether an accused person is innocent or guilty. But reasonable doubt is something that can be applied to many kinds of situations. You might be asked to spend money on something. You might be invited to join a club, organization, or association of some kind. You might be asked to endorse a certain religious, political, or moral belief, for instance by signing a petition, or attending a rally, or voting, or making some kind of public statement. You might be asked to do something that you have never done before. In such situations, and others like them, it can be very useful to think of such requests as propositions, and then decide whether they are believable. There are lots of fairly straightforward ways to do this. And if you find that the argument is weak, or incomplete, or objectionable, or for any reason fishy, then it is probably wise to invoke your reasonable doubt. 5.1 What is reasonable doubt? As we saw in the discussion of good thinking habits, reasonable doubt is related to healthy skepticism. We defined healthy skepticism as “a general unwillingness to accept that things are (always) as they appear to be”. Reasonable Doubt is like a refinement or a specialization of the habit of healthy skepticism. Let’s define it here as the suspension of one’s acceptance of some
statement or proposition, due to an absence of sufficient support for that statement. Here are some questions you can ask yourself, to decide whether some reasonable doubt is warranted: • Is there decent and readily available evidence which proves that the proposition is true? • Can you see that evidence for yourself? • Can the proposition be put to some kind of test, especially a scientific test which could definitively prove that it is false? • Does the argument in support of the proposition pass the test of Ockham’s Razor? In other words, is it simple? • Is the person who asserted the idea someone you have good reason to trust? • Is it consistent with other propositions that you are already reasonably sure are true? • Is it consistent with your world view?
The more of these questions you answer with ‘no’, then the more grounds you have for reasonable doubt. You can also ask critical questions about a few alternative propositions. For instance: • Is there decent evidence that supports some other proposition, and/or which contradicts the one you are considering? • Are there other, perhaps simpler ways to interpret the evidence that supports the proposition? • What additional implications or conclusions can be drawn from the proposition, and are they: