BURDEN
This follow-up/supplimentary assignment is designed for students whose grasp of relevant
arguments is good but who seem to have a problem figuring out who mainly bears
the burden of proof for some particular issue, and what failing to meet this burden would mean for that person's argument.
The basic rule is
that the side advocating a change in our established knowledge, or the side
saying that something should be illegal, or some action that hurts people is morally justified, or some behavior
is morally wrong, bears the burden of proof. (So if this side can't meet their burden of proof, we should conclude that they're wrong, or at least have failed to prove their point.) But when our established knowledge
doesn't clearly support either side, or when people will be, or might be hurt
either way, or when more than one established moral principle is involved, then
things get messy.
In addition, if someone says that one thing makes another thing impossible,
then he bears the burden of proof. For instance, someone who says that the existence
of the National Basketball Association means it is impossible to make cheese
would bear the burden of proof. As would someone who claims that Euclidian geometry
is incompatible with skateboarding. On the other hand, someone who claims two
things are compatible, such as someone who claims it's possible to be both a
religious believer and a critical thinker, would not bear the
burden of proof. If someone thinks that religious belief rules out critical
thought, then he bears the burden of proving it.
If sombody makes a claim that some method or procedure (such as astrology, chiropractic, chemotherapy) actually produces results (knowledge of future or of self, cure of pain, deafness or asthma, or cure of cancer), then that person bears the burden of proving that those results exist, and that they were achieved by that method of procedure.
If it turns out that the only evidence present is that people believe that the method works, but that belief can also be explained by something else, such as cold reading, confirmation bias or placebo effect, then the burden of proof hasn't been met, and we should believe that the method doesn't work.
If both sides go beyond or contradict what has already
been established as knowledge, try to figure out your own views on which
one is most nearly consistent with our present knowledge, or which claim seems
to you to be easiest to accept. Designate the less consistent or harder to accept
thesis as the one bearing the burden of proof, and write a paragraph explaining
(as best you can) how you came to that decision.
If someone is advocating a claim that radically conflicts with our established knowledge, then that person bears a heavy burden of proof. They have to come up with some facts that cannot be reasonably explained without accepting their radical new claim. If they can't come up with compelling evidence, we should conclude that their claim is false.
If someone is advocating
an action that will hurt people on the basis of a claim that not doing
it will result in more people, or more innocent people being hurt, look
at the likely magnitude of the harms on each side. Generally, the side advocating
a hurtful action, like a war or a compulsory vaccination program, bears the
burden of proving three things: 1. That refraining from action will result in
harm. 2. That the proposed action will actually avert the feared harm,
and 3. That this harm will be significantly greater than the harm that will
be caused by the action. The advocates of action clearly bear the burden of
proof on the first two questions, but it may turn out that there is no
easy way to determine the burden of proof on the third question. This is because
(in my view) there is no intrinsic moral difference between action and inaction.
It is just as immoral to deliberatly let harm happen as it is to deliberately
take an action that results in an equal amount of harm.
When the pro-action
side has proved that refraining from action will allow harm to happen and proved
that taking the proposed action will avert that harm, start working out your
opinion on the issue of whether action or inaction is more likely to result
in more harm. There's no hard-and-fast method of doing this, but there are a
few rules of thumb.
1. Proximate harms are more significant than future harms.
(A death tomorrow is more significant than a death next year.)
2. Guaranteed
harms count more than probable harms. (A person who will die is more significant
than a person who might die.)
3. Speculative harms don't count for
much. (Don't pay much attention to sentences starting with "what if?")
4.
Familiar causes of harm count more than unfamiliar ones. (Things that have
happened before count more than things that haven't.)
5. Costs count. (People
who die because the action diverts resources away from them still die.)
6.
Reactions count. (People killed in response to the action, or inaction, are
still dead.)
7. Optimism is for suckers. (Use the best-supported scenario,
not the best-case scenario.)
8. Advocates exaggerate. (Use the most independent
estimates you can get.)
Remember that you're only deciding the initial
burden of proof. Arguments from one side or the other may shift the burden again
later, so don't agonize over this too much once you've worked out a rough idea
of where the burden lies. Of course, it may turn out that the harms seem about
equally matched, or a big chance of a small harm is balanced against a small
chance of a big harm. In that case, if you grind to a halt after examining all
the harm issues, just arbitrarily assign the burden of proof to the pro-action
side and go on from there.
Copyright © 2004 by Martin C. Young
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