Generalisations, causal relationships and moral responsibility

Abstract

In Chapter 4 of his book Character in the Criminal Trial, Mike Redmayne addresses a series of non-epistemic arguments against the use of bad character evidence. Redmayne is particularly successful in debunking arguments focusing on the defendant’s autonomy. Inspired by the early drafts of Chapter 4—which I had the honour to read—I published an article trying to contribute to the debate. At the time of writing, however, I was not aware of a beguiling argument concerning the use of behavioural generalisations, formulated and defended by Amit Pundik in a recent research paper. According to this argument, we should not prove guilt using generalisations that presuppose a causal relationship between an antecedent factor and individual behaviour, if this relationship negates the freedom of the individual under any theory about determinism and free will that one may adopt—be it a libertarian or a compatibilist theory. In this article I critically assess this argument and attempt to show that it does not succeed.