• courts of laws aren’t primarily truthseeking practices. as in, courts fulfill a governmental function primarily and the truth is auxiliary. they can be truthseeking, but they aren’t by design. the adversarial system for example is antithetical to truthseeking, because attorneys have no obligation to the whole truth. lying by omission is permitted.
• even if they were, what you’re trying to get at—analogizing the role of demographic qualities to licensing credentials—doesn’t hold here. a steelman of your argument would be that licensing means lawyers can more deftly handle certain kinds of evidence, so their licensure is a shortcut because we know to listen to them over someone else. this would NOT mean that their licensure makes some claim correct. for this analogy to hold, “you’re just saying that because you’re not a lawyer” would have to be a coherent objection. there are very few instances where this objection would be relevant to the truth of any claim and even in those objections, the truth of the claim that “you’re just saying that because” rebuts wouldn’t depend on who is “allowed in the discourse”, it would be a descriptive explanation of the origin of their interlocutor’s ignorance.
Court have a system for seeking truth when participants are adversarial and rules that have intention of producing truth under those conditions. While it’s not the only goal that courts have truth finding is one of the major goals. In situations where participants are adversial it’s useful to have a system that takes that into account.
“Objection, this is hearsay” is a move that you can use in court to shut down a witness. It’s a principle where people who don’t have direct experience about whether something is true are not allowed to say what they want over it.
It’s similar in nature to the complaint that someone speaks about something where they lack certain direct experience because they are white.
• courts of laws aren’t primarily truthseeking practices. as in, courts fulfill a governmental function primarily and the truth is auxiliary. they can be truthseeking, but they aren’t by design. the adversarial system for example is antithetical to truthseeking, because attorneys have no obligation to the whole truth. lying by omission is permitted.
• even if they were, what you’re trying to get at—analogizing the role of demographic qualities to licensing credentials—doesn’t hold here. a steelman of your argument would be that licensing means lawyers can more deftly handle certain kinds of evidence, so their licensure is a shortcut because we know to listen to them over someone else. this would NOT mean that their licensure makes some claim correct. for this analogy to hold, “you’re just saying that because you’re not a lawyer” would have to be a coherent objection. there are very few instances where this objection would be relevant to the truth of any claim and even in those objections, the truth of the claim that “you’re just saying that because” rebuts wouldn’t depend on who is “allowed in the discourse”, it would be a descriptive explanation of the origin of their interlocutor’s ignorance.
Court have a system for seeking truth when participants are adversarial and rules that have intention of producing truth under those conditions. While it’s not the only goal that courts have truth finding is one of the major goals. In situations where participants are adversial it’s useful to have a system that takes that into account.
“Objection, this is hearsay” is a move that you can use in court to shut down a witness. It’s a principle where people who don’t have direct experience about whether something is true are not allowed to say what they want over it.
It’s similar in nature to the complaint that someone speaks about something where they lack certain direct experience because they are white.