Epistemic reasonableness: ethical and epistemological reflections from BARD

Rawls’s conception of epistemic reasonableness relies on the so called ‘burdens of judgment’. He holds that, to a large extent, reasonable and conscientious persons may remain with divergent views even after a discussion in which the full powers of reason have been employed. I want to contend that there is more to epistemic reasonableness than what Rawls allows. The convergence of courts both in the common law and in the civil law on the BARD (‘beyond any reasonable doubt’) criterion shows that juries may reach a high level of consent even in very controversial criminal cases in which the liberty or life of people are at stake. My claim in this paper is that (1) the functioning of BARD in trials gives us more hopes to reach quasi-unanimity even on controversial political questions; (2) the agreement on BARD may be improved if we adopt a multi-dimensional criterion of interpretation in which three elements combine. (a) The best objective evidence of the facts under assessment; (b) ‘moral’ certainty of the jury about the conclusions; (c) the exercise of the virtues of truthfulness and accuracy on the side of both the jury and the judge.