Positives, negatives and empirical reasoning

摘要

In their clear review of the false memory debate, Chris Brewin and Bernice Andrews (July 2017) draw an important and valid conclusion, viz: 'Recovered memories lie on a spectrum from being plainly false, being plausible but lacking in corroboration, to being independently corroborated.' Two intersecting implications arise from this statement that might be useful to consider. The first relates to false positives and false negatives in criminal prosecutions. The second relates to generalist and particularist empirical reasoning.