Allegations and Obituaries

Allegations and Obituaries

Anybody can make any allegation against anyone. It means nothing. Allegations are not evidence. This is obvious, though often forgotten. The OUP gives us: “a claim that someone has done something wrong, typically an unfounded one”. An allegation is a claim not a report, an assertion not a fact. It is as easy to make an unfounded allegation as a founded one. The gap between saying and being is enormous and principled. It is not like the gap between sensory impressions and facts: an impression is evidence (though not conclusive evidence) of fact. An allegation is a voluntary act of speech causally untethered to reality, but a sense impression is an involuntary state on mind typically caused by what it purports to represent. It gives an appearance of reality, while an allegation does no such thing: when you hear an allegation it doesn’t seem to you that the world is as alleged. We should not confuse these two types of relation. An allegation is not a perceptual impression of what is alleged. It is not a sense-datum. A false allegation is nothing like a visual illusion. This is why allegations always stand in need of supporting evidence; you can never be convicted on allegation alone. Allegations are just words, and words are not necessarily connected to facts, nomologically or otherwise. Allegations never by themselves imply truth, even weakly. Just because somebody says it doesn’t mean it’s true. When we acquire knowledge by testimony, our evidential basis is not the fact of assertion alone but the evidence we have of the reporter’s veracity, which must be independent of the assertion currently being made, to the effect that the speaker is reliable. This never consists in further assertions by that speaker; the circle of assertion must be broken out of. No allegation can be supported by other allegations alone; nonlinguistic facts must be adduced. Allegations in themselves are epistemically null. Their existence does not raise the probability of what is alleged. Indeed, they may lower the probability if the speaker is a known liar or unreliable idiot or certifiably insane. Allegation is never demonstration, or even indication. The law is very clear on this and insists upon it, rightly so.

I say all this because newspapers (etc.) have taken to mentioning in obituaries that the deceased person has been alleged to have done such-and-such. This is a very bad practice. By all means mention actual findings against the person, if such there be, but don’t mention mere allegations. If the practice were consistently applied, obituaries would be stacked with the lies of the person’s enemies; lies would be manufactured for precisely this purpose. The only reason to mention allegations, often salacious, is to indicate or suggest that the allegations are credible; but no proof of credibility is given, and the facts often contradict the allegations. Unproven allegations should not be cited, because doing so conversationally implies that there is reason to believe them, but there may be no such reason. Innocent people have allegations made against them all the time from a variety of motives, so don’t buy into these allegations by mentioning them. And don’t reply that it is a fact that such allegations were made and you are just reporting facts: if I allege falsely and maliciously that you are a child murderer, should that fact (that I made this allegation) find its way into your obituary? Of course not. Mentioning allegations only gives readers the impression that there must be substance to the allegations, or else you wouldn’t mention them. Report findings of guilt not imputations of guilt: truth not opinion (or mere assertion). Surely, this is obvious.[1]

[1] The case of John Searle is a case in point.