KJuris: (When) Statistical Evidence Is Not Evidence: On Rigged Lotteries, Pickpockets, and Washing Machines

Date: Wednesday 7 October 2026

Time: 17:00-19:00

Location: Ante Room, 1.17, Somerset House East Wing, Strand Campus, King's College London, WC2R 2LS

Event Abstract:

As I enter the room and we are introduced, you think to yourself: ‘Lovely philosopher! I’d better watch it, though, she’s quite likely to steal my wallet.’ I’m sorry, what? What just happened? According to the leading theories on the market, your thoughts have fine evidential support, but you shouldn’t entertain them because they’re morally problematic. Some think they’re epistemically problematic because they’re morally problematic, some think you’re epistemically in the clear but morally dubious. But the evidence is there. In great news for both you and I, and as I will argue, that’s false: you simply have no reason to believe I’m going to steal your wallet.

Speaker Bio:

Mona Simion is Professor of Philosophy and Michael Cohen Fellow of Exeter College at the University of Oxford. She works in epistemology, philosophy of language, moral and political philosophy, philosophy of AI, and philosophy of gender and race. Her research also spans interdisciplinary collaborations across computer science, neuroscience, psychology, and the social sciences. She is the author of 'Shifty Speech and Independent Thought' (OUP 2021), 'Sharing Knowledge' (CUP 2021, with C. Kelp), 'Resistance to Evidence' (CUP 2024), 'Knowledge-First Epistemology: A Defence' (CUP 2025), and 'Knowledge and Conceptual Engineering' (OUP 2026, with C. Kelp). She is currently running several major interdisciplinary research projects, funded by the ERC (‘KnowledgeLab: Knowledge-First Social Epistemology’) and the UKRI (‘Embedding Ethics and Epistemology in Neurotech’ and ‘Open Chorus: Testimonial Fidelity in AI-Mediated Healthcare Narratives’). From April 2027 she will be running a new ERC project entitled ‘The Epistemology of Artificial Intelligence.’

Description supplied by the event organiser.