(In relation to Swinburne's Bayesian natural theology, in particular, this objection surfaces in criticism of assumptions about how to set the prior probabilities implicated in calculations of, for example, theism's probability on the evidence of the 'fine-tuning' of the Universe's basic physical constants, or of the probability, on all our evidence, of the truth of the Resurrection).
First, the unexamined status hierarchies of criticism, and "the assumption that anything stylized (or formulaic, or pleasurable, or funny, or feminine, or explicit about sex rather than about violence, or made collaboratively) must be inferior".
And, he added a little later, "probably what's a fair criticism is my assumption that if we had checks and balances from the courts and Congress, that that traditional system of checks and balances would be enough to give people assurance that these programs were run properly.
For criticism of this assumption, see Kornhauser [1998, 2000].
She was unfazed by a majority of the criticism, but the assumption she rejected the most firmly was about her upbringing.
There has been criticism of the assumption in association studies that maternally and paternally inherited alleles are functionally equivalent (Guilmatre and Sharp, 2012).
Thus, there would be no warrant for talk of group minds.[48] Of course, this criticism makes strong assumptions about how to explain any rationality that might be exhibited at the group level, assumptions that are open to challenge.
Yet implicit in such criticisms is the assumption that the city should somehow operate outside the economic system we have developed for ourselves in the post-cold-war world.
Just as critics need to operate in good faith, so should consumers of criticism proceed from the assumption of good faith.
"These stories are inconclusive, we say, and proceed to frame a criticism based upon the assumption that stories ought to conclude in a way that we recognize," Virginia Woolf would later write about Chekhov.
