Different Ways of Taking the Evidence, III

 In the real world truth is less like a puzzle or a murder mystery and more like an actual murder trial.

Twelve Angry Men, a deservedly famous film (stop reading this and go watch it, mon freres!) offers a closeup of an old fashioned jury trial of a young man suspected of murder.  Over the course of two hours in one hot small room, Henry Fonda’s character, playing the cautious, law-conscious, convict-as-last-resort character, slowly manages to persuade the other members of the jury that every piece of evidence in the seemingly airtight case can actually be interpreted innocently.  The point of the film, as I understand it, is not that the suspect is actually innocent—indeed, by refusing to introduce him to the audience, the film pointedly makes the jury and their deliberations, their attitudes and innocence or lack thereof, the real topic.  A jury trial, in this showing, is not about determining what the evidence proves, but rather about whether or not, given certain evidence, a person can be found guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

That’s actually a fairly high bar, and one unlikely to ever be found in philosophical discourse, or related discourses like metaphysics, epistemology, theology, sociology, anthropology, and politics.  Why not?  Aristotle said it best: “Our intellect is related to the prime beings, which are most evident in their nature, as the eye of an owl is related to the sun” (Metaphysics Ia, 1).  Or, as Aquinas puts it, when he explains why revelation is necessarily, the truths about God which are attainable by human reason can be attained in that way only by those few men who by disposition and circumstances are inclined to philosophical inquiry, and even for them these truths could be attained only after a long time and with uncertainty and an admixture of falsity.

Translation: in this long-running and much contested case of Man v. World, we are never going to know beyond a Shadow of a Doubt (speaking of good movies) whodunnit.