The ways of knowing

12 Angry Men How did the various jurors justify their beliefs that the defendant was guilty/innocent? What ‘ways of knowing’ are implicit in these justifications?

12 Angry Men

Emotion Anger Hate Indifference/ignorance Empathy Instincts “gut feelings” Emotions play a powerful role in shaping thoughts, influencing behaviour, and steering the pursuit of knowledge.

Perception Expectations- we can often see or hear what we expect rather than what really happened Filtering out- our senses receive much more information that we are capable of processing. Limitations of human senses can cause problems. We perceive the world through our five senses: sense perception is the active, selective and interpretative process of recording or becoming conscious of the external world.

Language Cultural & Class differences can lead to different understanding and use of language can lead to miscommunication Language can be thought of as a symbol system, engaged in representing the world, capturing and communicating thought and experience

Reason Unreliable judgments and logical fallacies Reasoning is a collective endeavour by which people construct meaning together by exchanging, modifying and improving their ideas and opinions

Fallacies Logical errors in an argument. Fallacies are the nemesis of scientific inquiry. They are commonly committed because people are primarily concerned with achieving a goal, playing on human emotion, ignorance and prejudice.