To what extent does the film "12 Angry Men" illustrate the central knowledge questions and ideas taught in the TOK course so far?

To what extent does the film "12 Angry Men" illustrate the central knowledge questions and ideas taught in the TOK course so far?

To me, if a person reach to conclusions without having a valid reason/proof is a halfwitted person. It is like the famous quote, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” However everyone including myself has fallen prey to such a thing and we all at one point or another have passed it on by saying it was our sixth sense. 

Whether it is a small problem or a big one, one should never defend themselves for taking a certain action on the grounds of “sixth sense.” We should always think thoroughly and apply rational thought. Once we do that, we would disrupt our subconscious thoughts which are responsible for the institution that we use to justify our sixth sense. 

In “12 Angry Men”, even before the jury members retired to the private room for discussions, many members had gone in with a “closed mind”, that the boy  was unquestionably guilty. When the men were asked to state as to why they think that boy was guilty, some of them had the nerves to say that “because they knew.” 

Some of the jurors might have pieced together important facts in their minds subconsciously such as, the boy growing in a slum and then thought about how slum life is. Soon, they might have prejudged him and kept those opinions in their brain during the whole trial which could have blocked their true judgement. Such a conclusion would relies on inductive and deductive inferences drawn from conscious thought processes, instead of making connections subconsciously. Even though the juror maybe factually accurate, but pre judging the boy based on his background without thinking about it is absolutely ridiculous especially when determining whether he should be hanged or not.  Unlike the juror's original thinking, the boy was was not guilty of murder. This shows that pre judging should not be something which should be done at all especially on something that is as big as someone's life. 

Sometimes even experiences are inadequate in helping us generate reliable intuitions, perhaps because our minds have drawn incorrect conclusions about the experience they have taken in and processed.

This is why intuition as an area of knowledge is limited. However, incase of juror #5’s his intuition played a huge role in saving of the defendant. Due to the fact that he had Having grown up in a slum, juror #5 had seen knife fights all the time before,  thus he could intuitively tell that the boy, who also  lived in a slum all his life, would have stabbed upwards with his switchblade instead of what was earlier described in the court as downwards. Our intuitions develop due to our experiences in certain contexts, without which intuition can’t be a reliable way of knowing in these contexts.

This film demonstrated why emotions can sometimes prevent us from reaching the truth. From the discussions in the room one can know for sure that juror #3 had a really bad relationship with his own boy , which resulted in a general hatred towards children. This makes us think whether his guilty accusations were based on his experiences with his own child or whether it was actually because he thought the boy was guilty. Therefore emotions, while enabling us to see things that we would otherwise overlook using reason or perception.

Relating to the “map glued to our faces” analogy that Mr. Alchin presented in his lecture, our senses provide us with knowledge of the world, instead, it is just like a small model of the world, which we then use to understand the world. Just like we do not have any direct access to the world apart from our senses, the sensory information presented by the witnesses in their testimonies would inevitably have had inherent issues. In case of the the old man in the apartment above said that he heard someone threateningly scream “I’m going to kill ya”, and then heard a loud “thud”. Although this evidence in itself may not be false, the certainty in the conclusions.

Likewise, the testimony presented by the lady across the street who saw the act of stabbing may have been a truthful account of what happened. She lacked precision in terms of important details that were beyond the scope of the lady’s visual capacity. However she claimed she for sure could see everything. For example, she may have been uncertain of who the murderer was, but may have assumed it to be the boy because it was contextually feasible. After re creating the scene and it was that is was physically impossible for the old lady.

To conclude, the film “12 Angry Men”  brings out several interesting  points of discussion on the lines of using intuition, emotion, and perception as ways of knowing.