However, there are not just two levels of awareness, the conscious and the unconscious. There are degrees of awareness; awareness is a continuum.
Furthermore, the status of some awareness of something is not always fixed or static; awareness that is relatively subterranean in the human mind can become more explicit, more conscious -- and, presumably, the reverse can happen.
These facts must be taken into consideration when we contemplate the role of reason and explicit argument in inference in legal contexts such as trials. For example, some devices can perhaps help jurors or judges become more aware of some of their thoughts, to spell out more what lies darkly in half-consciousness; and, if this can be done (or already is done), it is possible -- just possible -- that better inferences will be drawn. But don't ask me to prove that this expectation or hope is a reality!
It's here: the law of evidence on Spindle Law. See also this post and this post.
1 comment:
Intuition -- tacit knowledge, subconscious knowledge, unconscious inference -- has its uses. Indeed, without it, we literally could not survive; for example, without it we could not manage to walk in a city without being hit by a car. But the fact that tacit knowledge is indispensable does not always mean we should rest content with how we know at present. If we did that, we would not have invented space ships, automobiles, the computer chip, or the abacus. It may be possible to improve the drawing of inferences. The real trick is to figure out when a suggested explicit method is actually an improvement and how to blend tacit brain operations with explicit reasoning and evidence marshaling.
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