Update 08-courts-apologia.md

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2020-10-09 11:55:41 +11:00
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@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@ Common law did well to adopt Aristotle's epistemology and acknowledge that only
Considered in this way, we can see that the common law process was *trying* to be a sound, reasoning mind that applied the Aristotelian laws of valid inference to the facts in evidence that were brought forward in order to objectively settle a dispute using the laws of logic.
The ideal for a court process is **not** that a jury of peers should be the final court of appeal. The ideal that common law was striving to arrive at was that Aristotelian reason itself, the **law of Identity**, the one true arbiter of objectivity, should be the final court of appeal. The common law tried, but failed to implement an Aristotelian reasoning process.
The ideal for a court process is **not** that a jury of peers should be the final court of appeal. The ideal that common law was striving to arrive at was that Aristotelian reason itself -- the **law of Identity**, the one true arbiter of objectivity -- should be the final court of appeal. The common law tried, but failed to implement an Aristotelian reasoning process.
Its failure however, was not due to its goal being flawed, but to our knowledge being incomplete. To wit, we know the rules of valid **deductive** inference. Deductive logic has been well understood ever since Aristotle formalized it during his floruit. But deductive reasoning is not all that comprises reasoning: there is also induction. Thus, because we have not yet found a genius philosopher who could formalize and explicate for us the rules of valid inductive generalization, we could not eliminate the bias of individual human judges and juries from the common law process. The trial by jury is the common law's stand-in for a pure, unbiased reasoning court process.