When listening to a juror from the recent trial in Florida I was amazed at how naive she was, and frankly how simplistic. I thought that the issue is understanding the difference between deduction and induction or between the rationalism of Descartes and the empiricism of Hume. Simplistically she seemed to state that unless there was a clear deductive path from one fact or event to the other then one could never prove anything. She seemed to state that failure in any link, and to her failure required an inductive leap, would result in her view as a failure to provide evidence. Yet the law expressly states “beyond a reasonable doubt”. and that term reason was there for a reason! It admits induction, it admits a Cartesian acceptance of connecting the dots.
Juries are oftimes a highly unpredictable lot. The problem is also often that their conception of how one reaches a conclusion is not necessarily what the educated mind would use. This one juror is a case in point. She seems never to have ever heard of induction but one could wager that she uses induction daily in her life.
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