Most legal system trials are based on adversarial argumentation (two lawyers arguing against each other). Is this the best way to determine someone’s innocence?

There are numerous positives with adversarial argumentation. By each side being guaranteed legal representation, it makes sure that people have access to a better understanding of the legal system (most people aren’t lawyers). By having two sides present proof, this allows the judge and jury (if a jury is present) to evaluate both sides, ideally impartially, and make a verdict from there. This system is standard practice in countries such as the US.

            However, in practice, this can often unfairly benefit those with wealth, as they have access to better, and more dedicated legal representation (in the U.S. for example, in some states, public defenders are only given minutes per case, due to the overflow of cases). Also, with a jury and in some cases a judge, while ideally, they are supposed to be impartial, they can sometimes fall into prejudices against people, and that can influence their verdict. For example, two suspects are presented for a mugging: a married mother, and a single male. Just from that information, who do you think committed the crime? While statistically, perhaps the single male is more likely to have committed the crime, the legal system evaluates on a case by case basis, in reference to the law, making this point less relevant. If the jury and judge have these preconceptions about the case, they may fall into ‘confirmation bias’, and see evidence against the male where there isn’t any (i.e. “we found a knife in his house” but the knife is just a multi-tool one or one for hunting – the guy is a hunter). In addition, the prosecution investigating could’ve had that same bias, and searched for evidence more actively against the guy.

            Furthermore, a lot of the system depends on the qualifications of the people involved. An incompetent prosecution or police force can miss evidence that would’ve been found by better qualified personnel, which would influence the verdict. Also, if a person has the unfortunate luck to receive a bad lawyer, that can also influence the verdict, if the lawyer doesn’t argue their position well. In addition, if the judge is up for re-election (in places that have elected judges), they might want to appear ‘tough on crime’ and decide to punish criminals more harshly than they normally would, or be nicer to donors (to their re-election campaign).

            Overall, while adversarial argumentation works best in ideal conditions (both sides have similarly qualified personnel, judge and jury are impartial, with no prejudices), it seems to work fine in real life conditions, in regards to determining a person’s innocence. Because the burden of proof lies on the accuser, it is harder for innocent people to be convicted (however, this still happens on occasion). Also, due to the accessibility of the legal system for the average person, i.e. jury, and right to legal representation, it is a bit more equalised. Like all legal systems, it has its difficulties, but what system is better than this? This system is more inclusive of the average person, due to the aid they receive from legal representation, and the burden of proof lying on the accuser, making it less easy for the government or other groups with massive resources to convict someone who has done something they didn’t like. In a way, it is the most ‘democratic’/equal system, due to the two lawyers from two differing sides format.

Emotions and Feelings Questions

Can feelings have a rational basis? Would it be better or worse could be justified? Are emotions and feelings essential? Is 'emotional intelligence' an oxymoron?

Although there is officially no right or wrong answer to this question, I personally believe that feelings do have a rational basis. I believe that emotions and feelings are essential to society and humanity as a whole. Without feelings such as love, families would be much more separate (that is if their were even able to form), and therefore more vulnerable. Feelings of guilt prevent us from doing damaging things to society, such as murder. As we humans are a social species, having mechanisms that bring us together and create at least some form of trust between us is very important for our survival. Emotions such as fear serve an evolutionary basis as well, fear keeps us from getting into unnecessary danger and getting ourselves injured or killed, for example. I believe that emotions and feelings have a rational basis, simply because we need them to survive as a species. As for emotional intelligence, I think that it is not an oxymoron, and is actually quite an important skill to have, as we are a social species, so it is a good thing to be able to identify emotions and feelings in others and to be able to better understand and communicate with them.

Can there be 'correct' or 'appropriate' emotional responses? Is it 'correct to be horrified by accounts of torture?

In my opinion it depends on the situation. To me, if I had to make a criteria for a 'correct' or 'appropriate' emotional response, I would start looking at the logical evolutionary basis of it. To me, a fear of the dark, is a perfectly rational and correct thing, even when most of the time the fears come to naught, because a fear of the dark has a basis in evolution (to protect from predators at night). For example, to have feelings of grief at the death of a loved one, is a 'correct' and 'appropriate' response due to humans being a social species and bonding to one another. If people felt nothing about their close friends and family dying, it would result in a more 'psychopathic' species, where people regularly betray one another and have conflict, as they wouldn't have attachment or the grief that comes with it, and therefore they couldn't care less about others. Now you may be asking, what if you could have the bond between individuals without the grief at loss of it. My argument is, is that with a genuine bond, it hurts to lose that bond, because you value that person. Moving on to the the 'torture question', I think it is a bit of a gray area. I personally abhor it, and see it as an awful practice, directly conflicting with my perhaps more liberal point of view. My view on torture is not a universal view, as many people are fine with torture. Even though torture isn't considered a necessary interrogation method by most people, there is a sort of appeal to the anger emotion in us, that wants us to make our enemies suffer for whatever crime they have committed. The death penalty also shares this factor. In my values, torture is a great evil, no matter what your end goal is, but I recognize that there is no sort of universal value on torture. However, I think that most people in the world would dislike it, and almost no one, if given the opportunity, would carry out this act, unless in extreme distress such as grief combined with anger.

Is emotion an essential ingredient of scientific or artistic knowledge? Can there be creativity without emotion?

I believe that emotion is a major driver in the motivation to explore scientific and artistic knowledge, and is a catalyst for creativity. In science, we want to find out more about our world. Questions such as, 'how did the universe get from the beginning to now?' originate from our curiosity to learn, our wish to understand and perhaps better control the world around us. In art, artists express the world through their eyes and mind, providing their own unique perspective. Without emotion, art would be missing a piece of itself, part of what makes individual artists so different and unique from another. As for creativity, I think emotion, while not necessarily being part of it itself, is at least a driver in it. When Apple uses its creativity to make a new iPhone, the emotions/feelings that drive the people behind it could be fear (of losing revenue and/or their jobs), the desire to create something new that people want (if the new iPhone is successful, this can turn into joy), and want (they desire money, so they can get things that their family needs or wants, or get things that they themselves want, or they desire recognition/fame of their technical skill that took part in making the product). In short, yes, I do think that emotion is an essential part of all of these ideas. 

Does Absolute Certainty Exist?

In my opinion, it really depends on what you regard as 'absolute certainty'. For example, someone could tell you that they are absolutely certain that their religion and their god or gods are absolutely real. However, such a statement is near impossible to prove, as often, the only evidence we have the writings and accounts of people who claim a certain event to happen. This is why all religions have a faith aspect to them; a worshiper of a particular religion chooses to have faith that their god/s and their religion is real. Their faith gives them absolute certainty that their beliefs are right. Now, I'm not saying that all religious people are absolutely certain that their religion is right, but that there are at least some people with absolute faith and certainty in their religion. I guess at the core of it is this question: Does absolute faith mean absolute certainty? I think an answer to this question could be, in my opinion, that absolute certainty can give way to absolute faith and vice-versa. Lets look at maths for instance. Now, all of us can and will say that 1+1 is 2. We can visualize it, we can prove it practically ourselves, you name it. However, once you get to very advanced maths, it can be hard to visualize and understand. You might not have a clue on how this formula and so on even works. But we place faith in those who know the formulas, know how to solve them, and trust them to be right. We hear that proof has been found, but most people would not bother to actually check the proof themselves, because they're either uninterested or don't have the necessary skills to check it themselves. So the faith is put on mathematicians as we trust their expertise and have near absolute faith in their ability to be right. If you regard absolute certainty as a fact backed up by evidence proving it to be real without a shadow of a doubt, than I think that sciences (the non-social sciences, Physics, Biology, and Chemistry) and Maths can fit that category. Unlike faith and philosophy, science is mostly a subject of absolutes. An apple falls to the ground because of gravity. That is something of absolute certainty. There is an immeasurable amount of proof that gravity is in fact real. Science and maths are like the blueprints of the universe: it tells us how it all works and provides the evidence for us to prove it ourselves. Technically science and maths don't really rely on faith at all. As said before, it requires evidence, and the ability to be corroborated by others. However, us, non-scientists and non-mathematicians have placed a certain degree of faith that the evidence is there despite not having the knowledge or ability to prove it themselves (they put their faith/trust in actual mathematicians and scientists and mostly believe what they have to say). I believe that what cannot be proven by science or math, we cannot have absolute certainty of. But a monk or an other type of person that is very religious may believe their religion to be absolutely certain due to their absolute faith. Going back to my original point, it really depends on your definition.
Even if there was no absolute certainty, there's no need to stress your mind doubting everything. Even if your brain is in some Matrix-style vat and this entire world is lie, is there really a point in doubting everything? If you have spent your whole life in a simulation and not even a second outside of it, than who's to say that you're living in a false world? It may be a computer simulation, but its the world you've always known, and its the world that is real to you. If you think too much about the nature of the world, it is my opinion that you may take yourself into a dark abyss that can be very hard to crawl out of. And what would the benefit be to you? You probably would not make any sort of material gains unless you wrote a book or something that millions of people bought, on your thoughts. It is often easier and sometimes happier for us to see things with a simpler perspective. However, since I believe that we can be absolutely certain about things that can be proven and observed, this is not really an issue with me, to be honest.
I believe that either something is an absolute certainty or it is not. There isn't really a middle ground to me, just two separate categories. Absolute certainties are things that can be proven with facts and evidence, and can be observed by others. There can things that are in debate on whether or not the evidence and/or theory is correct, which calls the absolute certainty of the theory into question, which I guess puts it into a bit of a middle ground, but I like to think of it as more limbo than middle ground as the answer is there somewhere, that tells us if its absolutely certain or not,we just don't know it yet.
Those are my thoughts on absolute certainty. 

First TOK Post

How do we know what is real and certain? Do we know what is real just because it has been told to us numerous times with little to know alternative opinion? These are questions that I believe TOK asks quite a lot (don't take my word for it, I've only had two TOK lessons so far). Maps, explore a part of our world that we essentially view as real. We look at maps as if they are an absolute truth even though, deep down, we may know that with maps there is no real 'correct' perspective. But to most people, Europe is north of Africa, and Australia is almost as south as you can get. But what justification is there for the mp being this way? The answer is pretty much none. The main reason we use the standard world map is mainly because people are used to the world map in its current form, the Mercator Projection. Think about it, doesn't a map that looks like this look wrong?:

If you can get so many different perspectives from an object most consider to be unimportant in their lives, imagine the different perspectives you can get from something that affects people even more. Actually, you don't even have to use your imagination, just look at politics and/or religion. Even looking at just one religion or ideology, one can see there are many differing and even contradicting sects within it. Perspectives also change with time. For example, what exactly is a necessity? If you asked a person two hundred years ago that question, their definition would almost certainly be different to yours. Things like the Internet, cars, or even democracy would almost certainly not be considered as such by that person. But today, since we (at least in countries like the U.S.), have gotten use to a society with all these aspects included, we couldn't survive without them! For most people in countries like the U.S. (low pop. density and less developed public transport system) cars are a necessity to be able to even work. The same goes for the internet (how would you apply for a job, communicate with overseas workers quickly and efficiently, etc.) This shows that perspective means a lot. 

This is also very relevant in IB subjects and subjects in general, as even with science, when one is formulating a hypothesis, for example, one usually has a certain perspective. When a scientist writes a hypothesis, the scientist suspects that this will be backed up by the evidence they find. Now, the scientist doesn't know for sure, that this is the result that they would get, but they use their reasoning, which is based on their past leanings and whatever evidence pertaining to that subject they may have found. It is a perspective/assumption until proven fact. 

However, as humans, we must make our own maps, so that we may navigate the world with greater ease. We make the north up and the south down, because it doesn't make sense to change our perspective/our way of viewing things just because we can. We strive to make our lives better, and these assumptions/perspectives, and these maps, help us make life easier and more efficient for us.