No profession uses a language that totally belongs to it. This is why every profession needs to communicate with other professions and the general public, as each profession needs other professions and vice versa for survival and mutual understanding. Imagine visiting your doctor or your architect who use a language that is totally different from your own! How is this issue solved? Each profession borrows common language and adds to it some expressions to prove to you that you may understand the prepositions, conjunctions and other links between his words, but you cannot invade his top professional standards.
This is also done in law – and particularly in matters of great importance. For example in the notion of doubt. But, apart from professional semantic superiority, the law utilises ambiguity as this creates doubt – which is the basis of intellectual legal debate. However let’s not call doubt automatically a negative thing as even psycholinguistics – which researches the development of intelligence – claims that the child must be taught to doubt and challenge all he hears and reads, as gullibility does not lead to intellectual development.
The law kindly, tolerantly and generously contributes to intellectual development by promoting ‘reasonable doubt’ in all that is presented to it. The layman may appreciate doubt, though not necessarily ambiguity. In the notion of ‘reasonable doubt’, for example, the layman regrets that ‘reasonable’ is a confusing abstraction. This is why he expects that the same reasoning he uses in his everyday life must not be a source of ambiguity in law – which is there to give him rights. He is used to encountering the idea of reasonability or not in the price of a meal in a restaurant, in rent, the character of a person, the type of weather. Thus ’reasonable doubt’ in law means very little to him for, being sure beyond a reasonable doubt could, to him, have been better expressed as being ‘almost totally sure’.
In daily life we are confronted with situations where almost total certitude – as against reasonable doubt – is highly important. This is why we take a mechanic with us when we buy a second hand car. He has to be very sure that your purchase is excellent. If he speaks of reasonable doubt, you will probably send him to water the lettuce of Marsa. The same thing happens when you take an architect to inspect a house you are interested in buying. It is impossible for him to provide you with almost total certitude that you are not buying a humid abode with weak, shaky concrete and with the existence of roaches and rats here and there. These may or may not be there, although their disappearance may be related to their being scared of the character one of the new spouses – or both.
When visiting a doctor due to some strange physical feelings, you do not wish him to philosophically discuss with you the reasonability beyond doubt that you will continue to offer your entourage the pleasure of your company for a long time to come. It would be much pragmatically better if he were to prescribe methodologies of resistance.
If you see a scratch or dent on your car, you may start looking around suspiciously to try and discover who was the clumsy busker who did this. Your friendly neighbour may tell you that he feels convinced that it was the Neanderthal at the end of the street who did it. When you ask why he is so sure, he may explain that he has conviction to a high probability, that his capability of deep perception leads him to that conclusion. Now you may say that your neighbour has conviction and perception, but really has no proof as all these talents may be built on prejudice and perhaps the Neanderthal may actually be a nice person. However, if you are prejudiced yourself, you may say that you intend to destroy the Neanderthal as your neighbour is a good friend whom you trust and that he cannot possibly be wrong.
In relations between countries, things become much more serious. Countries are not cars, houses or daily maladies. They represent millions of people, governments elected - and hopefully administering - by democratic practices, and responsible not only for the welfare and security of masses of citizens, but also having under their thumbs the capability of sending weapons of mass destruction roaming and flying all over wide areas of the globe.
In the case of international relations, being convinced about something ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ becomes not only ridiculous, but also very dangerous. Your friendly neighbour who instigates you against the kind Neanderthal, cannot possibly play a part in your serious decisions. In this case, you cannot possibly state that, since you and your neighbour are good friends, then you must trust his judgement to a high level of certitude.
I have sometimes heard politicians in one country condemn politicians in other countries. And this they may do either with hysteria or nonchalance.
When world peace depends on high certitude of realities in our and other countries, one cannot think and act upon friendly advice given to you by friendly neighbours or good friends. Because you were elected with respect and conviction of rational analysis. Ergo, you are not expected to arrive at conclusions because your good friends feed dangerous prejudice and hysteria with nonchalance into your mind.
Your friend may be a very nice person, and may try and convince you that his conviction is beyond reasonable doubt. As soon as you start sharing his emotions, you become a dangerous person hysterically believing that another politician in another country did something wrong to you – which you believe to a degree of high probability. But a great level of probability is not a certainty – at least not enough to place you in a sabre-rattling mode. Was it not Dostoevsky who said that a hundred suspicions are not equal to one proof?
Acting on simple or strong suspicion, is not politically mature or sufficiently rational. For the sabres of nowadays are not the type that do not go beyond scratching your car. They are sufficient to wipe the world from under your feet.
Dr Anthony Licari has an academic background of Human Sciences from various French universities.