Template:Notification of default paradox

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

—Bishop Berkeley

Perhaps unwittingly, George Berkeley addresses the language-dependence of reality. For what no human ear registers cannot be articulated, and what cannot be articulated carries no weight in our ontology. One only articulates things one cares about — the world wide web seems to gives the lie to this, come to think of it — so, for something to matter, someone who cares about it must see or hear it.

So it is with contracts. There are two kinds of obligations: overt ones, that cannot help but announce themselves to someone who is on record as caring about them — payments, deliveries, the rendering of agreed-upon services — and implicit ones, private matters that can only be determined by enquiry — one’s good standing, license to do what one has undertaken, one’s solvency".

These latter obligations are generally oblique to the purpose of the contract: I don’t care exactly that you hold a licence to drive a taxi, I care that you are a competent driver and my journey will be safe. A licence is a basic proxy to save me making that enquiry. It obviates due dilly. Likewise, I may seek a certificate of good standing from the companies register.

What has this to do with trees in uninhabited forests? Well, you cannot hide your loss of licence. A third-party agency exists exactly to confirm, for people like me, whether you have one or not. But we can imagine other such “oblique obligations” for which there is no third-party verifying agent, at least not one prepared to tell you what you want to know.