For the avoidance of doubt: Difference between revisions

{{a|g|{{image|Rene Descartes|jpg|I ''think'' this is [[René Descartes]]. But ...}}

{{subtable|The [[JC]] likes to rush in, as you know, where fools fear to tread. So let us try to achieve what Descartes could not. If you cannot ''avoid'' it, at least put a ''name'' on it. So let us  — [[for the avoidance of doubt]] — thoroughly define what we ''mean'' by “[[doubt]]”:

===The meaning of doubt===

{{rice pudding and income tax}}}}

When one whose [[Legal eagle|livelihood]] attests to unusual semantic facility — uses the ugly expression “[[for the avoidance of doubt]]”, she surrenders without a shot to the demands of the English language. Even as a piece of English the phrase is hideous: who [[Nominalisation|converts]] “avoid” into a [[noun]]? What kind of glass-half-empty misanthrope sets as a guiding objective ''not being confusing''?

“You had one job”, so the saying goes: it is to express yourself in a way that ''doesn’t contain doubt in the first place''. For what is the point of a {{tag|contract}} if not to clear up the confusion left by the primordial grunts, nods and mumblings of interacting merchants?

Our plea falls upon deaf ears. We know this. This is how it usually plays — this is, honest to God, a real-life example:

{{quote|''The [[chargor]] [[Assign|assigns]] and agrees to assign<ref>What, by the way, on earth was going though the mind of whoever confected that expression? “Assigns ''and agrees to assign'”'? Is this to distinguish from those who assign at gunpoint?</ref> absolutely, [[subject to]] the [[proviso]] for re-assignment on redemption, all of its rights in respect of the assigned receivables, together with the benefit of any security granted to the [[chargor]] thereof (and together in all cases, [[for the avoidance of doubt]], with the proceeds thereof).''}}

Do you feel reinvigorated with clarity, readers?

Speaking of God, it is a little known fact that [[Descartes]]’ metaphysical epic {{br|Discourse on the Method}} was a spirited attempt to define the expression ''[[for the avoidance of doubt]]''. He started by asking, “what ''is'' doubt? Can we ever be sure that what we ''think'' is doubt, is, actually, ''doubt''? And if there is some doubt about that, how should we feel about it? Doubtful?”  

Yet, ''what is doubt''? What is this existential flummery, that fogs our interior on even the sunniest day? Whence that numbing smoke, that more thickly fills our mortal cockpit, day by day?  

None of this will stop [[ninja]]-types on their crusade to exterminate doubt wherever they can find it. That elite force of lexical purists, {{icds}}, has in recent times begun ''nesting'' doubt-avoidance subroutines, presumably fearful that uncertainly might leech into a construction ''even during the process of driving it out''. <ref>For example, in the definition of {{euaprov|Settlement Disruption Event}} in the EU Emissions Allowance Annex.</ref>

How to ensure such second-order neurosis does not rot your verbal superstructure from the inside out, like some kind of insidious rising damp? Fear not, the JC, as ever, has your back: add this in, like a doubt-course membrane:

*[[Doubt]]