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Counter-examples are legion, of course, but of all the vacuities a [[legal eagle]] can commit to a page, none is quite so pointless as this: | Counter-examples are legion, of course, but of all the vacuities a [[legal eagle]] can commit to a page, none is quite so pointless as this: | ||
“[[This page is intentionally left blank]]” | “[[This page is intentionally left blank]].” | ||
Beyond dispensing with the concern that there might be writing on it that you just can’t see, what could this mean? | Beyond dispensing with the concern that there might be writing on it that you just can’t see, what could this mean? | ||
Does it distinguish a ''wantonly'' blank page from one whose lack of content came about from a feebler conviction? (Recklessness<ref>in that the author apprehended the risk the page would be bare and took it anyway.</ref>, for example, or negligence<ref>In that a reasonable person in the author’s position would have realised there was a risk the page would be blank</ref> in omitting to put anything on a page? Could the redundant page have been overlooked through no cognitive operation, actual or constructive, on the author’s part at all? | |||
Agonising over the writer’s mens rea obscures the real question: WHO CARES? What difference does it make why | Agonising over the writer’s [[mens rea]] obscures the real question: WHO CARES? What difference does it make why the page is blank? It ‘’is'' blank: that is a brute existential fact<ref>Or would be, had you not written that very thing on the page to contradict yourself. See below.</ref>. | ||
A [[mediocre lawyer|diligent student]] pipes up from the back: “But, why, can’t you see? It is an omission. It is the ''failure to say something''. A fellow can infringe her neighbour’s rights by omission just as well as she can by action.” | |||
''Au contraire.'' | |||
The semantic content of an empty page is null. It is neither action not omission, but a formless void; inert; lacking the divine breath of a creator. It is neither [[alpha]] nor [[omega]], nor anything between. An unmarked sheet is not a dog that fails to bark in the night time. It conveys no premise and permits no conclusion of [[any type or kind]]. An ''omission'' to say this or that cannot be imprisoned within the margins of an empty page: it is universal: it inhabits every page, however densely entexted, on which the thing is not said; it rides upon every breath on which the utterance does not pass. | |||
To paraphrase a British Prime Minister, “[[Brexit means Brexit|a blank page means a blank page]]”.Be in no doubt, dear reader: This statement, like the page it decorates, is joyously, wilfully, defiantly —and with the publisher’s unequivocal endorsement — ''blank’'. [[For the avoidance of doubt]]. | |||
Except | Except — and it brings no pleasure to point the glaringly obvious out, but here goes — as soon as one dollops a great wodge of italicised, square-bracketed text right in the middle of a page, IT IS NOT BLANK. | ||
This puts us in a fine old pickle. If the only way we can be certain a page is blank is by writing on it, can we ever be sure of anything ever again? Have we hit a kind of Russell’s paradox<ref>Let R be the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. If R is itself not a member of itself, then it must contain itself. If it contains itself, then it cannot be a member of the set of all sets that are not members of themselves</ref> of the law? We seem to have hit a patch of legal quantum indeterminacy. What would Descartes think? Or Gödel? Can’t you just imagine Schrödinger, sitting on his chair, stroking his cat? | |||
[[Scribo “non”, ergo non scribo]]. | |||
{{plainenglish}} | {{plainenglish}} | ||
{{Ref}} | {{Ref}} |