Date: Sun, 11 Jan 1998 12:34:41 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <199801111734.MAA28403@locke.ccil.org> Reply-To: Steven Belknap Sender: Lojban list From: Steven Belknap Subject: beyond a reasonable doubt X-To: LOJBAN@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan X-UIDL: 9de23931d3902c3ae7fdf1b85c27457e Status: RO X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 3376 X-From-Space-Date: Mon Jan 12 15:56:21 1998 X-From-Space-Address: - jorge: > >>But wouldn't it be better to know by {le nu racli birti} = "being >>>rationally certain", rather than by >rationally doubting? >> >>Hmm. I don't think is quite right, as I am trying to >>translate "beyond a reasonable doubt", the standard of American >>jurisprudence in a criminal trial. The question the jury must answer is, >>"Is there a reasonable doubt?" and not "Is there reasonable certainty?" > >If you don't think those two are exclusive, then how about "le nu racli >nalsenpi" = "reasonable non-doubt". This would work if there were no cultural context, but it seems to me that "beyond a reasonable doubt" is not adequately translated by , as I am trying to translate the cultural context of American criminal jurisprudence, which differs from French jurisprudence, for example. There is also a separate criteria for American civil trials: "proponderance of the evidence" >The trouble with "beyond" is that it depends on where you start from. >If you start from uncertainty, then getting past the point of reasonable >doubt means getting to the side of certainty. But if you start from >certainty, then passing the point of reasonable doubt means getting >to the side of uncertainty. So you could be beyond a reasonable >doubt if you had lots of doubts. Maybe something like: {le nu ragve >le ka racli senpi kei le ka senpi} = "being beyond reasonably doubtful >starting from being doubtful". The standard in an American criminal trial is that the defendant is "innocent until proven guilty" So I would think you would start with an assumption of innocence, you then cross over into possible guilt, probable guilt, and guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. When you reach guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, you have reached the criterion for conviction. So thats the vector. > >> Also, you are right that I need an abstractor, but doesn't >>seem right, as "beyond a reasonable doubt" is not an event. > >It can be a nu, a state in this case. But I don't know whether >it makes sense that events are epistemologies. > >>It seems to me >>that "beyond a reasonable doubt" implies that the evidence is being weighed >>on a scale (the scales of justice), and found to surpass a threshold, which >>seems rather like a numerical quantity: >> >><.i mi ja'a xipa djuno le du'u la xorxes kau porpi gasnu le rulja'o kei fo >>le za'u ni racli senpi> > >That's grammatical, but I'm not getting into the discussion of what >{ni} means again. :) Understood. It is in the grammer, however. >{le za'u ni} would seem to be "a positive number >of amounts", I think you need {le piza'u ni} for "a positive amount". >But do you really want "a positive amount of rational doubting" as the >epistemology? You're right, thats not quite what I mean. It should be something like: "Starting from a presumption of innocence we the jury were convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty." A lot of this does not need to be explicit, as it is culturally implicit; "beyond a reasonable doubt" is the short form for this in English. That's why I though might be apropos, but then must be used instead of , as it doesn't make sense to be "more than" an event. -Steven Steven Belknap, M.D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Medicine University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria