> "unless the contrary is shown". Shown by whom? To what standard? What must be shown?
I have no idea about British law, but... As I get it, here we see the fallback logic that defines some defaults when dealing with lack of information (an abandoned newborn). Here we don't know newborn's nationality, so we must make an assumption - the lawmakers decided they didn't want to have proverbial NULLs in here.
- "What must be shown?" - I could be misunderstanding things (especially because English is not my native language), but I believe the intent here is pretty clear. To me it reads as applicability scope, constraining when the fallback kicks in, so we don't create logical contradictions. My understanding is that it says that if there's a known fact that contradicts (a) or (b) it would make those defaults inapplicable - which is logical, because we can't proceed to assume A if we know that ¬A is true. E.g. if there's a known fact (say, a DNA test or a witness testimony or some other evidence) that confirms e.g. that the infant's parent wasn't and isn't a British citizen or permanent resident, this piece won't apply and we won't consider infant to have been born of such father. I think the program at the bottom of the page 374 (page 5 in the PDF) agrees with me on this.
- "Shown by whom?" - as this is clearly unspecified, can't we safely assume that the existence of the fact alone is what should affect the execution flow, not who brought this fact to the light? That is, I believe it reads so anyone or anything can show it, but only the fact (and its truthfulness) itself matters. Again, don't see the issue here - but I'm curious if you have alternative interpretations how it could be read?
- "To what standard?" - this is the only real ambiguity here. Probably because the lawmakers writing the act weren't exactly capable or even aiming to figure out the theory of truth for a natural language. As I get it, for the legal stuff it's pretty normal to have undefined behaviors and return to them when they are triggered and someone is unhappy about the outcome and goes to the court to follow up and clarify the details. When we're rendering laws as machine programs, we mustn't forget what they apply to - to the society governed by those laws. Unless we're running a simulation, the society is external to the program - and it's the only sane design (that doesn't violate Kant's categorical imperative, so the laws should not treat the society as means to some goal but as the goal itself - if I understand the idea correctly, please correct me if I don't) that any or almost any statement may raise an exception-like situation that would require a human to look into it and fix (thus always deferring ultimate legislating to a rational being's will). In other words, it's our usual "I don't want to think too much about this edge case, gotta ship this thing already, so we'll get to this later if we get an error report". This is the universal mechanism that applies not just to this particular question, but to the other questions above that I thought are clear, if someone disagrees.
I have no idea about British law, but... As I get it, here we see the fallback logic that defines some defaults when dealing with lack of information (an abandoned newborn). Here we don't know newborn's nationality, so we must make an assumption - the lawmakers decided they didn't want to have proverbial NULLs in here.
- "What must be shown?" - I could be misunderstanding things (especially because English is not my native language), but I believe the intent here is pretty clear. To me it reads as applicability scope, constraining when the fallback kicks in, so we don't create logical contradictions. My understanding is that it says that if there's a known fact that contradicts (a) or (b) it would make those defaults inapplicable - which is logical, because we can't proceed to assume A if we know that ¬A is true. E.g. if there's a known fact (say, a DNA test or a witness testimony or some other evidence) that confirms e.g. that the infant's parent wasn't and isn't a British citizen or permanent resident, this piece won't apply and we won't consider infant to have been born of such father. I think the program at the bottom of the page 374 (page 5 in the PDF) agrees with me on this.
- "Shown by whom?" - as this is clearly unspecified, can't we safely assume that the existence of the fact alone is what should affect the execution flow, not who brought this fact to the light? That is, I believe it reads so anyone or anything can show it, but only the fact (and its truthfulness) itself matters. Again, don't see the issue here - but I'm curious if you have alternative interpretations how it could be read?
- "To what standard?" - this is the only real ambiguity here. Probably because the lawmakers writing the act weren't exactly capable or even aiming to figure out the theory of truth for a natural language. As I get it, for the legal stuff it's pretty normal to have undefined behaviors and return to them when they are triggered and someone is unhappy about the outcome and goes to the court to follow up and clarify the details. When we're rendering laws as machine programs, we mustn't forget what they apply to - to the society governed by those laws. Unless we're running a simulation, the society is external to the program - and it's the only sane design (that doesn't violate Kant's categorical imperative, so the laws should not treat the society as means to some goal but as the goal itself - if I understand the idea correctly, please correct me if I don't) that any or almost any statement may raise an exception-like situation that would require a human to look into it and fix (thus always deferring ultimate legislating to a rational being's will). In other words, it's our usual "I don't want to think too much about this edge case, gotta ship this thing already, so we'll get to this later if we get an error report". This is the universal mechanism that applies not just to this particular question, but to the other questions above that I thought are clear, if someone disagrees.