How accident claims ever get to be completed at all has always been a wonder to me.
I am aware of course that injury claims get settled every day. Some plaintiffs, unable to bear the burden of a protracted lawsuit, choose to drop their cases altogether. Or this can happen to the defendant. There are cases too when the case gets settled by the court, after many rounds of procedure by personal injury lawyers.
It is in the last of these that I am interested in. As a philosophy major, I am infatuated with the idea of how the truth ever gets to the fore when people file accident claims.
For one thing, the claimant can only imperfectly understand the facts of his case. For he participated in it. He was not a spectator who could coolly judge of what really happened. More likely, his version of the event will be one that exonerates his guilt or negates it altogether.
Next, he will then be compelled by the system to talk about his imperfect version of the truth. This would not be a problem at all except language is an imperfect instrument in itself to transmit facts. In fact, I would even go so far to say that the moment we articulate facts, we subject them to the restrictions of grammar and so lose their authenticity.
But this is not all. As if transmitting his imperfect version of the truth using an imperfect instrument of communication were not enough, it must be added that this doubly problematic event is aggravated furthermore by the fact that the agent who will receive this corrupted information can only imperfectly understand it too. For lawyers will never be able to remember everything, nor will they be interested in everything that their clients say.
Finally, the imperfect knowledge which was transmitted imperfectly and received imperfectly will have to undergo one more round of communication. The lawyer, then, will have to represent his client to the defendant or the judge.
How much changed the truth will be after all of these events is truly something interesting. But alas, it seems only for us philosophy majors. Highly ironic that those who have least to do with claiming are the same people most interested in the truth. No puzzle is more enigmatic than reality.
I am aware of course that injury claims get settled every day. Some plaintiffs, unable to bear the burden of a protracted lawsuit, choose to drop their cases altogether. Or this can happen to the defendant. There are cases too when the case gets settled by the court, after many rounds of procedure by personal injury lawyers.
It is in the last of these that I am interested in. As a philosophy major, I am infatuated with the idea of how the truth ever gets to the fore when people file accident claims.
For one thing, the claimant can only imperfectly understand the facts of his case. For he participated in it. He was not a spectator who could coolly judge of what really happened. More likely, his version of the event will be one that exonerates his guilt or negates it altogether.
Next, he will then be compelled by the system to talk about his imperfect version of the truth. This would not be a problem at all except language is an imperfect instrument in itself to transmit facts. In fact, I would even go so far to say that the moment we articulate facts, we subject them to the restrictions of grammar and so lose their authenticity.
But this is not all. As if transmitting his imperfect version of the truth using an imperfect instrument of communication were not enough, it must be added that this doubly problematic event is aggravated furthermore by the fact that the agent who will receive this corrupted information can only imperfectly understand it too. For lawyers will never be able to remember everything, nor will they be interested in everything that their clients say.
Finally, the imperfect knowledge which was transmitted imperfectly and received imperfectly will have to undergo one more round of communication. The lawyer, then, will have to represent his client to the defendant or the judge.
How much changed the truth will be after all of these events is truly something interesting. But alas, it seems only for us philosophy majors. Highly ironic that those who have least to do with claiming are the same people most interested in the truth. No puzzle is more enigmatic than reality.
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