«Godel’s Undecidable Proposition» and the Problems of Machine Readable Law

Abstract

The relevance of machine readable law, the significance of which is confirmed by both the general trend and the need to consider law in the context of the development of information technologies, and the adoption of significant legal acts, including the Concept of the Development of machine readable law technologies, implies the need to form an appropriate theoretical basis and develop methodological support for relevant processes. The general problem of the «methodological insufficiency» of ensuring the processes of digital transformation of law, as well as the relevance of the development of machine reading technologies of law, predetermine the need to address, among other things, the results and achievements of natural science knowledge.The paper analyzes the correctness of the transfer of K.Godel’s conclusions in their gnoseological (epistemological) context to the legal field. Considering law as an object of machine reading in the context of «Godel’s undecidable proposition» and based on Godel’s conclusion about the inability of the system to describe itself by its own means (to prove its consistency), the author concludes that the «supra-legal» basis is culture, and law itself is seen in the system hierarchy: culture--law--legislation.It is proposed to consider the machine reading of law in the context of a semiotic paradigm, based on the widest possible coverage of sign systems reflecting the diversity of regulatory systems, and not limited only to religion, morality, ethics, law and legislation, but referring to culture as a «mega-source of a sign set» reflecting a whole complex of regulatory systems. Based on the analysis of K. Godel’s conclusions, as well as the principles of «complementarity» by N. Bohr and «uncertainty» by V. Heisenberg in their gnoseological (epistemological) aspect, a number of conclusions are drawn. These can be significant both for the methodological basis of machine reading of law and the law and for the problems of legal understanding and legal perception in general. In particular, it is concluded that of high importance is the topic of the transformation of scientific disputes on theories of legal understanding into the process of complementarity of such theories in order to achieve a state of their constructive contradiction (contradictority).