Why do some journalists use 'lede' instead of 'lead'? I don't know. A lede is "the introductory section of a news story that is intended to entice the reader to read the full story." (Merriam-Webster) The same source claims that the first known use was in 1976. Why the innovation? Just to be cute or 'different'?
Here we read that 'lede' is an invention of linotype romanticists and does not come from the linotype era.
Why do I blog about such a bagatelle? To fix in my memory this word I learned just this morning.
Dennis Prager was complaining one day about how the Left ridicules the Right. He sounded a bit indignant. He went on to say that he does not employ ridicule. But why doesn't he? He didn't say why, but I will for him: Because he is a gentleman who exemplifies the good old conservative virtue of civility. And because he is a bit naive.
Prager's behavior, in one way laudable, in another way is not, resting as it does on an assumption that I doubt is true at the present time. Prager assumes that political differences are more like intellectual differences among gentlemanly interlocutors than they are like the differences among warring parties. He assumes that there is a large measure of common ground and the real possibility of mutually beneficial compromise, the sort of compromise that serves the common good by mitigating the extremism of the differing factions, as opposed to that form of compromise, entered into merely to survive, whereby one side knuckles under to the extremism of the other.
But if we are now in the age of post-consensus politics, if politics is war by another name, then it is just foolish not to use the Left's tactics against them.
It is not enough to be right, or have the facts on your side, or to have the better arguments. That won't cut it in a war. Did the Allies prevail over the Axis Powers in virtue of having truth and right on their side? It was might that won the day, and, to be honest, the employing of morally dubious means (e.g., the firebombing of Dresden, the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), the same sort of means that the Axis would have employed had they been able to. One hopes that the current civil war doesn't turn bloody. But no good purpose is served by failing to understand that what we have here is a war and not minor disagreements about means within the common horizon of agreed-upon assumptions, values, and goals.
Have we entered the age of post-consensus politics? I think so. I should write a post about our irreconcilable differences. For now a quick incomplete list. We disagree radically about: the purpose of government; crime and punishment; race; marriage; abortion; drugs; pornography; the interpretation of the Consitution; religion; economics.
Take religion. I have no common ground with you if you think every vestige of the Judeo-Christian heritage should be removed from the public square, or take the sort of extremist line represented by people like Dawkins and A. C. Grayling. If, however, you are an atheist who gives the Establishment Clause a reasonable interpretation, then we have some common ground.
Here is part of a sentence I encountered in an article on mid-life suicide: "When Liz Strand’s 53-year-old friend killed herself two years ago in California, her house was underwater and needed repairs, she had a painful ankle that was exacerbated by being overweight . . ."
But if one's house were underwater, one could just swim from room to room. How then could being overweight exacerbate ankle pain?
A house fit for normal human habitation cannot be literally underwater. But it can be 'underwater,' i.e., such that the mortgagee owes more to the mortgager than the house is worth.
The omission of necessary 'quotation' marks is the opposite of that sure-fire indicator of low social class, namely, the addition of unnecessary 'quotation' marks. See The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.
Some of my conventions:
1. When I am quoting someone I employ double quotation marks.
2. When I am mentioning an expression, I never use double quotation marks, I use single 'quotation' marks, e.g., I write:
The marks signify a semantic stretch unto a sneer. This is not a case of mentioning the word 'city,' but of using it, but in a extended sense. Had old Koch said that, he would have been suggesting that Boston is a city in a merely analogical or even equivocal sense of the term as compared to the city, New York City.
3. So the third use of single 'quotation' marks is the semantically stretching use. The sentence I just wrote illustrates it inasmuch as this use of 'quotation' marks does not involve quotation, nor does it involve mentioning a word as opposed to using it.
This is a much trickier topic than you might think, and I can go on. You hope I won't, and in any case I don't feel like it. But I can't resist a bit of commentary on this example from the blog cited above:
This might just be an example of a misuse of 'quotation' marks. But it could be a legitimate use, an example of #3 above. They want your excrement.
If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, italicize, or bold, or underline it. Don't surround it with 'quotation' marks. Or, like Achmed the Dead Terrorist, I kill you!
My rule on contractions: though permissible in informal writing such as blogging, they ought to be avoided or used sparingly in formal writing. I came across the following sentence in a well-written piece in a serious publication.
"Heroic" would have pleased Ranke, who'd died nine years earlier.
The contraction distracted me, so much so that I am now writing about it. And note that in the very same sentence we find the uncontracted "would have." This is better:
"Heroic" would have pleased Ranke, who had died nine years earlier.
I am reading Ted Honderich, On Consciousness (Edinburgh UP, 2004) and trying to get a handle on just what his theory of consciousness as existence amounts to. An awkward and quirky writer, he doesn't make things easy on the reader, and doesn't seem to realize that in this very fast brave new world of ours the writer must get to the point without unnecessary circumlocution if he wants to keep his reader glued to the page. Here is an example of Honderich's style, from p. 206:
The other option from spiritualism now deserves the name of being devout physicalism. You can say and write, in a career that keeps an eye on some of science, maybe two, and is forgetful of reflective experience, that being conscious or aware of something is only having certain physical properties in the head. Usually this cranialism is a matter of only neural properties as we know them — thought of computationally or with microtubules to the fore or in any other way you like.
[Note the awkward placement of "Maybe two." It belongs right after "eye."]
Nobody not on the philosophical job of trying to approximate more to some of science or horse sense believes this either. We all know, to make use of a pefectly proper and enlightening parody, that consciousness, isn't just cells, however fancily or fancifully conceived. Everybody on the job tries to give a place to or register what they know when they're not on the job. But they can't do it if they have it that consciousness has only neural properties or conceivably silicon or otherwise physical properties, no matter how they are conceived additionally.
Honderich's thought is not so much expressed as buried in the above mess of verbiage. Here is the thought which is correct as far as it goes expressed in three sentences.
Devout physicalism is the main alternative to spiritualism, or substance dualism. But only someone who fails to reflect on his actual experience could suppose that being conscious of something is a matter of the instantiation of neural properties in the brain. Both philosopher and layman know that consciousness is not brain cells, but the philosopher trying to be scientific is apt to forget it.
Here is Colin McGinn's savage review of Honderich's book. Be aware that there is personal animus between the two men.
One morning recently I was talking with a thirtysomething woman about Obamacare. "If you like your period, you can keep your period" came out of my mouth. I was intending, "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan, period."
Thanks to Obama, the period is one punctuation mark that will never be the same. From now on, no one will be able to say 'period' without conjuring up the great man, just as words like 'inhale' and 'is' conjure up the first black president, Bill Clinton, along with images of chubby star-struck interns. "But I didn't inhale." I suppose it all depends on the meaning of 'inhale.'
Presidents need to realize that there is such a thing as videotape and that lies are easily exposed. In this clip, Bubba say that he tried marijuana a time or two, didn't like it, didn't inhale, and never tried it again. But obviously, there is no way to tell if you like it without inhaling it, and quite a bit of it, over several sessions. The man was obviously lying, and he must have known that we knew he was lying.
I tried it, and from '68-'72 smoked my fair share of it, inhaling deeply as one must to get any effect, but I did not like it. I'm an intense guy whose life is already plenty intense. My reaction was similar to Lenny Bruce's: "I've got enough shit flying through my head without smoking weed." (Quoted from memory from How to Talk Dirty and Influence People which I read around '66. My copy is long gone, my mother having confiscated it and thrown it away.)
Having just checked the quotation, I was pretty close. What Bruce actually said was this:
"I don't smoke pot, and I'm glad because then I can champion it without any special pleading. The reason I don't smoke pot is because it facilitates ideas and heightens sensations. And I got enough shit flying through my head without smoking pot."
Here is an old Powerblogs post. It is reposted in my conviction that we must catalog and never forget the absurdities of the race-baiting Left.
………..
A while back, some fool from the Left coast — a Democrat party hack if memory serves — suggested that the name ‘Schwarzenegger’ was racist because of the ‘negger’ part. There was also the sly implication that the ‘racism of the name’ transferred onto its bearer. This slovenly pseudo-thinking is aided and abetted by the fact that schwarz is German for black. Hence, ‘black-nigger.’ Arnold Black-nigger.
To dispel this nonsense, note first that the German for ‘negro’ is not Negger, but Neger. Second, when ‘Schwarzenegger’ is compared with such similar names as ‘Heidegger,’ it becomes clear that ‘Schwarzenegger’ is to be parsed as Schwarzen-egger and not as Schwarze-negger.’ When I pointed this out to Horace Jeffery Hodges, he remarked that Egger is an early form of Acker, field. I suggested in turn that this is probably the origin of the English ‘acre.’ So if we must assign a meaning to Arnold’s name, it would be that of ‘black acre,’ or perhaps, ‘swarthy field.’
Now what about Heidegger? If we must assign a meaning to his name, I suggest that it is that of ‘heather field,’ or ‘heath acre,’ or perhaps, ‘pagan soil.’ Die Heide (feminine) means heather, heath, moor. . . while der Heide (masculine) means pagan. Given Heidegger’s association with the Blut und Boden ideology of the National Socialists — an association he never properly renounced — and the dark trends of his later thinking, ‘pagan soil’ may well be fitting.
Some object to the popular 'Obamacare' label given that the official title of the law is 'Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act' or, as commonly truncated, 'Affordable Care Act.' But there is a good reason to favor the popular moniker: it is descriptive where the other two labels are evaluative, expressing as they do a pro attitude toward the bill.
Will the law really protect patients? That is an evaluative judgment based on projections many regard as flimsy. Will the law really make health care affordable? And for whom? Will care mandated for all be readily available and of high quality?
Everybody wants affordable and readily available health care of high quality for the greatest number possible. Note the three qualifiers: affordable, readily available, high quality. The question is how best to attain this end. The 'Affordable Care Act' label begs the question as to whether or not Obama's bill will achieve the desired end. 'Obamacare' does not. It is, if not all that descriptive, at least evaluatively neutral.
If Obama's proposal were referred to as "Socialized Medicine Health Care Act' or 'Another Step Toward the Nanny State Act,' people would protest the negative evaluations embedded in the titles. Titles of bills ought to be neutral.
So, if you are rational, you will not find anything derogatory about 'Obamacare.' But liberals are not known for being particularly rational. But they are known for playing the the race card in spades. (See my Race category for plenty of examples.) And if the liberal in questions hosts for that toxic leftist outlet, MSNBC, then 'morally obnoxious' can be added to the description. So the following comes as no particular surprise:
MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry went off on a tangent in a recent broadcast, ranting about the racist overtones of a word that’s been used for years by both sides of the political aisle — Obamacare.
“I want to talk today about a controversial word,” she said, as FrontPageMag.com reported. “It’s a word that’s been with us for years. And like it or not, it’s indelibly printed in the pages of America history. A word that was originally intended as a derogatory term, meant to shame and divide and demean. The word was conceived by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man — to render him inferior and unequal and diminish his accomplishments.”
Slanderous and delusional.
So the question arises once again: Can one be both a liberal and a decent and sane human being? Or is scumbaggery as it were inscribed into the very marrow of the contemporary liberal? Or perhaps it is more like this: once liberalism infects a person's mind, the decency that was there is flushed out. Need an example? Try Martin Bashir on for size. Or Keith Olbermann. (At the end of the hyperlink I defend Dennis Prager against Olbermann's vicious and stupid attack.)
I suppose I should say at least one good thing about MSNBC: both of the these leftist scumbags got the axe.
By the way, 'scumbag' is a derogatory word and is intended as such. But you knew that already. It is important to give leftists a taste of their own medicine in the perhaps forlorn hope that someday, just maybe, they will see the error of their ways and learn how to be civil. Civility is for the civil, not for assholes. 'Assholicity' for assholes.
John Hawkins argues that it is in a recent Townhall piece. I agree with everything he says, except the title. It suffices to argue that liberalism is wrong. It is irrelevant whether it is on the right or wrong side of history. Allow me to explain.
The phrase "on the wrong side of history" is one that no self-aware and self-consistent conservative should use. The phrase suggests that history is moving in a certain direction, toward various outcomes, and that this direction and these outcomes are somehow justified by the actual tendency of events. But how can the mere fact of a certain drift justify that drift? For example, we are moving in the United States, and not just here, towards more and more intrusive government, more and more socialism, less and less individual liberty and personal choice, Obamacare being the latest and worst example. This has certainly been the trend from FDR on regardless of which party has been in power. Would a self-aware conservative want to say that the fact of this drift justifies it? I think not.
But if not, then one cannot argue against liberalism by trying to show that it is on the wrong side of history. For which way history goes is irrelevant to which way it ought to go.
'Everyone today believes that such-and-such.' It doesn't follow that such-and-such is true. 'Everyone now does such-and-such.' It doesn't follow that such-and-such ought to be done. 'The direction of events is towards such-and-such.' It doesn't follow that such-and-such is a good or valuable outcome. In each of these cases there is a logical mistake. One cannot validly infer truth from belief, ought from is, or values from facts.
One who opposes the drift toward socialism, a drift that is accelerating under President Obama, is arguably, pace Hawkins, on the wrong side of history. But that is no objection unless one assumes that history's direction is the right direction. Now an Hegelian might believe that, one for whom all the real is rational and all the rational real. Marxists and 'progressives' might believe it. But no conservative who understands conservatism can believe it.
One night a conservative talk show host told a guest that she was on the wrong side of history in her support for same-sex marriage. My guess is that in a generation the same-sex marriage issue will be moot, the liberals having won. The liberals will have been on the right side of history. The right side of history, but wrong nonetheless.
It's why Congress has an approval rating of 6%. It's why Obamacare is wildly unpopular. It's why D.C. and our court system have devolved into partisan warfare. It's because liberalism is a non-functional, imperious philosophy that is out of step with the modern world and on the wrong side of history.
Hawkins thinks it is a point against liberalism that it is on the wrong side of history. But whether it is or not is irrelevant — unless one assumes what no conservative ought to assume, namely, that success justifies, or that might makes right, or that consensus proves truth, or that the way things are going is the way things ought to be going.
As I have said more than once, if you are a conservative don't talk like a [insert favorite expletive] liberal. Don't validate, by adopting, their question-begging epithets and phrases.
For example, if you are a conservative and speak of 'homophobia' or 'Islamophobia' or 'social justice,' then you are an idiot who doesn't realize that the whole purpose of those polemical leftist neologisms is to beg questions, shut down rational discussion, and obfuscate.
Language matters in general, but especially in the culture wars.
I stumbled across this word on p. 539 of the heaviest, fattest, stompingest tome in my library, Richard Routley's Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond (Ridgeview, 1980). The thing is 1,035 pages long. I could kill a cat with it, and you hope I won't. A mere $500 for an Amazon used copy. One copy available at the moment. No, I won't sell my copy unless you give me $500,000.00 for it. Cash on the barrel head.
In this way depauperate objects such as the present king of France can be seen as limiting cases of fictional items . . .
2. Severely diminished; impoverished: "But there were no pleasures in Australia. How could my friend admire so paleontologically depauperate a place?"(Jake Page).
Why did the Aussie Routley change his name to 'Sylvan'? Because of a love of forests? (L. silva, silvae) Because of a preference for Meinongian jungles over Quinean desert landscapes?
I don't know and it doesn't matter, but this tome does. I've slogged through most of it over the years. Very rich, very technical, very good.
As you use them, the terms 'fictional', 'intentional', 'possible', 'incomplete', and others like 'past' have a distinctive effect on the concept terms they qualify. Ordinary adjectives have the effect of narrowing the extension of the concept term they qualify: the red balls are a subset of the balls, the female prime ministers are a subset of the prime ministers, and so on. The terms in question have the opposite effect. They appear to widen, or indeed offset altogether, the extension of the qualified concept. They are thus potent alienating terms. So the question arises, What is the relation (if any) between the concepts 'fictional person' and 'person', between 'intentional object' and 'object', and 'possible X' and 'X'? Ordinary qualification can be uniformly understood in terms of set intersection. Is there a uniform explanation underlying these alienating qualifications?
1. First of all, contrary to what David says, there are plenty of ordinary adjectives that do not narrow the extension of the terms they qualify. There are redundant adjectives, alienans adjectives, and there is the construction known as the contradictio in adiecto. For example, 'decoy' in 'decoy duck' is an ordinary adjective despite its being an alienans adjective; it is just as ordinary as 'female' in 'female duck,' which I call a specifying adjective and which does narrow the extension of the noun 'duck.' I see no reason to say that specifying adjectives are the only ordinary ones.
2. We can agree on this: red balls are a proper subset of balls, and female prime ministers are a proper subset of prime ministers. We will also agree that round balls are a subset of balls, though not a proper subset, and that female girls are an improper subset of girls. We could say that the last two examples illustrate the null case of specification. We could make a distinction between properly specifying and improperly specifying adjectives corresponding to the distinction between proper and improper subsets.
3. We can also agree that specificatory qualification (but not all qualification) can be uniformly understood in terms of set intersection if the intersection is non-null. The set of cats and the set of dogs has an intersection, but it is the null set. Intersection is defined over all sets, disjoint or not, hence one cannot say that the set of dogs and the set of cats do not intersect. They intersect all right; it is just that their intersection is empty. 'Canine cat' is an example of a contradictio in adiecto which reflects the fact that the corresponding sets are disjoint. 'Canine' does not specify 'cat.' It does not divide the genus into two species, the canine cats and the non-canine cats.
4. I can't, pace David, think of an example in which an adjective widens the extension of the term it qualifies. Can you? For example, 'former' in 'former wife' does not widen the extension of 'wife.' It is not as if there are two kinds or species of wives, former and present. Tom's former wife is not his wife. 'Former' does not narrow the extension either. It is an alienans adjective. It is the same with 'artificial leather.' Alligator leather and cowshide are two kinds of leather, but artificial and real are not two kinds of leather.
5. We will agree that all or most the following constructions from ordinary, i.e., non-philosophical English feature alienans adjectives, adjectives that shift or 'alienate' or 'other' the sense of the term they qualify:
former wife
decoy duck
negative growth
faux marble
ex-priest
putative father
artificial leather
legally dead
male chauvinist (on one disambiguation of its syntactic ambiguity; see article below)
generational chauvinist (I am a generational chauvinist when it comes to popular music: that of my generation is superior to that of the immediately preceding and succeding American generations.)
6. Note that the adjective in 'alienans adjective' is not alienans! Note also that 'putative' and 'artificial' function a little differently. Exercise for the reader: explain the difference and formulate a general test for alienans adjectives.
7. Observe that 'artificial' in 'artificial insemination' is not an alienans adjective in that artificial insemination is indeed insemination, albeit by artificial means. Whatever the means, you are just as pregnant. So whether an adjective is alienans or not depends on the context. A false friend is not a friend, but false teeth are teeth.
8. We now come to more or less controversial examples:
same-sex marriage (Conservative position: same-sex marriage is not marriage)
merely possible animal ('The chimera is a merely possible animal.')
future individual
incomplete individual
Is a (purely) fictional man a man? You might be tempted to say yes: Hamlet is fictional and Hamlet is a man, so Hamlet is a fictional man. But the drift of what I have been arguing over the last few days is that a fictional man is not a man, and that therefore 'fictional' functions as an alienans adjective. But I am comfortable with the idea that a merely possible man is a man. What is the difference?
There might have been a man distinct from every man that exists. (Think of the actual world with all the human beings in it, n human beings. There could have been n + 1.) God is contemplating this extra man, and indeed the possible world or maximal consistent state of affairs in which he figures, but hasn't and will not ever actualize him or it. What God has before his mind is a completely determinate merely possible individual man. There is only one 'thing' this man lacks: actual existence. Property-wise, he is fully determinate in respect of essential properties, accidental properties, and relational properties. Property-wise the merely possible extra man and the actual extra man are exactly the same. Their quidditative content is identical. There is no difference in Sosein; the only difference is Sein, and Sosein is indifferent to Sein as Aquinas, Kant, and Meinong would all agree despite their differences. As Kant famously maintained, Sein is not a quidditative determination, or in his jargon 'reales Praedikat.'
For this reason a merely possible (complete) man is a man. They are identical in terms of essence or nature or quiddity or Sosein, these terms taken broadly. If God actualizes the extra man, his so doing does not alter the extra man in any quidditative respect. Otherwise, he ould not be the same man God had been contemplating.
9. Brightly hits upon a happy phrase, "alienating qualifications." In my first bullet list we have examples of alienating qualifications from ordinary English. I expect Brightly will agree with all or most of these examples. His questioin to me is:
Ordinary qualification can be uniformly understood in terms of set intersection. Is there a uniform explanation underlying these alienating qualifications?
If Brightly is looking for a test or criterion I suggest the following:
Let 'FG' be a phrase in which 'F' is an adjective and 'G' a noun. 'F' is alienans if and only if either an FG is not a G, or it does not follow from x's being an FG that x is a G. For example, your former wife is not your wife, a decoy duck is not a duck, artificial leather is not leather, and a relative truth is not a truth. Is an apparent heart attack a heart attack? It may or may not be. One cannot validly move from 'Jones had an apparent heart attack' to 'Jones had a heart attack.' So 'apparent' in 'apparent heart attack' is alienans.
Now it is obvious that a decoy duck is not a duck, and that a roasted turkey is not a turkey, but the cooked carcass of a turkey; but it is not so obvious that a fictional man is not a man, while a merely possible man is a man. To establish these controversial theses — if 'establish' is not too strong a word — requires philosophical inquiry which is of course very difficult and typically inconclusive. But once we have decided that a certain philosophical phrase is an alienating qualification, then my test above can be applied.
This from Nancy Pelosi's website (emphasis added):
The Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2010, ensures that all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care and significantly reduces long-term health care costs. This historic legislation, in the league of Social Security and Medicare, will lead to healthier lives, while providing the American people with more liberty to pursue their hopes and dreams.
This is another good example of an Orwellian use of language. Americans love liberty and so Pelosi, in an attempt to deceive, works 'liberty' into her statement, advancing a claim of Orwellian absurdity, namely, that limitations on the liberty of individuals and private entities are in reality enhancements of liberty.
War is peace. Slavery is freedom. Less liberty is more liberty. The Orwellian template: X, which is not Y, is Y.
Obviously, Obamacare entails a reduction in liberty via its various mandates and penalties for not obeying the mandates. There is first of all the individual mandate that requires that citizens buy health insurance or else pay a fine or tax or fee. Obviously, if the government forces you to buy something when you were not forced to buy that thing before, that is a lessening of one's liberty, not an increase of it. There are also employer mandates and HHS mandates. Overview here. I should think that if a man is forced to buy a policy that necessarily includes maternity care, then that is a reduction in cjoice not an enhancement thereof. But maybe I'm wrong and Big Bro is right. Maybe less choice = more choice.
What would Pelosi have to say to be intellectually honest? She would have to admit that on a progressive scheme such as the one she favors, while liberty is a value, liberty is trumped by the value of (material) equality or 'fairness.' Conservatives see it the other way around. This is part of the "conflict of visions," to borrow a very useful phrase from Thomas Sowell.
But instead of being honest, Pelosi and many of the rest of her ilk try to have it both ways at once: more government control of one's life and more liberty.
This is what could be called a STFU moment, Nancy, you either speak the truth, or STFU. Nancy has a right to her vision of an ideal society. But she has no right to her stealth tactics and her Orwellianisms.
I would say the same to Obama. Come clean, my man! Man up! Make the case for your progressive vision and all that it entails: robust, 'energetic' government; increased wealth redistribution via government-controlled health care; a retreat from American exceptionalism; a "fundamental transformation of America." Make the case as best you can and try to respond to the libertarian/conservative objections as best you can. Let's have a 'conversation.' Aren't you guys big on 'conversations'?
But if you try t0 win by cheating and lying and prevaricating and bullshitting, then: STFU. Man up or STFU.
Obama and Pelosi and the Dems want us to trust them. "Just trust us; when the ACA is implemented you will then know what is it and and you will experience its manifold benefits." If Obama would be our collective mama, then we have to be able to trust him or her.
Unfortunately, Obama has lied brazenly about the content of the ACA some 30 times, and then lied about his lying. His supporters have lied and prevaricated and obfuscated as well.
So why should we trust anything Obama or any Dem says from this moment on?
. . . the terms "calculated lie," "purposeful lie," "intentional lie," and "knowing
lie" (while referring to Barack Obama's claim that Americans could, if they so
chose, keep their insurance policy and their doctor). Calculation, purpose,
intention, and knowledge are built into the concept of a lie, so qualifying the
term "lie" in these ways is redundant and has the unfortunate effect of draining
the word "lie" of its meaning. Limbaugh uses "lie" as though it meant
"falsehood." It means far more than "falsehood." A lie is a very special
falsehood.
Right. I will now take the ball and run with it.
Every lie is a false statement, but not every false statement is a lie. A lie is a false statement made with the intention to deceive. Since intention to deceive is included within the concept lie, 'intentional lie' and its cousins are pleonastic. Someone who speaks of an intentional lie is treating the species as if it were a genus. 'Intentional lie' is like 'true fact.' Use of these pleonasms marks one as uneducated or worse.
There are two related mistakes one must avoid. The first is the redundancy mistake just mentioned. The other is the use of 'lie' to mean a false statement. The temptation to do so is strong indeed. Many of us are inclined to think our opponents not just wrong, but culpably wrong: you lied! Michael Medved speaks irresponsibly of ten big lies about America. But none of his ten falsehoods — and I agree with him that they are all of them falsehoods — is properly describable as a lie.
Here is one: "The two-party system is broken, and we urgently need a viable third party."
Like Medved, I consider that to be false. But is it a lie? Do the people who believe the quoted sentence know the truth but are out to deceive us? Of course not. I met a woman once who claimed that the moon was its own source of light. Was she lying? She uttered a falsehood, which is not the same as lying. Once I jokingly said to my wife that she was lying when she said that the room was cold. "You lie!" First of all, there is no fact of the matter as to whether or not the room is cold. Her cold is my hot. So what's to lie about? The only fact of the matter in the vicinity is wifey's feeling cold.
Jethro claims that the bottle is half-empty while Earl maintains that it is half-full. Is one of these yahoos lying? Here there is a fact of the matter but one describable in two equivalent ways.
If a person affirms (denies) the existence of God is the person lying? Here there is a fact of the matter but one hard to make out. It is rational to be a theist, but also rational to be an atheist. So perhaps my definition needs augmenting:
A lie is a false statement made with the intention to deceive about a definite matter of fact about which knowledge is possible.
To lie is to misrepresent willfully the way things are when the way things are is ascertainable with a fairly high degree of certainty. For example, the way things are with respect to the content of PPACA is easily ascertained: you just read the law. There is a matter of fact as to what is stated in the law and that fact is easily established.
Suppose you and I are discussing some very difficult question in mathematics or metaphysics or cosmology. I assert that p while you assert that not-p. It follows that one of us is wrong. But it does not follow that one of us is lying.
Suppose that A and B each have the intention to deceive the other. A asserts that p, while B asserts its negation. It is a very interesting question whether both are lying. One of them is lying, for at least one of them is saying something false with the intention to deceive. But are both lying? Is the intention to deceive sufficient for lying, or must the content asserted also be false?
Here is a further nuance that will bore some of you. The type-token distinction comes into play. "The two-party system is broken, and we urgently need a viable third party" is not a statement but a statement type. You don't get a statement until some definite person utters or otherwise tokens the type. (To token a type is to produce a token of the type.) But no statement-type can be a lie. For statement-types float free of language users, and to have a statement, an occurrent stating, a particular speaker must use the statement-type — must token the type — on a particular occasion. This is another reason to deny that Medved's ten big falsehoods are lies. Note that a falsehood is false whether or not anyone utters or otherwise tokens a sentence that expresses it. But a lie is not a lie whether or not anyone utters or otherwise tokens the sentence that expresses it.
It is also worth observing that the concept lie as I have defined it is not a normative concept. The definition merely tells us what a lie is. A lie is a statement made with the intention to deceive. But it is a further question whether deception is morally impermissible. And if it is, is it so in all cases or only in some?
Is a liar one who lies? No. One can lie without being a liar just as one can get drunk without being a drunkard. A liar is one who habitually lies. Does it suffice for a person to be a liar that he lie habitually about just one topic, or must he lie habitually about more than one topic? Interesting question.
Obama lied repeatedly when he said that under his collectivist scheme every one would get to keep his health plan if he so desired. May we infer that Obama is a liar? Or to judge him to be a liar must we also adduce his other (repeated) lies?
And then there is the epistemology of the situation. How do I know that Obama lied when he made his now-famous asseveration? I didn't peer into his soul. I know, or at least I have good reasons for believing that he lied, because he knows the subject-matter of his false statement and he had a very powerful motive for misrepresenting said subject-matter. Had he spoken the truth, it is a very good bet that the PPACA would not have passed and become law.
So plenty of evidence points in the direction of his being a damned liar.
Addendum 3 November
Dennis Monokroussos comments:
Apropos your post “On Misusing the Word ‘Lie’”, it would be better to say that a lie is (among other things) a statement its utterer believes to be false. Also, similarly, your augmented definition seems to require the same qualification; to wit, that it’s about something believed to be “a definite matter of fact about which knowledge is possible”.
My initial definition was this
1. A lie is a false statement made with the intention to deceive. (That is to be understood as a biconditional: for any x, x is a lie iff x is a statement made with the intention to deceive.)
DM suggests
2. A lie is a statement believed by its utterer to be false that is made with the intention to deceive.
(2), however, allows for the possibility of a true lie. For suppose a statement is made with the intention to deceive but is falsely believed by the utterer to be false. In such a situation the utterer says something true with the intention to deceive. Has he lied?
Well, what are we trying to do here? If we are trying to capture the ordinary language meaning of 'lie' and cognates, then I am inclined to say that (2) fails. For in ordinary English, a lie is a falsehood, though not every falsehood is a lie. I am making an empirical claim about English as she is spoken by people like me and Monokroussos (educated white male Americans not too far apart in age). People like us do not use 'lie' in such a way that it is sufficient for x to be a lie that x be made with the intention to deceive.
Having made an empirical claim, I am open to empirical refutation by a linguist.
If, on the other hand, we are trying to elaborate a systematic theory of lying, bullshitting and related truth-sensitive phenomena, a project that involves replacing the ordinary language concept with a supposedly better one, then perhaps (2) is acceptable.
But now we are headed for the metaphilosophical stratosphere. What is the role of ordinary language analysis in philosophical theorizing? Ought philosophy be theoretical and explanatory at all? Should it perhaps content itself with description? What is analysis anyway? And what about the paradox of analysis? And so on and so forth.
Not content to say what is true, people exaggerate thereby turning the true into the false. This post analyzes a particular type of exaggeration which is illustrated by something Dennis Prager said on his radio show one morning: "Happiness is a moral obligation, not a psychological state." Since I agree that we have a moral obligation to try to be happy, I won't say anything more about the first half of Prager's assertion. What I object to is the second half. Why does he say something that is plainly false? What we have here is a form of exaggeration. Prager wants to convey to us something that he, rightly, believes is important, namely, that we ought to strive to be happy, both for our own benefit and for the benefit of others. In order to emphasize the point, to throw it into relief as it were, he follows it up with another assertion whch is false, namely, that happiness is not a psychological state. Obviously, if I am happy, I am in a psychological state. What interests me is the pattern or form of this type of exaggeration which is this:
To emphasize that a is F, say 'a is F but not G' even though a is G.
Three examples from sober philosophers.
Martin Buber, who is certainly no Frenchman, writes that "a melody is not composed of tones, nor a verse of words. . ." (I and Thou, p. 59) His point is that a melody cannot be reduced to its individual notes, nor a verse to its constituent words. But he expresses this truth in a way that makes it absurdly false. A melody without tones would be no melody at all. The litterateur exaggerates for literary effect, but Buber is no mere litterateur. So what is going on?
For a second example, consider Martin Heidegger. Somewhere in Sein und Zeit he writes that Das Dasein ist nie vorhanden. The human being is never present-at-hand. This is obviously false in that the human being has a body which is present-at-hand in nature as surely as any animal or stone. What he is driving at is the truth — or at least the plausibility — that the human being enjoys a special mode of Being, Existenz, that is radically unlike the Vorhandenheit of the mere thing in nature and the Zuhandenheit of the tool. So why doesn't he speak the truth, and nothing but the truth, without exaggerating?
And then there is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who, according to J. N. Findlay, "took every wrong turn a philosopher can take." (Personal communication) Wittgenstein's fideism involves such absurd exaggerations as that religions imply no theoretical views. But when a Christian, reciting the Apostle's Creed, says "I believe in God the Father, almighty creator of heaven and earth . . ." he commits himself thereby to the metaphysical view that heaven and earth have a certain ontological status, namely, that of being creatures.
Of course, the Christian is doing more than this: his 'I believe' expresses trust in God as a person and not mere belief that certain propositions are true. But to deny that there is any propositional content to his belief would be ludicrous. And yet that appears to be what Wittgenstein is doing.
There are still a lot of posts from the old Powerblogs site that have yet to be uploaded here. What follows is one that even I find pedantic. And I'm a pedant!
Can 'each other' and 'one another' be used interchangeably by good writers, or is there some distinction we need to observe? Compare 'less' and 'fewer.' Good writers know that 'less' is used with mass nouns such as 'food,' 'furniture' and 'snow' whereas 'fewer' is employed with such count nouns as 'meals,' 'tables' and 'snow plows.' Correct: 'If you eat less, you consume fewer calories.' Incorrect: 'If you eat less, you consume less calories.' The second sentence should grate against your linguistic sensibilities.
No doubt there are schoolmarm strictures that good writers may violate with impunity. 'Never split an infinitive' and 'Never begin a sentence with a conjunction' are two examples. But I deny that the fewer/less distinction is in the same grammatical boat: it reflects prima facie logical and ontological distinctions that need to be acknowledged. They are distinctions of the Manifest Image, to borrow a term from Wilfrid Sellars, distinctions that are innocent until proven guilty. Whether these distinctions can survive deeper logical and ontological analysis is a further question.
Now on to my topic.
Bill and Ron are chess players who play each other on Sunday afternoons. But we could just as well say that they play one another on Sunday afternoons. For if each plays the other, then each plays another. And if each one plays another, then each one plays the other given that there are only two players. Now suppose Bill and Ron start a chess club with more than two members. When the members meet they play one another, not each other. Why?
Suppose there are three members. Each one plays one of the others; it is not the case that each one plays the other — for the simple reason that there are two others. Since each one plays one of the two others, each one plays an other, hence another.
I therefore lay down the following rule. 'Each other' and 'one another' are stylistic variants of each other, and are to that extent intersubstitutable salva significatione, in contexts in which two things stand in some sort of reciprocal relation. In contexts in which more than two things stand in some sort of reciprocal relation, however, 'one another' is correct and 'each other' incorrect.
How did I arrive at this? Well, I gave an argument that appeals to your reason. I did not invoke any authority — that would be unphilosophical. Nor does actual usage cut any ice with me. Since grammar has a normative component, it cannot merely describe actual usage. For if boneheads prevail, usage degenerates. Describing the details of degeneration may well be a worthwhile linguistic exercise, but conservatives, here as elsewhere, want to impede degeneration rather than merely record it. Grammar must be based in logic, logic in ontology, ontology in — what? Onto-theology?
