Category: Truth
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On Misusing the Word ‘Lie’
Keith Burgess-Jackson rightly criticizes Rush Limbaugh for using . . . 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,…
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Exaggeration
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…
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Obama as Bullshitter
While listening the other day to Barack Obama shuck and jive about fiscal responsiblity, shamelessly posturing as if he and not his Republican opponents is the fiscally responsible one, when he is in truth the apotheosis or, if you prefer, the Platonic Form of fiscal irresponsibility, I realized just how uncommonly good our POMO Prez…
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The IQ Taboo and the Truth-Intolerant Left
The Left is dangerous for a number of reasons with its disregard for truth being high on the list. For the Left it is the 'narrative' that counts, the 'script,' the 'story,' whether true of false, that supports their agenda. An agenda is a list of things to do, and for an activist, Lenin's question, What…
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Lying in the Age of Obama
This may well be the best column Victor Davis Hanson has written. He meticulously documents the widespread lying, prevarication, and other offenses against truth among our elites, offers a diagnosis, and then addresses the question, Why not lie? Here is his beautiful answer: I end with three reasons to tell the truth. The majority has to…
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Truth and Accuracy
I heard Paula Deen's son say that some statements made about his mother were not accurate. But I think what he should have said, and perhaps wanted to say, is that they were not true. What is the difference between truth and accuracy as properties of statements and such cognate items as declarative sentences, propositions,…
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Truth and Truthfulness
The bathroom scale doesn't lie, but it doesn't tell the truth either. It is either accurate or inaccurate. Only a spiritual being can be either deceptive or truthful. I cannot lie by simply saying something false. I must have the intention to deceive. That is perfectly clear. Rather less obvious is that to tell the…
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Literarily Pleasing, but Incoherent
I found the folllowing quotation here: But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. — Umberto Eco The world is a play of phenomena, an enigmatic play of…
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Metaphysical Grounding I: True Of
(Note to Peter L: This begins our discussion of metaphysical grounding and metaphysical explanation, topics of common interest. We need, over a series of posts, to uncover and discuss as many examples as we can find. My aim, and perhaps yours as well, is to demonstrate that metaphysical grounding and metaphysical explanation are legitimate topics,…
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Time, Truth, and Truth-Making: An Antilogism Revisited and Transmogrified
Earlier, I presented the following, which looks to be an antilogism. An antilogism, by definition, is an inconsistent triad. This post considers whether the triad really is logically inconsistent, and so really is an antilogism. 1. Temporally Unrestricted Excluded Middle: The principle that every declarative sentence is either true, or if not true, then false…
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Excluded Middle and Future-Tensed Sentences: An Aporetic Triad
Do you remember the prediction, made in 1999, that the DOW would reach 36,000 in a few years? Since that didn't happen, I am inclined to say that Glassman and Hasset's prediction was wrong and was wrong at the time the prediction was made. I take that to mean that the content of their prediction…
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Caesar, the Rubicon, Tenseless Truth, Determinism, and Fatalism
In a post the point of which was merely to underscore the difference between absolute and necessary truth, I wrote, somewhat incautiously: Let our example be the proposition p expressed by 'Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 44 B.C.' Given that p is true, it is true in all actual circumstances. That is, its truth-value…
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Absolute Truth and Necessary Truth
Absolute truth and necessary truth are not the same. Let our example be the proposition p expressed by 'Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 44 B.C.' Given that p is true, it is true in all actual circumstances. That is, its truth-value does not vary from time to time, place to place, person to person, or…
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Regress? What Regress? Truth-Making Revisited
Ed continues to repeat his regress argument against truth-makers, despite my hurling invective at it. I think I called it "breathtakingly rotten" or something equally offensive, all in good fun of course: I have argued (e.g. here and here that the notion of a ‘truthmaker’ leads to an infinite regress. If there is such a…
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You Deny Truth-Makers? What Then is Your Theory?
Let us confine ourselves to true affirmative contingent nonrelational predications. If you deny that there is any extralinguistic fact or state of affairs that makes it true that Tom is smoking, then what is your positive theory? Here are some possible views, 'possible' in the sense that they are possibly such as to be held by…