Category: Truthfulness
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Taqiyya, Tawriya, and Creative Lying
Here: Perhaps you have heard of taqiyya, the Muslim doctrine that allows lying in certain circumstances, primarily when Muslim minorities live under infidel authority. Now meet tawriya, a doctrine that allows lying in virtually all circumstances—including to fellow Muslims and by swearing to Allah—provided the liar is creative enough to articulate his deceit in a…
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The Pinocchio ‘Paradox’
This curious bagatelle is wending its way through the World Wide Web. The cartoon is supposed to be paradoxical in some way. The reader who brought it to my attention writes, "A friend and myself actually debated this at length over lunch, and I argued that at best it is a performative inconsistency. I'm sure…
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On Exaggeration
Why do people exaggerate in serious contexts? The logically prior question is: What is exaggeration, and how does it differ from lying, bullshitting, and metaphorical uses of language? A physician in a radio broadcast the other morning said, "You can't be too thin, too rich, or have too low a cholesterol level." Note first that…
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The Tendency to Exaggerate
Not content to say what is true, people exaggerate thereby turning the true into the false. 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…
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Bullshitting and Lying
What is it to bullshit? Perhaps the best way to understand bullshitting is by comparing it to lying. So what is it to lie? The first thing to understand is that a lie is not the same as a false statement. Suppose I make a statement about something but my statement turns out to be…