Monday 24 January 2011

this is old.. I wrote it long ago..

I was browsing in wikipedia again.. looking for the definition of "lie" and I found this:
"A lie is an untruthful statement made to someone else with the intention to deceive. To lie is to say something one believes to be false with the intention that it be taken for the truth by someone else.
A lie involves the use of conventional truthbearers, (i.e., statements in words or symbols) and not natural signs. Intentional deceit involving natural signs, such as wearing a wig, shamming a limp, or wearing a fake arm cast, is not usually classed as "lying", but as "deception".
A true statement may be a lie. If the person who makes the true statement genuinely believes it to be false, and makes the statement with the intention that his audience believe it to be true, then this is a lie (see Jean-Paul Sartre, Le Mur (1937)). When a person lies he or she necessarily is untruthful, but he or she is not necessarily making an untrue statement."

I think There's a 3rd way to it ,that you neither lie nor tell the truth. I wonder how would Sartre and others  explain something like that. I don't know why , but most of people tend to give Lie a larger definition than truth. But if we begin to look fuzzy, this kind of statement is merely ambiguous, and it's up to the recipient to disambiguate it.

Nevertheless, to me.. lie is deformed , ambiguity is polymorphic, and truth is always well-shaped, even in its ugliest form!

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