Tuesday, October 20, 2020

Can Trumpolini Lie?

The last century's most interesting philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, looked at what constituted a mistake. If memory serves, Wittgenstein used the example of someone who took a test in addition and got every answer wrong. Had the man been making mistakes? No.  The man didn't know how to add. To make a mistake in addition, you have to know how to add. 

Don Trumpolini presents us with a related problem.  "Lying" is a word that goes back to the 1300s. It has several meanings today, but the oldest one is that lying is the opposite of telling the truth. 

Trumpolini quite literally does not know what the English word "truth" means. Observers have commented on this. Trumpolini believes that anything he says is, at that moment, true.  He can comfortably contradict himself in the same paragraph. Of course, "anything the President says" is not a definition of "truth"  in the English language. But not being able to correctly identify the truth makes it impossible for Trumpolini to lie. To lie you must understand the concept of truth. 

His inability to tell the truth or lie is, I suppose, a symptom of a much deeper mental disorder. A language is kept in order by other people who tell us if we have used a word incorrectly. But for Trumpolini other people hardly exist except as weak projections of himself. 

 

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