Heck, it may have been heartburn. I can never be sure.
O’rily and Moore came together for a discussion and both exited alive? How did I not here about this before… well, that’s irrelevant now, what’s important is to say that while O’Riley may have taken a more logical argument in this instance, in the grand scheme of things the factor’s daily mockery of facts levels out Moor’s dispersed chapters of insanity. Neither side is what Bill likes to call ‘objective’ using as they do emotions to sway people.
rhetoric is still a very important tool, one that’s not to be overlooked, and one both sides had in spades; Bill was never going to convert any lefties, and Mike couldn’t dream of getting one of the O’Riley Fundamentalists to even listen to a word he said, let alone consider agreeing with him.
No matter indeed; it certainly is generous for you not to call me a liar.
Strangely, when I looked it up in my dictionary downstairs, your second condition is the one that didn’t appear. And it’s the second condition that enables you to claim that Bush possibly didn’t lie about WMDs in going into Iraq–since he clearly uttered an untrue statement, and almost certainly did so intending to deceive the audience about the real world. And you accuse ME of engineering a definition for political ends…
Daniel
Is it a lie if you believe something to be true only because you intentionally ignore any and all evidence to the contrary?
Apparently so, but I fear for the canapes.
This question seems to me to be the ultimate in “let’s set the bar unimaginatively low” intellectual judgments.
O’Reilly vs Moore. I am not sure it makes the detection of sense meter even quiver.
Tris
Oh boy, where to start… Let’s leave aside your “almost certainly” above and discuss dictionary definitions. But before we get to that, let’s recap.
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I offered a litmus test for a lie. You initial post here volunteered agreement with that.
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when I pointed out that the two conditions of the test prevented you from concluding that Bush lied, you tap danced that the definition (test) was insufficient because it didn’t take into account things like jokes, sarcasm, or fiction. (Things, I might add, that all reasonable people understand to not be at issue.)
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when I excluded those very things—the supposed reason for you backing away from agreeing with the statement that you initially said you did agree with you suggested to omit a laundry list and add the idea of deception to cover them.
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I did that with my last post. At this point, you should be in total agreement with my revised statement. You originally agreed with the heart of it, and I then massaged it to address the specific problems you had with it.
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But now you find a dictionary in your basement and claim that it omits my condition #2—which you originally volunteered agreement with.
Now I don’t doubt that there is A definition that might exclude my second condition. I do doubt that the dictionary you have offers that definition as the primary definition. A quick trip to American Heritage, Merriam Webster and Cambridge all include the idea of inteional deception in the primary definitions. Some include the definition you wish. So, your desire to attach “lie” to Bush “on a technicality” is safe. By the way, which dictionary do you have, and where does your definition fall numerically?
But I ask you this: when you attach the label of “lie” to what Bush said, do you not do so hoping that the reader will assume that you mean “lie” as it is primarily defined? That the intent to deceive, and the requisite knowledge of the “lie” being false, is present in Bush’s action? If so, is that not misleading on your part? If you do NOT intend for that impression to be conveyed, are you willing to state, unequivocally, that you use “lie” as it is defined not primarily, but alternatively, and that you do so because you cannot prove the case for the primary usage, i.e., that Bush coveyed an untruth that he knew to be untrue?
If you ignore it, how do you know it is to the contrary? I maintain that a lie—as it is understood in common usage—must necessarily require that the speaker know that his statement is untrue. If not, he is simply mistaken. Perhaps pathetically so, which would merit him the label of idiot, shit-for-brains, or some other similar descriptor. But it does not fairly earn him the label of “liar”. Doing so robs the term of any meaning.
My guess, one supported by my experience of this thread, is that if there is not a prior mandate to have Bush be called a liar, everyone would agree on the definition I’ve supplied. I am far from a Bush fan, but I think that logic and the language is more important than a mistake that will be gone in 15 months.
That’d be the requisite dishonesty, no?
First, what an absurd summary of events.
That said, your second criterion was not intentional deception–that’s the bit that I insisted on, not you. Your second criterion was that the person involved knew that their statement was false.
And that’s the one that doesn’t appear in primary definitions in dictionaries. Viz Merriam webster: “To make an untrue statement with intent to deceive.” Viz Random House: “A false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive.” American Heritage: “A false statement deliberately presented as being true.”
Hmm. That last one comes closest to supporting your case, except that it’s sadly overbroad. It includes also anyone who deliberately presents a false statement as true because they believe it’s true.
Daniel
Not dumb necessarily, but mistaken. There is such a thing as an honest mistake. A person who scores 70 out of 100 on a history exam isn’t lying about the 30% he got wrong, he’s mistaken about them. A lie, on the other hand, is a deliberate misstatement.
If you are trying to deceive someone with a particular untrue statement, i.e., a specific series of words that is untrue, must not that statement be known to be untrue? If not, there is not** intent to deceive**. The intent to deceive, when talking about a statement that is untrue, necessitates that the speaker knew it to be untrue. Otherwise, he is simply mistaken.
Now, it is quite possible to mislead or deceive someone by uttering statements that are true, but we are talking about statements that are untrue, unless you are now trying to dance away from even the first prong of my definition (again, which you volunteered agrement with until it posed problems for you classifying Bush’s actions as lying).
I agree that this hyper-technical parsing of the definition is not as good as the others, as it does allow for the possibility you suggest. So, which definition do you think is best?
Finally, your simply labeling my summary of events as absurd hardly makes it so. I notice that you did not attempt to point out where it disagreed with your actual action in this thread. You also forgot to share which dictionary you were using from your basement.
Someone may certainly attempt to deceive someone with a statement they believe to be true. If that statement is false, then they are making a false statement intending to deceive someone. I see no reason not to consider that a lie. That is, at its most charitable, what Bush did concerning the yellowcake memorandum (more likely he knew that his statements were false–acting as though he did not know so assumes a staggering level of incompetence among his personal staff).
Blah blah blah. I know you think this is some sort of personal duel, but that aspect of it is as boring as it is absurd.
Daniel
And if they know it to be false, it is a lie. If they do not know it to be false, they are being deceptive while being mistaken. They are not lying.
Let me help you. Becuase if you agree it is not you are stuck with all your previous claims of Bush lying being false. And would have to cease from similar claims in the future. Unless, of course, you wanted to lie about it.
This was a discussion about what constituted a lie. You came in an declared agreement with my statement, but added that Bush still lied. I took the side of O’Reilly. You agreed with me. Now you take the position of Moore. When I went to the thread you cited, you evidently thinking you had proven your point there, and showed you that you hadn’t, you started backpedaling and tap dancing. You haven’t stopped since.
Now if you had put a hat out I would gladly throw in a quarter. It’s been quite entertaining.
Oh, by the way, I’m still interested in which dictionary you cited from your basement and which definition you think best…
One-sidedly.
Daniel
No doubt. All that tap dancing, shucking and jiving seems like it would be exhausting.
::throws antoher quarter into the hat::