Truth Teller's Paradox

The Truth Teller's Paradox

By John Taylor; 1 December, 2005

Dearest friends, today let us continue our exploration of truth
telling and lying initiated yesterday in an essay entitled, "The Lying
Cheerleader." We started off with an explanation of good and evil, of
truth and lies, provided by the Master in Some Answered Questions.
Although on the surface His thesis is clear and decisive there remain
in its backwash, as it were, implications that have always puzzled and
intrigued me.

Many are saying out loud these days a thought that has invaded the
peripheries of my conscience for some time, the idea that in policy
there is no such thing as liberal or conservative, right or left, or
even right or wrong, but rather there is only one real, qualitative
difference that matters -- the distinction between short and long term
thinking. Yesterday I came across this remarkable statement that the
ancient historian Herodotus put into the mouth of the king of the
Persians, Darius, which shows clearly that this is far from a new
idea. Darius says,

"An untruth must be spoken, where need requires. For whether men lie,
or say true, it is with one and the same object. Men lie, because they
think to gain by deceiving others; and speak the truth, because they
expect to get something by their true speaking, and to be trusted
afterwards in more important matters. Thus, though their conduct is so
opposite, the end of both is alike. If there were no gain to be got,
your true-speaking man would tell untruths as much as your liar, and
your liar would tell the truth as much as your true-speaking man."

This is worthy foreshadowing of Socrates, of Bishop Berkley and many
other philosophers who held that virtually all human beings deep down
seek after good, that evil is not real but ill will mixed with
ignorance. All people deep down want good ends but wrong and evil
result from flawed means. Darius understands that the pillar of
success is not any good goals or benefits we aim for -- all seek that
-- but the touchstone ultimately is the ability to speak a truth that
outlasts other, more ephemeral truths. Humans become their words. God
help us.

I know that I am going on endlessly about truth telling when I have no
idea what it is, but my hope is that some readers of this Badi' list
will find it interesting nonetheless, especially in view of what the
Guardian says,

"One can hardly imagine what a great influence genuine love,
truthfulness and purity of motives exert on the souls of men. But
these traits cannot be acquired unless every believer makes a daily
effort to gain them..." (SE, in Individual and Teaching - Raising the
Divine Call, p. 15)

Every Baha'i, then, is striving constantly to get a deeper grounding
in this "foundation of all virtues," and so we put ourselves through
the ringer daily when we take ourselves into account and assess how
"true" our words and deeds were that day.

I reached the end of yesterday's "Lying Cheerleader" essay and felt
tongue-tied and woefully confused. As my school buddy Daryl used to
say over and over, "I may be dumb but I am not stupid. I know what you
are after." But did I? I asked myself, how can a bumbling attempt to
tell what I do not understand, to tell the truth about truth telling,
how can it be anything but devoid of interest? When I get confused
like this I am in real danger of sinking into despair, depression, and
another painful migraine. And I look out the window and see only
migraine weather. The thing is that I care about this. It is serious.
Telling the truth when I do not remember what is true, when I put my
head up the anus of one thought and cannot see head nor tails, what
precedes it or follows from it. But I try and that has to count for
something.

Fortunately my reading of late is backing me up, for once, rather than
bogging me down in further meanderings. Or not. Anyway, over past
weeks I have been going through the "Introducing..." series of précis
put out by Icon Publishers, and next on my list was "Introducing
Logic," by Cryan, Shatil, et al. To my great surprise and consolation,
I learned that I am not the only one confused and stymied by this
problem. Pretty much every logician and systematizer in history, from
the Greeks to now, was defeated by some form of the liar's paradox
("this sentence is false"), along with a few other simple but
effective families of paradox.

What got me is what I might as well call the Master's lying physician
paradox -- a doctor who declares a moribund patient cured may by
saying so actually cure that patient. By making a cheerleader's
declaration of health the physician is telling a greater truth than
any he could hold in his head or that could be read from a machine's
readout, since it gives life in the face of death. What got me about
this is that his true lie seems to be yet another form of the liar's
paradox, only this one you could call the "truth teller's paradox."

To try to grasp this paradox means taking a walk on logic's wild side,
non-classical logic without an excluded middle or Reductio Ad
Absurdam, the self referential talk of a Manifestation. The truth
teller's paradox means never saying you are telling the truth, that
saying "This sentence is true," is every bit as paradoxical as saying,
"This sentence is false." Why? Because you cannot speak true about
anything. No matter what you say, no matter how sincere you feel,
there is always a chance that you will be wrong.

Examples? I may say, "I am happy," and tomorrow realize that I am not
and never have been. Or, I may say, "I am unhappy," and realize later
that my misery was just a sign that I was entering into a higher stage
of happiness. What the heck do I know? In all good faith, nothing can
be said as long as my understanding is less than perfect. The doctor
can say, "You are cured," or he can say, "You have no significant
chance of recovery." Both are true, both are lies. Certainly in most
situations in daily life there is nothing you can say that is free of
the statistical chance that it is wrong and deceptive. No matter how
certain things seem, uncertainty and certainty, lies and truth are
mixed in.

This applies on the surface, and deep down too. No matter what I aim
at, to say something bends truth contrary to reality. The only truly
honest thing is to say nothing, to shut yo' mouth and keep it shut.
The only true statement that avoids both the liar's paradox and the
truth teller's paradox is no statement at all. And indeed, that could
be why Baha'u'llah affirms Ali's assertion that silence (reflection)
is worth more than seventy years of pious worship. Baha'u'llah also
says that in some valleys of the soul mentioning anything other than
the Self of God is blasphemy. Piety is quietude. This certainly seems
to be the experience of the logicians, all of whom have been wiped off
the chessboard by the Most Great Grandmaster, the Master of Paradox.

Historically the most striking example of the truth teller's paradox
is Pilate washing his hands before the suffering Christ. Jesus says, I
am doing this to demonstrate the truth; Pilate validly exonerates
himself by saying, "What is truth?" He is technically correct, nobody
can say what is true or false without perfect comprehension of
reality. Pilate could not see what was before his very eyes, and he
knew it. No logician since has been able to demonstrate decisively
that Pilate could not take this out. If they did, faith would cease to
be a virtue and life would be a solved problem. It would no longer be
a game worth playing and we could all jump in the grave and go on to
better things.

Where does Pilate go wrong? He forgets that ethics and logic cannot be
separated. While it is true that little that can be said that may not
be false, that no words are true without a tinge of a lie there is a
big notwithstanding clause called love. Ignorance is no excuse not to
love. For God is love, God is life, and He wants the life He created
in us to thrive. That is truth. Let us give Him the last word today,
as He declares how truth and love are intermingled in faith:

"I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have
set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose
life, that both thou and thy seed may live: that thou mayest love the
LORD thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou
mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy
days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy
fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them."
(Deuteronomy 30:19-20, KJV)

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com