Whoah. Okay, so, yeah, there's a philosophy of language question in there for sure if we're talking about "truth".
First off, for this to be a good argument I'd expect it to be both logically sound and based on reasonable assumptions. Whether it's sound or not actually depends on what the assumptions are in this case, I think, and how you define the terms involved.
The first set of assumptions to tackle would be about what it means to lie, what it means to tell the truth, and whether not telling the truth is necessarily the same as lying. This is primarily a philosophy of language question.
The second assumption to tackle would be about whether lying (however it's defined) is wrong. This is primarily an ethical question and can only be dealt with once the philosophy of language question has been answered in some way or other.
I think I would actually be inclined to skip the second (ethical) question altogether and just argue that it's a bad argument because the conclusion doesn't logically follow from the proper definition of "lies" and "truth". But that's because I like arguing philosophy of language and dislike arguing ethics, so....
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Date: June 4th, 2010 12:53 pm (UTC)From:First off, for this to be a good argument I'd expect it to be both logically sound and based on reasonable assumptions. Whether it's sound or not actually depends on what the assumptions are in this case, I think, and how you define the terms involved.
The first set of assumptions to tackle would be about what it means to lie, what it means to tell the truth, and whether not telling the truth is necessarily the same as lying. This is primarily a philosophy of language question.
The second assumption to tackle would be about whether lying (however it's defined) is wrong. This is primarily an ethical question and can only be dealt with once the philosophy of language question has been answered in some way or other.
I think I would actually be inclined to skip the second (ethical) question altogether and just argue that it's a bad argument because the conclusion doesn't logically follow from the proper definition of "lies" and "truth". But that's because I like arguing philosophy of language and dislike arguing ethics, so....