Can there be 'half truths'?

[Antares]

In my opinion there can't. All they mean by half-truths is that the individual in question did not give all the true facts in order for the situation to make sense. Seeing it's called 'half truth', it implies that the information supplied must be true. But each fact presented is a truth, so how can it be half truth? At best it's 'not enough information'. The cause and effect of the situation is not the 'whole truth'. It's the product of the accumulation of little bits of truths.

[kevintr]

A clever person can state facts about a matter and still cover the truth about it, They might have to play with semantics some, but they didn't lie. When I hear about half truths thats what I think of.

[thod]

And yet in dividing the world into the dichotomy of true of false you are making a statement which can only be answered within the constraints of that system.

[Monte314]

I believe (along with Socrates) that Truth is absolute. We get into the "half-truth" scenario as soon as we try to use language (which is ambiguous, limited, and has a strong subjective element) to describe Truth.

[IgnoranceIsKind]

There can exist half truths. The simplest example would be in a scenario when a man delivers a message that contains factual statements, along with lies, therefore in the consideratioon of the message as a whole, therein lies truth and falsities. Is that not half-truth?

I know this may sound very colloquial, but if I said that I ate bagels for breakfast in bed today except I didn't really do it in bed, can that be considered a half-truth?

Of course I'm merely scraping the surface of this potentially invigorating philosophical debate. Do challenge my hypothesis.

[Bandit]

I slept with your sister today while you were at work in our bed honey!!!

But I didnt really do it in our bed, would this then be a half truth?

[Undead Bonzi]

I slept with your sister today while you were at work in our bed honey!!!

But I didnt really do it in our bed, would this then be a half truth?

I believe that one is known as 'grounds for divorce'...or 'motive for murder'.

[thod]

Suppose the question was is "Is that guy tall". A simple yes/no answer does not satisfy. We could define a cut off point and say guys over this height are in the group of 'tall people' and those less in the group of 'short people'. Yet any such line would be arbitrary and those on the boundary could belong to either group. Instead of defining a statement as being a member of the true statements or false statements sets, which are mutually exclusive, perhaps the answer is in fuzzy sets where we can say the guy is 0.8 tall.

[ElstonGunn]

I know this may sound very colloquial, but if I said that I ate bagels for breakfast in bed today except I didn't really do it in bed, can that be considered a half-truth?

It depends on whether you want to say that you made one statement or two. If "I ate bagels for breakfast in bed" is a single statement, and you did in fact eat bagels but consumed them elsewhere, then the statement is entirely false.

If it's two statements-- "I ate bagels for breakfast" and "I ate breakfast in bed"-- then one statement is entirely true, and another is entirely false.

If you need food, water, and oxygen to live, and you only have food and water, you're not two-thirds alive. You're all dead. If you need security, love, and purpose to be satisfied, and you have security and purpose but don't have love, you possibly could say that you're two-thirds satisfied (and probably an INTJ ;) ).

[Jakalwarrior]

In my opinion, a lie by a direct misleading statement that includes omission is a "half truth".
"Honey did you cheat on me with that tramp again today?"
"What? I went to work like normal today!" ..... and got with her on my lunch break

Sort of like a conventional half truth except the lie is meant to be implied but isn't actually said so there is no lie. When I lie it is usually by this method since I have a hard time forcing myself to make false statements. The correct term for this is omission but it seems more like half truth to me.
I also used to have a habit of saying the truth flat out but using inflection and timing etc... to imply a lie. I think I have grown out of that maybe?

[Monte314]

There can exist half truths. The simplest example would be in a scenario when a man delivers a message that contains factual statements, along with lies, therefore in the consideratioon of the message as a whole, therein lies truth and falsities. Is that not half-truth?

If you agree with the tenets of predicate logic, a collection of statements, some true and some false, all asserted in the same statement, is FALSE. This would make the man a liar. More formally, a conjunction of predicates is TRUE only when all the predicates are true.

Colloquially, the term "half-truth" is descriptive. But now we are back to the linguistic vagaries I warned about earlier in this thread.

[Seppuku Savant]

Do other people try to convey half truths? Yes. As Monte stated, it's merely semantics. Does that make it the absolute truth? No.

[Antares]

There can exist half truths. The simplest example would be in a scenario when a man delivers a message that contains factual statements, along with lies, therefore in the consideratioon of the message as a whole, therein lies truth and falsities. Is that not half-truth?

I know this may sound very colloquial, but if I said that I ate bagels for breakfast in bed today except I didn't really do it in bed, can that be considered a half-truth?

Of course I'm merely scraping the surface of this potentially invigorating philosophical debate. Do challenge my hypothesis.

About your example: I think that would be a mixture of lies and truths, and not half truth.

Well, most people consider half-truths to be telling the truth, but lacking in information to illustrate the whole event. I don't consider that to be a 'half truth'. If every statement is the truth, then how can we divide truth in half? I think it's just the convenient,figurative term for "not providing enough true information". I'm talking about literally here.

Suppose I murdered my family member and I ran to the police and told them "she died". Of course, that's true. I told the truth. There is no 'half truths'. I'm just hiding something so that the police wouldn't hear anything from me that links me to the murder. It's just semantics, I know, but it's a bit of semantics that have irked me. "Not telling everything" is the only way I can think of to describe "half truths", since there literally can't be a "half truth". Every statement in the "half truth" is truth; how can a 'half' encompass so many 'wholes'? I know 'truth' is not a tangible object and it shouldn't be compared like this, but it doesn't make intuitive sense either.

[zibber]

In my opinion there can't. All they mean by half-truths is that the individual in question did not give all the true facts in order for the situation to make sense. Seeing it's called 'half truth', it implies that the information supplied must be true. But each fact presented is a truth, so how can it be half truth? At best it's 'not enough information'. The cause and effect of the situation is not the 'whole truth'. It's the product of the accumulation of little bits of truths.

You can do a lot with (verbal) implicature, using statements that are all perfectly true in such a manner as to nudge someone's interpretation in a certain direction.

(Not really predicate logic, more like practical linguistics a la Parikh. I'm just trying to seem informed :P)

[cal]

About your example: I think that would be a mixture of lies and truths, and not half truth.

Well, most people consider half-truths to be telling the truth, but lacking in information to illustrate the whole event. I don't consider that to be a 'half truth'. If every statement is the truth, then how can we divide truth in half? I think it's just the convenient,figurative term for "not providing enough true information". I'm talking about literally here.

Suppose I murdered my family member and I ran to the police and told them "she died". Of course, that's true. I told the truth. There is no 'half truths'. I'm just hiding something so that the police wouldn't hear anything from me that links me to the murder. It's just semantics, I know, but it's a bit of semantics that have irked me. "Not telling everything" is the only way I can think of to describe "half truths", since there literally can't be a "half truth". Every statement in the "half truth" is truth; how can a 'half' encompass so many 'wholes'? I know 'truth' is not a tangible object and it shouldn't be compared like this, but it doesn't make intuitive sense either.

You're bringing gestalt's definition to mind here, of the whole being different than the sum of the parts. But in a seeming negative way.

Maybe a name change that's as short as 'half truth', but closer to what you're looking for, might work. A term in such a direction as 'piled truth' might work here - truths that are 'piled' together in a way that forms a deceiving/less than honest 'product'. Maybe 'lite truth' - the truth provided is true, but 'lite' in that not everything was provided.

A quote, from a book called Parallel Thinking, that might offer something of use:

The problem with the Socratic method and our thinking tradition is that we seek to proceed statement by statement. Is a particular statement true or false? But when we chop up complex systems into separate statements it is then impossible to make that judgement or , if it is made, it is likely to be incorrect in terms of the whole system. System relativity is sometimes essential. The atomistic, step-by-step process is simply inadequate. We cannot proceed by small steps each of which is soundly 'true'.

[Supreme Dick]

Someone once said that the difference between a disreputable advertiser and a reputable advertiser is that a disreputable advertiser uses lies to decieve us, while a reputable advertiser uses the truth to decieve us.

It's the intention and that little "slight-of-hand" that gets at the essence of the 'half truth' idea for me. And often, it isn't that the half-truth doesn't pass the test of a Logic 100 argument -- it's just that I get that funny feeling that it's time to count the silverware!

[Saint]

In my opinion there can't. All they mean by half-truths is that the individual in question did not give all the true facts in order for the situation to make sense. Seeing it's called 'half truth', it implies that the information supplied must be true. But each fact presented is a truth, so how can it be half truth? At best it's 'not enough information'. The cause and effect of the situation is not the 'whole truth'. It's the product of the accumulation of little bits of truths.

Yes. And this statement that contains "not enough information" is called a half-truth.

Antares, What phrase do you use when someone says a deceptive statement that contains some element of truth, or is wholly truthful?

Here is an example:

"I'm a really good driver. In the past thirty years, I have only gotten four speeding tickets"

This statement is 100% true, but irrelevant if he or she started driving a week ago and has since accumulated four tickets. This is a half-truth. It is "not the whole story."



Edit: Here is another real-life example that happened recently:

The automaker Mercedes said they were going to convert their entire fleet to run on alternative fuels by 2015. Many people thought this meant they will stop making gasoline cars, which is what they wanted the public to think. This is false, they are merely promising to have options other than petrol. Like the above example, they have deceived people very effectively, but are still technically telling the truth. Mercedes wanted to drum up a good rumor. This deception renders it a half-truth.

[Antares]

The automaker Mercedes said they were going to convert their entire fleet to run on alternative fuels by 2015. Many people thought this meant they will stop making gasoline cars, which is what they wanted the public to think. This is false, they are merely promising to have options other than petrol. Like the above example, they have deceived people very effectively, but are still technically telling the truth. Mercedes wanted to drum up a good rumor. This deception renders it a half-truth.

Technically, that is a lie. Because if every car they make run on alternative fuel, then there is no way they can manufacture more cars run on gasoline. It wouldn't be truth at all. Of course, I'm not sure what you meant by 'entire fleet'.

"I'm a really good driver. In the past thirty years, I have only gotten four speeding tickets"

"I'm a really good driver" is a matter of opinion. There's no absolute. Some people are going to think he's good, some people are going to think he's bad.

If he indeed has gotten four speeding tickets, then he told the truth. The first is an opinion; he has the audacity to think he's good. To me, it's not a 'half truth', since his four speeding tickets is a truth. There can't be 'half truths' in a literal sense. How do you cut truth in half? All he's done is not tell everything. His 'thirty years' is said directly to confuse people, but he did not lie; he just made a pointless statement. Again, this relates to jumping to conclusions.

"Half truth" doesn't make sense logically. I meant the term, not the concept. I'm ok with the concept itself, but I think it's badly worded, like the Big Bang (it's not big, and there's no bang for there are no air to resonate for a 'bang' to ensue). I'm sorry if I hadn't made this clear before, triggering a debate as to whether there is such concept as 'half truths'. Of course there is. I'm just biting on the name and its linguistic accuracy.

[Xtradi]

hmm i guess half truth applied to fuzzy logic where there are varying degree of truth. so half truth maybe exactly 50% truth or 50% lie.

In the real life however we cannot present complete information because the limitation of our senses and the way brain sort information.

if you say that half truth is hiding some information or incomplete facts then there is some relation with "what the speaker perceived as needed information" vs "what listener perceived as needed information". Can we unintentionally say half truth ?

The real problem in communication is if we don't understand the question we cannot answer it correctly and most of the time we "feel" like we know the question but we actually doesn't understand the question and so we answer it incorrectly.

[Udog]

A half truth, to me, is a full lie. It's telling truth, but leaving out the most important facts to give a false impression.

I slept with your sister today while you were at work in our bed honey!!!

But I didnt really do it in our bed, would this then be a half truth?

A half truth would be more like: "I stayed at home in bed while you were at work, honey."

[Antares]

A half truth, to me, is a full lie. It's telling truth, but leaving out the most important facts to give a false impression.

Again, the other party is also guilty of jumping to conclusions. 'Half-truths' (the term name I'm railing against) are supposed to be purposefully vague, but not false so they cannot be accused of lying when caught.

[acyckowski]

It appears the opponents of "half-truth" are confusing facts with truth and/or arbitrarily applying boolean logic out of context.

Facts are things which can be demonstrated, implying concreteness. Truth implies an underlying integrity which is more conceptual than real. Thus, "I stayed in bed all day" is factually correct. Omitting the relevant detail of your sister's company makes the statement a falsehood, but a factually accurate one.

As for the either-or argument, replace "half-truth," with "Gray." Does gray mean precisely equal parts black and white, or a commonly understood range of shades between the two. By using the logic of "it must be either-or," then gray ceases to exist at 49.999:50.001 ratio of black and white. How useful is that to communicate an idea? It's not.

"Half-truth" is a commonly-understood phrase which describes the action of selectively choosing "facts" to create a misperception of the commonly-understood "truth." It is meaningul only in the context of common-usage, but that's all it needs to be. The social norming of concepts is an important tool in effective communication; if I told you to meet me at my truck, which is green, I would be committing a "logical" lie since my "green" truck is about 30% black, 5% chrome, and 15% transparent...yet, if I tell you it's green you won't go to the one that's 50% red. Were I to rattle off a precise breakdown of the percentage of surface area by color, you would intuitively summarize it to "green" anyhow.

[NephilimAzrael]

Is there really truth in the first place? I personally believe we have interpretations, inferences and judgments based on numerous intakes. But truth itself is rather an apt description..

[True Rune]

I believe another name for what you're calling "half-truth" is "white lie". I believe truth to be absolute, so there are no "half-truths". Literally, at least.