I think truth and knowledge is good for atheists, scientists and materialists, but it is detrimental to theists, Christians and the otherwise religious.

Keep in mind the distinction between truth and validity, and the a priori and contingent. And do not ever confuse logic with communication, especially with a woman.

:up: :up:

Ethics seems to have a very deep connection with epistemology. — TheMadFool

My conception is, in order to optimize agency (eudaimonia), the latter (praxis) applies, or strives for, the former (arete).

Like telling a kid santa clause does not exist. :)

I think truth and knowledge is good for atheists, scientists and materialists, but it is detrimental to theists, Christians and the otherwise religious. — god must be atheist

Streetlight Effect/The Drunkard's Search Principle. Seeking truths where they're easy to find is not my idea of good faith. Different strokes for different folks.

Keep in mind the distinction between truth and validity, and the a priori and contingent. And do not ever confuse logic with communication, especially with a woman. — tim wood

I'm fairly onfident of my ability to distinguish those concepts you mentioned above but they don't seem to be relevant insofar as the tautology p v ~p is the issue. As for women I'm absolutely clueless.

My conception is, in order to optimize agency (eudaimonia), the latter (praxis) applies, or strives for, the former (arete). — 180 Proof

I don't know if this is relevant or not but I recall listening to a podcast many suns ago and the speaker defined wisdom as, and I quote, " the knowleddge of what is true and good". A perfect example, don't you think?, of the belief, perhaps intuition, that the good and the true are intertwined like snakes in a mating ball ( @tim wood :wink: ), quite possibly good & true are two sides of the same coin.

To All Of The Above Posters

The tautology p v ~p for any proposition p guarantees that one speaks the truth, that's for sure. However, what bothers me is that employing p v ~p to never lie also commits you to the law of the excluded middle which, to my understanding, is that there are only two possibilities for a given proposition p, either one must affirm it (p) or one must deny it (~p) which together is p v ~p. The law of the excluded middle is also considered to be just another way of saying contradictions p &~p are impossible because ~(p & ~p) = p v ~p. Understood differently, deny the law of the exluded middle is tantamount to claiming contradictions are true.

Noteworthy too is that some logics reject the law of the excluded middle i.e. ~(p v ~p) but that doesn't necessarily imply that one has to accept contradictions are true i.e. for some systems of logic, ~(p v ~p) =/= p & ~p

In summary,

1. The easiest way to speak the truth with respect to a proposition p always and everywhere to anybody who cares to listen is to utter/write p v ~p. This has been explained well enough in the OP.

Now for some detective work bordering on conspiracy theory. The long tradition of making truthfulness a big deal in ethics, especially in religion which seems to be the inspiration for Kantian ethics may be a clue put there by ethicists of days bygone (Buddha to Kant), either deliberately but elliptically or unwittingly but intuitively, to eventually guide us to the problem disguised as an easy solution for dishonesty/lying viz. the law of the excluded middle. In other words the (easy) solution for mendacity, the law of the excluded middle, is actually the source of all our problems, ethical or otherwise. Perhaps like any truther worth his salt, I'm reading too much into this.

2. What happens if make the obvious choice and reject the law of the excluded middle but within the bounds of classical logic? We must perforce accepts contradictions are true. What would that mean for us? Taoism which I believe is a treatise on paradoxes (contradictions); paraconsistent logic; dialetheism; Zeno of Elea; As you can see I'm out of my depths.

The last possibility listed in Nagarjuna's tetralemma is ~(p v ~p) i.e. it amounts to denying the law of the excluded middle. Unfortunately, I can't comment more on it because the Wikipedia page doesn't provide a good enogh explanation. Other resources don't seem to be to be up to mark either. Suffice it to say thqt Nagarjuna denies contradictions (p & ~p) and so he must've had something else in mind by, what I believe is a, rejection of the rejection of the law of the excluded middle.

I can't follow ... what does any of this has to do with "true" and "good" or the OP? (Here are my two bits on 'wisdom'.)

Truth table for p v ~p
p v ~p
T T FT
F T TF — TheMadFool

I don't understand this notation. there are only two variables, and one result. Why the four truth values? You are naming something or imbuing something with true or false, and I don't know what it is that you do that to. It is not on the initial line; it's in your mind; and you don't tell us what it is. This what you wrote is not comprehensible to a normal philosopher without further explanation.

Like telling a kid santa clause does not exist. :) — Tiberiusmoon

Very much so.

Ethics seems to have a very deep connection with epistemology. — TheMadFool

I don't see how you could have got to that conclusion, aside from discovering that some logical statements are always necessarily true.

Wait until you hit the next lesson, and read about
p and ~ p

You will be meeting Satan himself, as the above is always false. (I surmise that would be your perception, since always true leads, according to you, as in the spirited description you provided, to a magnificently morally high standard of always telling the truth.)

. Out of a simple question ... Out of a simple reality ... you're making such a cloudy noise of thoughts followed by thoughts ... unnecessarily ...

. It's good for the Ego ... I know that ... but it's not good for understanding ... as such ... right ... ?!

. I want you to understand this ...

. Knowledge is neither good or bad ...

. There's nothing in this world ... whose nature is .... good or bad ...

. Good or Bad are nonexistent phenomena ...

. Good or Bad are a subtle craft ... created by mediocre beings ... by repressive stupid individuals ... by priests ... so fear can be born in you ... that ... you're not enough ... that ... you're not good the way you are ...

. And ... in fact ... you're good the way you're ... nothing can be improved on you ...

. Do never say a person is bad ... Why is it so ... ?

. Because it makes you presumptuous .... it makes you thinking that just people like you ... are good ...

. Don't be a moralist ... Don't be a puritan ... Don't be a so-called perfectionist ...

. Be ... just ... a simple human being ... Don't judge nobody ... unless you're perfect ...

. You're perfectly imperfect ... and ... that makes you a beautiful human being ...

. Now ... Let's see your question ...

. You can go on thinking, accumulating information—but those are paper boats, they won’t help in an ocean voyage. If you remain on the shore and go on talking about them, it is okay—paper boats are as good as real boats if you never go for the voyage, but if you go for the voyage with paper boats then you will be drowned. And words are nothing but paper boats—not even that substantial.

. And when we accumulate knowledge, what do we do? Nothing changes inside. The being remains absolutely unaffected. Just like dust, information gathers around you—just like dust gathering around a mirror: the mirror remains the same, only it loses its mirroring quality. What you know through the mind makes no difference—your consciousness remains the same. In fact, it becomes worse, because accumulated knowledge is just like dust around your mirroring consciousness; the consciousness reflects less and less and less.

. The more you know, the less aware you become. When you are completely filled with scholarship, borrowed knowledge, you are already dead. Then nothing comes to you as your own. Everything is borrowed and parrot-like.

. The mind is a parrot. The mind is a computer, a bio-computer. It accumulates. It is never original, it cannot be. Whatsoever it has borrowed, is taken from others.

. You become original only when you transcend the mind. When the mind is dropped, and the consciousness faces existence directly, immediately, moment to moment in contact with existence, you become original. Then for the first time, you are authentically your own. Otherwise, all ideas are borrowed. You may quote scriptures, you may know by heart all the Vedas, the Koran, the Gita, the Bible, but that makes no difference—they are not your own. And the knowledge that is not your own is dangerous, more dangerous than ignorance, because it is a hidden ignorance, and you will not be able to see that you are deceiving yourself. You are carrying false coins and thinking that you are a rich man. Sooner or later your poverty will be revealed. Then you will be shocked.

. This happens whenever you die, whenever death comes near. In the shock that death gives to you, suddenly you become aware that you have not gained anything—because only that is gained which is gained in being.

. You have accumulated fragments of knowledge from here and there, you may have become a great ‘encyclopedia’, but that is not the point; and particularly for those who are in search of truth, that is a barrier, not a help. Knowledge has to be transcended.

. When there is no knowledge, knowing happens because knowing is your quality—the quality of consciousness. It is just like a mirror: the mirror reflects whatsoever is there; consciousness reflects the truth that is always in front of you, just at the tip of your nose.

. But the mind is in between—and the mind goes on chattering, and the truth remains just in front of you and the mind goes on chattering. And you go with the mind. You miss.

. First: knowledge is borrowed, realise this. The very realisation becomes a dropping of it. You don’t have to do anything. Simply realise that whatsoever you know you have heard, you have not known it. You have read it, you have not realised it; it is not a revelation to you, it is a conditioning of the mind. It has been taught to you—you have not learned it. Truth can be learned, cannot be taught.

. Learning means being responsive to whatsoever is around you—that which is, to be responsive to it. This is great learning, but not knowledge.

. There is no way to find the truth—except through finding it. There is no shortcut to it. You cannot borrow, you cannot steal, you cannot deceive, to get to it. There is simply no way unless you are without any mind within you—because the mind is wavering, the mind is a continuous trembling; the mind is never unmoving, it is a movement. The mind is just like a breeze, continuously flowing, and the flame goes on wavering. When the mind is not there the breeze stops, and the flame becomes unmoving. When your consciousness is an unmoving flame, you know the truth. You have to learn how not to follow the mind.

. Nobody can give you the truth, nobody, not even a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna—nobody can give it to you. And it is beautiful that nobody can give it to you, otherwise it would become a commodity in the market. If it can be given, then it can be sold as well. If it can be given, then it can be stolen as well. If it can be given then you can take it from your friend, borrow it. It is beautiful that truth is not transferable in any way. Unless you reach it, you cannot reach. Unless you become it, you never have it.

So, if you want to tell the truth about tomorrow and rain you could say, either it'll rain tomorrow OR it'll not rain tomorrow. The same logic applies to any other proposition.

Conclusion: It's possible to always tell truths. — TheMadFool

Either there's enough gas in my car to get me to town or there isn't enough gas in the car to get me to town.
Either I'm dead, or I'm not dead.

Such "truth telling" is useless.

I have someone very close to me who has zero tolerance for lies - comes down hard on anyone caught lying - and the reason for that attitude is 100% ethical in flavor.

How about, solely for the purposes of an experiment, viewing that person as immature, naive; or as bossy and aggressive, rather than as a moral ideal?

Taking into account that one is ethically duty-bound to always tell the truth, isn't it rather intriguing that one way of doing that is by resorting to a tautological disjunction (p v ~p)?

Either one is ethically duty-bound to always tell the truth, or one is not ethically duty-bound to always tell the truth.
There you go.
There is no such ethical duty.

Thus, in some sense, being honest/truthful is to admit one is uncertain.

Only when one is in fact uncertain.

Ethics seems to have a very deep connection with epistemology.

Such is the view of virtue epistemologists: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-virtue/

I can't follow ... what does any of this has to do with "true" and "good" or the OP? (Here are my two bits on 'wisdom'.) — 180 Proof

I may have gone off on a tangent there. Do excuse the digression as I hadn't slept well.

Let me summarize my thoughts for your convenience.

a) The easiest, simplest way to never lie given a proposition p is to claim p v ~p, a tautology and ergo, always true but one must remember that truth in this case is a function of the logical form of p v ~p i.e. the specific content doesn't matter.

b) Thus one way of heeding the moral injunction to "always tell the truth" is to resort to p v ~p for a proposition p. You could, using this rather obvious technique, become an examplar of honesty; after all, you can't possibly utter a falsehood with p v ~p. It might be worth noting that the universal requirement for truthfulness is nowhere more emphasized than in religion and Kantian ethics.

c) From a certain perspective then, we can say that to lie, faleshood itself, deception to the nth degree, is the exact opposite of p v ~p i.e. falsity is ~(p v ~p) and what is ~(p v ~p) but p & ~p or a frank contradiction. In other words, the moral obligation to always tell the truth is a roundabout way of telling us, whosoever cares to listen, that we should avoid contradictions on pain of upsetting God himself in a religious context. There's probably more that can be said but my brain doesn't seem up to the task.

d) The other possibility is that all I've said above is balderdash, poppycock, utter nonsense. What "always tell the truth" is some kind of coded message that p v ~p though the most obvious way to follow the moral commandment is, instead of being the solution, actually the problem. Whatever else p v ~p is, it becomes important at this juncture to realize that it's the well-formed formula (?) version of the law of the excluded middle (LEM). LEM, true to its name, excludes a possibility ("middle") which Wikipedia informs me is the contradiction p & ~p.

@Wayfarer However, in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, Nagarjuna, the founder does something amazing with the LEM. He rejects it outright as part of Nagarjuna's tetralemma i.e. he states ~(p v ~p) which in plain English means neither p nor not p but then he makes it a point to also deny p & ~p (contradiction). With this he, to use a gaming analogy, unlocks the so-called middle of LEM but by rejecting p & ~p he wishes to warn us that p & ~p ain't the middle he's interested in. Please note this is my interpretation and may not reflect mainstream views which I discuss below.

Nagarjuna, as part of his famous tetralemma, rejects even ~(p v ~p) like so ~~(p v ~p) which means not that neither p nor not p, another way of saying to hell with the...er...middle as well. Thus for a proposition p he says no to p, no to not p, no to p and not p and, last but not the least, no to neither p nor not p (the middle). In essence, Nagarjuna takes us one step further from where we would've been if we'd only rejected the LEM. Please note that the logical notations employed herein may not match up perfectly with Nagarjuna's own ideas about what his tetralemma truly means. For example, I don't think ~~(p v ~p) evaluates to p v ~p as it does in classical logic.

Multi-valued logic, paraconsistent logic, fuzzly logic, etc. maybe relevant.

FYI, the greek skeptics like Pyrrho had remarkably similar thoughts, so uncanny is the resemblance is that it's been hypothesized the Greek skeptics borrowed heavily from Nagarjuna and his ilk. More on that below.

Nagarjuna's tetralemma in re skepticism.

For any proposition p,

1. p or ~p or (p & ~p) or ~(p v ~p)

2. ~p :down: says Nagarjuna

3. ~p or (p & ~p) or ~(p v ~p) [1, 2 DS]

4. ~~p :down: says Nagarjuna

5. (p & ~p) or ~(p v ~p) [3, 4 DS]

6. ~(p & ~p) :down: says Nagarjuna

7. ~(p v ~p) [5, 6 DS]

8. ~~(p v ~p) :down: says Nagarjuna

9. p v ~p [8 DN]

I wonder if the above is an accurate description of Pyrrho's logic for skepticism because Nagarjuna's negation rule seems to differ significantly from those of Pyrrho e.g. for Nagarjuna ~~(p v ~p) = p v ~p is false.

Anyway, if Pyrrho did arrive at p v ~p (line 9 above) via denial of every possibility for a proposition, it seems like a good stance for a skeptic to take; after all, a skeptic knows that either p or not p (p v ~p) but denies that it's possible to know that p or to know that not p. In other words, p v ~p sums up a skeptic's position regarding any proposition.

This immediately raises the question as to whether the ethical principle to always be truthful is just another name for skepticism? It's kinda like a person who can't bear the fact that fae doesn't have a penny to faer name but just to make faerself feel better fae tells faerself that fae "has" money, 0.00 dollars to be precise.

More can be said but I'm just too tired to think.