If x makes an untruthful statement to y, without the intention that y believe that untruthful statement to be true, but with the intention that y believe something else to be true that x believes to be true, then x is not lying to y, according to L1. Examples of such non-deceptive untruthful statements include polite untruths (Kant 1997, 27; Mahon 2003, 109).
However, in the case of polite untruths, such as "Madam is not at home," the untruthful statement is simply a euphemism: "For example, the words "She is not at home," delivered by a servant or a relative at the door, have become a mere euphemism for indisposition or disinclination" (Isenberg 1973, 256).
They might be hieroglyphs, frenzied maenads or black serpents with men's heads and menacing tongues – for stinging, perhaps, for uttering untruths, for screaming fury.
May, the ECHR's leading opponent within government, had long found Grieve an irritant; as far back as 2011, he had dismissed objections like hers to the convention as "hysterical untruths".
And the people doing it are ignorant of – or blatantly ignoring – the facts … Any debate should be based on fact not untruths.
"The Conservatives are peddling untruths about Labour's spending plans and must stop misleading the public," she said.
It is not only Vladimir Putin's propaganda channels that spew untruths: if you read certain magazines in the US and rely on Twitter, it is possible to believe that the Ukrainians shot down MH17, that Barack Obama ordered the poison gas attack on east Damascus last summer, that the west "provoked" the conflict in Ukraine in order to boost the fracking industry, and so on.
These particular untruths might prompt a perjury investigation.I, your correspondent, am figuring it all out for next week's issue.
Americans have been fed, during the summer slanging, a diet of ludicrous untruths: that the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, for instance, would have been abandoned to die of his motor neurone disease had he been unfortunate enough to live in Britain.
Letters are welcome via e-mail to [email protected] voice of dissentSIR – Your article on the Iranian opposition group, the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (PMOI), ("Where will they all go?", April 11th) repeats untruths commonly voiced by the Iranian regime's Ministry of Intelligence and Security to demonise the Iranian resistance.
He suspected that untruths were being peddled to curb liberty, and he was having none of it.John Stuart Mill might have disagreed with him; freedom, he wrote, must be limited when it injures others.
