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3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 7. Falsehood

[how to understand failures to be true]

6 ideas
In the deeper sense of truth, to be untrue resembles being bad; badness is untrue to a thing's nature [Hegel]
     Full Idea: When truth is viewed in the deeper sense, to be untrue means much the same as to be bad. A bad man is an untrue man, and man who does not behave as his notion or his vocation requires.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §213)
     A reaction: See Idea 19071 for the 'deeper sense'. This seems to confirm that Hegel's deeper concept of truth resembles authenticity. I guess it will be something fulfilling the essence of the thing. Doctors must be proper doctors. Gold must be true gold?
Only because there is thought is there untruth [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Only because there is thought is there untruth.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Will to Power (notebooks) [1888], §574)
     A reaction: A nicely oblique place to start in one's study of truth. Untruth is a very human contribution to the world, making virtually no sense of animal thought. Meta-thought seems to be required.
To love truth, you must know how to lie [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Inability to lie is far from being love of truth. ....He who cannot lie does not know what truth is.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra [1884], 4.13.9)
Asserting not-p is saying p is false [Russell]
     Full Idea: When you do what a logician would call 'asserting not-p', you are saying 'p is false'.
     From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5)
     A reaction: This is presumably classical logic. If we could label p as 'undetermined' (a third truth value), then 'not-p' might equally mean 'undetermined'.
A good theory of truth must make falsehood possible [Russell]
     Full Idea: A good theory of truth must be such as to admit of its opposite, falsehood.
     From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.12)
True and false are not symmetrical; false is more complex, involving negation [Williamson]
     Full Idea: The concepts of truth and falsity are not symmetrical. The asymmetry is visible in the fundamental principles governing them, for F is essentially more complex than T, by its use of negation.
     From: Timothy Williamson (Vagueness [1994], 7.5)
     A reaction: If T and F are primitives, controlled by axioms, then they might be symmetrical in nature, but asymmetrical in use. However, if forced to choose just one primitive, I presume it would be T.