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Jonah Goldberg considers Donald Trump's relationship with the truth, and finds it ... absent:
While I cannot vouch for Frankfurt's book, as interesting as it sounds, I think the above applies to Trump, whose breathtaking ignorance never seems to interfere with his constant babbling, or the appetite of a certain portion of the population to swallow whatever he says hook, line, and sinker -- or of another to waste its time "fact-checking" him.In the immediate aftermath of Pretti's killing, members of the Trump administration took to TV and social media to describe Pretti as a "domestic terrorist" and an "assassin." Gregory Bovino, the CBP commander on the ground in Minneapolis, said "This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement." (Bovino has since been removed from his post.) Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem echoed the same talking points. Pretti's motive, she claimed, was "to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement" because he was a "domestic terrorist." White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller asserted that Pretti was an "assassin" who tried to "murder federal agents."
The administration is making all of this up. But that doesn't necessarily mean they are lying. They just don't care what the truth is.
In his seminal book On Bulls -- (the actual title isn't censored), philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt argues that lying implies a certain respect for, and knowledge of, the truth. "It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bulls -- requires no such conviction." What this administration does is worse than lying because they don't care whether something is true or false, only whether it will be believed. [italics in original, links dropped]
Frankfurt's point is similar to, and somewhat reminds me of another philosopher's discussion of arbitrary statements:
Since an arbitrary statement has no connection to man's means of knowledge or his grasp of reality, cognitively speaking such a statement must be treated as though nothing had been said.Leonard Peikoff's words capture why arbitrary pronouncements are worse than lies, and perhaps offer a guide towards better dealing with what Trump and his similarly cognitively self-crippled minions say: Rather than worry too much about fact-checking them, consider what they intend to accomplish with their words, and look much more at what they have done and might likely do -- and act accordingly.
Let me elaborate this point. An arbitrary claim has no cognitive status whatever. According to Objectivism, such a claim is not to be regarded as true or as false. If it is arbitrary, it is entitled to no epistemological assessment at all; it is simply to be dismissed as though it hadn't come up... The truth is established by reference to a body of evidence and within a context; the false is pronounced false because it contradicts the evidence. The arbitrary, however, has no relation to evidence, facts, or context. It is the human equivalent of [noises produced by] a parrot ... sounds without any tie to reality, without content or significance.
In a sense, therefore, the arbitrary is even worse than the false. The false at least has a relation (albeit a negative one) to reality; it has reached the field of human cognition, although it represents an error -- but in that sense it is closer to reality than the brazenly arbitrary.
I want to note here parenthetically that the words expressing an arbitrary claim may perhaps be judged as true or false in some other cognitive context (if and when they are no longer put forth as arbitrary), but this is irrelevant to the present issue, because it changes the epistemological situation... [bold added]
-- CAV
