Half-truths

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Half-truths are deceptive statements, that include some element of truth. The statement might be partly true, the statement may be true but only part of the whole truth, or it may utilize some deceptive element, such as improper punctuation, especially if the intent is to deceive, evade blame or misrepresent the truth.

1 Purpose
2 Politics
3 Meme Theory
4 Statistics
5 Examples
6 Quotations
7 See also
8 External links
9 References

[edit] Purpose

The purpose of a half truth is to make something that is really only a belief appear to be knowledge. According to the justified true belief theory of knowledge, in order to know that a given proposition is true, one must not only believe in the relevant true proposition, but one must also have a good reason for doing so. A half truth deceives the recipient by presenting something believable and using those aspects of the statement that can be shown to be true as good reason to believe the statement is true in its entirety, or the statement represents the whole truth. A person who is deceived by a half truth will then consider the proposition to be knowledge and act accordingly.

[edit] Politics

Half-truths are an integral part of politics in representative democracies. The reputation of a political candidate can be irreparably damaged if he or she is exposed in a lie, so a complex style of language has evolved to minimise the chance of this happening. If someone has not said something, they cannot be accused of lying. As a consequence, politics has become a world where half-truths are expected, and political statements are rarely accepted at face value^[1].

[edit] Meme Theory

Alfred North Whitehead, a British mathematician who became an American philosopher, said in 1953: "There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil". Richard Brodie acknowledges Whitehead and extends the idea when he claims "the truth of any proposition depends on the assumptions you make in considering it - the distinct memes you use in thinking about it".^[2]. Brodie considers half-truths are a necessary part of human interaction because they allow practical application of ideas when it is impractical to convey all the information needed to make a fully informed decision.

[edit] Statistics

Milo Schield, who has a PhD in Astrophysics, is a professor at Augsburg College who teaches statistical literacy, traditional statistics and critical thinking at the undergraduate and graduate level.^[3]In his 2005 paper, Statistical Prevarication: Telling Half Truths Using Statistics^[4] , Schield notes,

All too often statistics are characterized as lies. But statistics are more likely to be half truths than lies.... statistical prevarication [is] the art of straddling both sides of an issue or idea... If statistics educators are to avoid a charge of statistical negligence, they should focus more on identifying and eliminating sources of statistical prevarication in their teaching and textbooks. And statistical educators should do more to help students become statistically literate in detecting statistical prevarication.

Let us assume a statistic is true, it represents one part of the whole picture. The fastest growing sport, may not be the most popular. ^[4]

[edit] Examples

The sun sets in the west. This is a half truth because, although the sun sets in a westerly direction at most locations in the world, the actual direction of the sunset varies in a continuous manner between due south (near the poles from September to March) to due north (near the poles from March to September). Depending on the season and the latitude the sun may not actually set at all for months. The half-truth that the sun sets in the west is a convenient meme for most of the world's population, but anyone who treated it as an absolute truth for navigational purposes would be courting disaster^[2]. Also, it is not true for all planets; for example, on Venus, the sun (if it were visible) would set in the east.

Myths have also been noted to be half-truths, most notably when they form part of an ideology

[edit] Quotations

The notion of half-truths has existed in various cultures, giving rise to several epigrammatic sayings.

Karl Kraus, an Austrian journalist, critic, playwright, and poet noted, "An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half"
William A. Mathews, author of Lonergan's Quest: A Study of Desire in the Authoring of Insight, stated, "All maxims have their antagonist maxims; proverbs should be sold in pairs, a single one being but a half truth."
Ardha-Satya Mithya Apeksa Bhayankara Translation: Half-truth is more dangerous than falsehood.^[5]
Arthur Koestler "Two half-truths do not make a truth, and two half-cultures do not make a culture."
Yiddish Proverb "A half-truth is a whole lie."
Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist who made fundamental contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, said, "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." reflects the little understood world of dimensional truths, or half-truths as they are called. ^[6]