Lying and Truth

Lying vs Honesty vs facts:

Lying is intent to convey falsehood whether through action or inaction

Honesty is an intent to convey facts through action.

These are both irrespective of the actual facts.  Someone could lie and convey factual information if they are misinformed. and the reverse is also true.  Propagating a falsehood is the putting forward of false information, whether or not you know it's actual truth value. 

There are four states: 

You are conveying True information and believe that you are conveying True information This is Honesty (and  being correct)

You are conveying True information and believe you are conveying False information This is Lying and being misinformed (and unlikely)

You are conveying False information and believe that you are conveying False information This is lying (and being correct)

You are conveying False information and believe that you are conveying True information This is Honesty and being misinformed

       Note that these states really have two features. One refers to the state of reality the other to the state of someones belief about the nature of reality. I don't want* to get into a long diatribe about the values and reasons for considering an objective reality to be true.  So basically something can either be true or false, but you can also believe it to be true or false** And it is how we act on our beliefs that reflect whether we are lying or not lying, but it is how what we say reflects reality that determines if we are telling the truth or not. (not lying or ~lying)   

      Now there are ways of telling if someone is lying, that have various degrees of reliability from some to none.  But there are certain techniques for getting at the truth that are very thorough. And while it is a good idea to know something about the art and science of deception. It is a simpler and worthier practice to learn how to find the truth regardless of the opinions of others.  These methods are the various types of formal and informal reasoning of which logic is the main branch.  Logic itself can only deal with the way ideas are structured and requires information and knowledge to be used well.  Further discussion of these ideas is beyond the scope of this essay and will be covered elsewhere.

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*Well, I want to but I wont here.

** You can also hold the following beliefs, although they are very difficult to do and we typically have an opinion even if we don't admit it.  that something is unknown*** (insufficient data)  , that something is unknowable (called agnosticism) or Fuck All, Who cares, let's go to the pub (known as indifference).

*** There is of course that famous Rumsfeld quote that sums up the various states of knowledge; Which for some reason people find amusing when it is actually quite astute:      "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."