Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/201

185 doubtful expediency. I cannot but feel that the young, and perhaps also the majority of professional readers, are likely rather to be misled and harmed by the loose deductions and careless declarations of the Study, than benefited by its production.

famous Elench of the Eubulides: if a man acknowledges that he lies, does he lie or speak the truth? is treated, as by Hegel (History of Philosophy, vol. I, p. 459), as a formal contradiction. Hegel remarks, "If it is said that he tells the truth, this contradicts the content of his utterance, for he confesses that he lies. But if it is asserted that he lies, it may be objected that his confession is the truth. He thus both lies and does not lie; but a simple answer cannot be given to the question raised. For here we have a union of two opposites, lying and truth, and their immediate contradiction." But the difficulty of this Elench rests, I think, not, as generally supposed, on logical contradiction, but on psychological confusion. Strictly speaking, one cannot acknowledge to lying, cannot say I lie, but only I lied. A lie is always about something, hence one cannot in the same psychic act lie and acknowledge to this lie, i.e., a psychic act is never its own object. In the nature of psychic fact a lie cannot take cognizance of itself. Hence the acknowledging to a lie need not be confounded with the lie acknowledged. But a man may lie in the acknowledging to a lie, he may lie about lying as about anything else; he may falsely say, "I lied." Thus he may falsely say, "I lied in telling you it was ten miles to Dover." A man may then lie in saying that he lied, and lie in saying that he lied about lying, and lie in this last acknowledgment, and so on in infinite regressus; but however far we go back, we do not get contradiction, but falseness or truth may be properly affirmed of any acknowledging act. The acknowledging act may at any stage be a lie, but it always takes a new acknowledging act to acknowledge the lie. Hence I take it that psychological analysis shows that the Elench can always receive a simple answer: in every acknowledging, he either lies or does not lie.

But the Elench, properly stated, is this: Can the liar confess to a lie? If he confesses truthfully, of course he is not a liar; only by claiming to be truth-teller does he become liar. However, if on the other hand, he confesses untruthfully to a lie, he implicates himself in a truth, and so is not liar. If a man falsely declares that he lied in saying it was ten miles to Dover, he says he lied when he did not lie, and thus admits himself as truth-teller. The real paradox, then, is