ABSTRACT
There are figures in history for whom defending the truth of the propositions expressed in their beliefs was more important than their continuing earthly existence. Socrates was an early documented example of a principled self-execution, and his attitude to truthfulness is summarized in Table 2.2. His compatriot successor Plato is on record as wishing to ban poetry, plays, and songs in his ideal republic if their constituent statements were not true, so puritanical were his attitudes to language use for true representations. Since those times, many martyrs have been created because they would not renounce what they held as well-founded beliefs about matters moral, ideological, scientific, and religious. It is only to people who do not prioritize integrity in truth-telling that such commitments are strange. In half contrast, evasion of the truth is a pervasive feature of human communications that may appear to prioritize truth as a value but actually seek to implant some other construction of reality or avoid an explicit pronouncement on the matter at issue (Bavelas, Black, Chovill, & Mullet, 1990). However, only explicit falsity is treated here (section 4.2).
