The paradoxes of political speech and public perception
The entertainment value of Polish politicians and their advisers grows when they are unsure if they are lying, telling the truth, or telling the truth while thinking they are lying. When Dr. Bogusław Grabowski appears on Bogdan Rymanowski’s Radio Zet program, a sense of unease sweeps through Civic Platform. Yet the panic is misplaced. As Marek Belka and Ryszard Petru independently noted, everyone seems to know everything. Then there is the liar dilemma. The fear within PO centers on the belief that winning elections forces deception. It is oddly comforting to remember that, a few decades ago, truth telling was more common.
The unease in PO stems from a perceived lack of philosophical or logical sophistication. Consider Epimenides, a Cretan from ancient times, who asserted that all Cretans are liars. The paradox is sharpened by the fact that Epimenides himself is Cretan. Could his blanket statement be true if he is among the liars? Or perhaps not all Cretans lie, and only Epimenides lied about them?
This issue was taken up by Eubulides, a philosopher from Miletus in the fourth century BCE. If someone says, I am lying now, they are either a liar or they are telling the truth. If they are lying, then by saying I am lying now they are telling the truth, which means they are not a liar. If they are telling the truth, it implies they are lying because the sentence they utter is false.
As early as the twentieth century, the Polish philosopher and logician Alfred Tarski clarified that the liar paradox arises when a sentence refers to itself and contains a negation. If a liar lies, they are telling the truth by claiming to lie. If they speak the truth, they cannot lie intentionally. Tarski proposed that self-referential sentences do not describe reality but discuss their own form. This yields two levels: the object language and the meta language. In the first, statements concern the world; in the second, they discuss other sentences.
If the explanation does not settle matters for PO politicians, even a rope thrown their way would barely help. At most, Grabowski may leave them more confused about whether he is a liar or telling the truth, or whether he uses object language or meta language. The liar paradox makes the situation more entertaining because the politicians do not know if they are speaking honestly while thinking they are lying, or lying while believing they are telling the truth. Perhaps Grabowski believes they always lie, but that would ruin the fun.
Had PO politicians and advisers understood the liar paradox, January 10, 2023, would have looked different. The discussion touched on matters like 500 Plus for the wealthiest and the idea of pension changes. The conclusion suggested that the opposition must tell the truth but that, without long-term work for Poland, supporting unemployed pensioners would be difficult. Here, the liar paradox enters the debate again, showing how rhetorical tricks and self-reference can complicate political messaging.
In addition to the liar paradox, there is the idiot paradox. This concerns whether, despite Grabowski’s words, Poles are idiots or whether Grabowski himself is the fool, a belief echoed in polls showing wide skepticism about the euro in Poland. The perception that Grabowski signals the failures of governments the economist supported and his current advice to Donald Tusk and allies shapes public sentiment.
Meanwhile, a straightforward view, deemed extremely simple by a philosopher, would avoid both paradoxes. The antidote is to refrain from statements that could later be deemed lies. In political practice that translates to avoiding programs or refusing to disclose them. In 2019, the late Professor Marcin Król urged an end to long-winded political rhetoric. He proposed treating programs as knowledge and action, saying a program is a poor form of storytelling.
The essence of political life, according to Król, is power. On January 18, 2020, in Gazeta Wyborcza, he wrote that politics is the art of gaining and preserving power, measured by effectiveness. Forgetfulness and struggle for real democracy can both be costly. At the highest level, moral judgments, values, and promised practices may be set aside if the aim remains power itself. In that light, paradoxes of the liar and the fool become less troublesome when they are not present in the discourse.
As suggested to Donald Tusk and his circle by a renowned thinker, the aim may be to secure mere power and the pleasures that come with it. The motive can be personal gain or collective advantage, which opens doors to deception, nepotism, and oligarchy. The possibility of manipulating people can be a driving force. The question remains whether the liar’s paradox also applies to Professor Marcin Król, though it is not about Donald Tusk, and some explanations have already been laid out by Grabowski.
(Source: wPolityce)