Sobre lenguaje, mentiras y otros avances evolutivos

Abstract

The Lie plays a primordial role in our individual and social existence. Several other species count with rudimentary ways of communication through simple languages, but the lie is something strictly human, something that presupposes an evolutionary advance to the mere existence of language. The lie is an offensive and defensive evolutionary weapon. The crisis caused by the “linguistic turn” has turned the lie out from the moral realm and has made it and object of study from many different and multiple perspectives. The idea exposed in this text is that the present interest on lie is fundamentally based in the problem posed with the crisis of truth: The crisis of our capacity of affirmation, representation, knowledge, etc. If we have renounced to truth, we’ll have to begin to deal with lie: With its functions, its effects and its consequences. The meaning of lie is analyzed in a psychological, social and linguistic level. The matter’s been displaced to more pragmatic perspectives: The lie has meaning in relation to others.