On Being True Or False

The central issue of this book is not ‘What is true?’ or ‘What is truth?’, but ‘What sort of thing is true (or false)?’ This question has had several answers over the centuries, but, as argued here, all the main ones are mistaken. It is not pieces of language (sentences), events in the mind (beliefs), nor transcendent objects (propositions) that are either true or false. Rather, the chief truth-bearer is what someone says (or writes). Being true or false is rooted in human talk. The book argues that the other candidates must either be rejected or understood differently from traditional interpretations. Along the way, a large number of topics not usually considered in philosophical writings are touched upon—and there is a significant criticism of what theoretical linguistics has to say on the issues. No other book has attempted such a broad examination of the topic.

"If I could pick one book to hand to every teen—and adult—on earth, this is the one. True or False is accessible, thorough, and searingly honest, and we desperately needed it." —Becky Albertalli, author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda A former CIA analyst unveils the true history of fake news and gives readers tips on how to avoid falling victim to it in this highly designed informative YA nonfiction title. "Fake news" is a term you’ve probably heard a lot in the last few years, but it’s not a new phenomenon. From the ancient Egyptians to the French Revolution to Jack the Ripper and the founding fathers, fake news has been around as long as human civilization. But that doesn’t mean that we should just give up on the idea of finding the truth. In True or False, former CIA analyst Cindy Otis will take readers through the history and impact of misinformation over the centuries, sharing stories from the past and insights that readers today can gain from them. Then, she shares lessons learned in over a decade working for the CIA, including actionable tips on how to spot fake news, how to make sense of the information we receive each day, and, perhaps most importantly, how to understand and see past our own information biases, so that we can think critically about important issues and put events happening around us into context. True or False includes a wealth of photo illustrations, informative inserts, and sidebars containing interesting facts and trivia sure to engage readers in critical thinking and analysis. This title has common core connections.

Jesus, True or False has been debated for hundreds of years as well the coming of Jesus foretold and debated hundreds of years before Jesus was even born. How can this be, why is this subject matter so sought out and even fought over century after century? As Pope Julius II use to say to Michelangelo taking over four years’ time to paint and finish up the Sistine Chapel ceiling, … “when will it end?” Perhaps it starts with the beginning battle between good and evil, light versus darkness. Who else on planet earth has been foretold of his arrival for eighty-nine generations before he was born? Who else while alive in human form owned no great positions yet produced the philosophy that has created unlimited amounts of financial millionaires and beyond?

One of our most brilliantly iconoclastic playwrights takes on the art of profession of acting with these words: invent nothing, deny nothing, speak up, stand up, stay out of school. Acting schools, “interpretation,” “sense memory,” “The Method”—David Mamet takes a jackhammer to the idols of contemporary acting, while revealing the true heroism and nobility of the craft. He shows actors how to undertake auditions and rehearsals, deal with agents and directors, engage audiences, and stay faithful to the script, while rejecting the temptations that seduce so many of their colleagues. Bracing in its clarity, exhilarating in its common sense, True and False is as shocking as it is practical, as witty as it is instructive, and as irreverent as it is inspiring.

Cultural Realities of Being offers a dialogue between academic activity and everyday lives by providing an interface between several perspectives on human conduct. Very often, academic pursuits are arcane and obscure for ordinary people, this book will attempt to disentangle these dialogues, lifting everyday discourse and providing a forum for advancing discussion and dialogue. Nandita Chaudhary, S. Anandalakshmy and Jaan Valsiner bring together contributors from the field of cultural psychology to consider how people living within social groups, regardless of how liberal, are guided by collective reality and interconnected with life circumstances. The book discusses experiences and events in the lives of people of Indian cultures covering topics including family, food, pilgrimages, social dynamics and truth, in order to expand the material on human phenomena under the broad frame of cultural psychology. The book builds upon rich cultural traditions present in India, and precisely because of this focus, the book has much larger implications and relevance to the field and aims to orient the academic reader from around the world to viewing India and Indian society as a valuable area for research. Divided into three sections, the book covers: • Social presentation in culture • Representing relations • Children and youth in culture This book includes commentaries from expert academics from outside of India, providing a bridge between academic reality and cultural discourse and throwing fresh light on the everyday events presented in the text. Cultural Realities of Being will be essential reading for those studying Cross Cultural Psychology as well as those interested in social representation and identity.

Pragmatics often begins by supposing that specifying and describing truth bearers is a proper task for semantics. The main thrust of the present work is to show why truth and truth bearers lie essentially beyond the descriptive reach of semantics, and to outline a theory of truth bearers as a proper and fundamental task for pragmatics. It is also common for treatments, or definitions of truth to be confused with substantive theories about truth bearers, with a variety of unfortunate results. This monograph suggests a way of separating these tasks, and shows how many problems are thus avoided. Some emphasis is placed on the generally universal — i.e., nonlanguage-specific — character of pragmatic topics, and of truth. These issues occasion a discussion of semantic paradoxes, and of several relativities in the notion of truth.

Klee’s last book, his first, was variously hailed as “sharply intelligent” (Publishers Weekly) and “harsh, spastic” (Justin Taylor): we like to think of True False as intelligently spastic, or sharply harsh—disquieting and funny. A collection of stories that range from the very short to the merely short, these forty-four tales evoke extraordinary scenes in an understated manner that’s marked Klee one of today’s most intriguing writers. From the apocalyptic to the utopic, from a haunted office building to a suburban pool that may be alive, a day in the mind of a demi-god Pythagoras to a secret race to develop artificial love, True False captures a fractured reality more real than our own.

This book serves as a security practitioner’s guide to today’s most crucial issues in cyber security and IT infrastructure. It offers in-depth coverage of theory, technology, and practice as they relate to established technologies as well as recent advancements. It explores practical solutions to a wide range of cyber-physical and IT infrastructure protection issues. Composed of 11 chapters contributed by leading experts in their fields, this highly useful book covers disaster recovery, biometrics, homeland security, cyber warfare, cyber security, national infrastructure security, access controls, vulnerability assessments and audits, cryptography, and operational and organizational security, as well as an extensive glossary of security terms and acronyms. Written with instructors and students in mind, this book includes methods of analysis and problem-solving techniques through hands-on exercises and worked examples as well as questions and answers and the ability to implement practical solutions through real-life case studies. For example, the new format includes the following pedagogical elements: • Checklists throughout each chapter to gauge understanding • Chapter Review Questions/Exercises and Case Studies • Ancillaries: Solutions Manual; slide package; figure files This format will be attractive to universities and career schools as well as federal and state agencies, corporate security training programs, ASIS certification, etc. Chapters by leaders in the field on theory and practice of cyber security and IT infrastructure protection, allowing the reader to develop a new level of technical expertise Comprehensive and up-to-date coverage of cyber security issues allows the reader to remain current and fully informed from multiple viewpoints Presents methods of analysis and problem-solving techniques, enhancing the reader's grasp of the material and ability to implement practical solutions