Steven Pinker: Herbert A. Simon Fellow

"The latter sentence was uttered by President Clinton in answer to the following question from the Starr commission … ‘Whether or not your attorney knew of your relationship with Miss Lewinsky. The statement that there was no sex of any kind in any manner, shape, or form, with President Clinton, was an utterly false statement. Is that correct?’ And Clinton replied, ‘It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If ‘is’ means is, and never has been, that’s one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement.’

"This is in fact not casuistry but an insightful analysis of a phenomenon that I am writing about in a new book, namely, the way in which space and time are encoded in language. Like many languages, English distinguishes between the location of an event in time relative to the moment of speaking, what we call ‘tense,’ and the ‘shape’ of an event, that is, how it unfolds in time: whether it’s instantaneous, protracted, has a discreet ending point and so on (linguists call this dimension of meaning ‘aspect.’) In the circumstances that Clinton was referring to, he was absolutely correct to make the distinction. The affair that he was being asked about had been over for several months at the time of the question, so when he said ‘there is no sex’ (more accurately, when he didn’t disagree with his lawyer saying it), he was not speaking an untruth.

"The questioner, nonetheless, was incredulous: ‘I just want to make sure I understand you correctly. Do you mean to say that because you were not engaging in sexual activity with Miss Lewinsky during the deposition that the statement Mr. Bennett made might be literally true?’ And Clinton said, ‘No sir, I mean at the time of the deposition that was well beyond any point of improper contact between me and Miss Lewinsky, so that anyone generally speaking in the present tense saying that that was not an improper relationship would be telling the truth. If that person said that there was not, in the present tense, the present tense encompassing many months. That is what I meant by that; I wasn’t trying to give you a cute answer.’ What this boils down to is how you assign a precise boundary to an event with a fuzzy termination. Where exactly is the edge of a forest as the trees gradually thin out? Where is the foot of a mountain range as the hills get smaller and smaller? If a person who claims to have quit smoking hasn’t smoked for two days, do you say that he or she has quit smoking?

"So Clinton was technically truthful. But linguists draw a major distinction between the part of the discipline called semantics: the literal content of words and constructions; and the part called pragmatics: how language is understood in a conversational context. The intent of the questioner was whether Clinton had ever had an affair with Lewinsky, and clearly Clinton evaded that intent, even though he was scrupulously accurate in the way he used tense. Clinton recognized these conflicting interests when he said, ‘My goal in this deposition was to be truthful, but not particularly helpful’—a nice acknowledgment of the difference between semantics and pragmatics. Whether the notion of ‘the whole truth’ includes the pragmatic obligation to be helpful or just the semantic obligation to be truthful is not something that I can judge. But it is something that ultimately his presidency hinged upon. As you all know, the House believed it did not satisfy the requirements for the whole truth and impeached Clinton. The Senate believed that it did and chose not to remove him.

"What about the second president? In 2000 I wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Times just a few days before the election on a burning issue around George W. Bush’s first run for the presidency, namely, his use and abuse of the English language … I predicted in 2000 that the way a president uses words can have consequences, and not just if he is impeached. Among the most famous set of words associated with [President Bush] came from his State of the Union address in January 2003: ‘The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.’ This was an important part of his case to the United Nations, and to the people of the United States, for invading Iraq. Probably most people who had any sympathy for the invasion at all had it because of the threat that Saddam was embarking on a program to assemble nuclear weapons. It turned out that he had no such plans, and that the alleged effort to obtain uranium from Niger never took place.

"But did Bush lie in those infamous sixteen words? Of course, any semanticist will remind us that saying something that is factually mistaken is not the same thing as lying. So was there an actual intent to deceive in that passage? Was there some aspect of its meaning that Bush must have known was false?

"It all hinges on the meaning of the word, ‘learn.’ ‘Learn’ is what linguists call a factive verb. It presupposes that the belief attributed to the subject of the sentence is true. ‘To know’ is the prototypical factive verb. If Melvin thinks that the moon is made of cheese, I can say ‘Melvin thinks the moon is made of cheese.’ But I can’t say ‘Melvin knows the moon is made of cheese,’ because you and I know that, in fact, it is not made of cheese, regardless of what Melvin’s beliefs are. There are many other factive verbs, such as ‘admit,’ ‘discover,’ ‘observe,’ and crucially, ‘learn.’ You cannot learn something that is not true. It’s the logic of factive verbs that led Mark Twain to utter his famous witticism, ‘The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that aren’t so.’ The humor of that comes from the semantics of the word ‘know.’ He relied on this semantic distinction in another of his witticisms: ‘When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not, but my faculties are decaying now so that I can only remember the things that never happened.’ Again, the humor comes from the semantics of ‘remember,’ which is another factive verb.

"Now, the rumor about yellowcake from Niger was based on reports from British intelligence. They had defensible reasons for thinking that Saddam had tried to obtain uranium ore from that West African country. It turned out subsequently that the British intelligence agents were mistaken, though they sincerely believed it at the time. The Bush administration, though, had been told by the CIA that these reports were far short of certain. So, did Bush lie, as the placards accused? The political sympathies of many people would lead them to believe that he did, but let’s try to analyze the semantics impartially. Let’s set aside the question of whether he acted rashly based on uncertain information. Let’s also set aside the question of how good the evidence was that Saddam was seeking uranium ore in Niger. The key question is, did Bush have reason at the time to entertain doubts about the report? Was the information available to him at the time short of certain? The answer is that we know that the reports were short of certain, because the CIA doubted them. Therefore I think the use of the word ‘learn’ in ‘the British government has learned … ’ was indeed deceptive. When challenged, Donald Rumsfeld said that the statement was ‘technically accurate,’ and Condoleezza Rice added, ‘The British have said that.’ But crucially, Bush did not announce that ‘the British have said’ that Saddam tried to obtain uranium; he announced that ‘the British have learned’ that Saddam tried to obtain uranium. This implies that Saddam’s attempt was a fact beyond doubt. And in that regard, the case can be made that Bush lied in that part of his speech.”

The views expressed herein are solely the opinions of the individuals and not those of the Academy.