If I were to reverse the sentence, "I care about the truth" I would want to say:
I care about the false.
Is that correct? It seems awkward at best:
He speaks the truth! / He speaks the false!
This one truth is important to all / This one false is important to all
The true response will depend on the context, I think. Truth as "fact" is best opposed by "falsehood" because these two words apply to whether or not statements correspond to reality. You might also make the argument the "fiction" is usually used in opposition in this same context.
This one falsehood is important to all
This one fiction is important to all
Of course, this is where the argument that there is only one truth and many falsehoods comes in, so you can take your pick of what word to use that means something that is not true. There are many words, because how we classify statements that are untrue depends on context, motivation, and intent (lies, deceptions, untruths, mistakes, misinterpretations, etc). I choose "falsehood" because I feel it is the most neutral term.
On the other hand, the truth as in "verity" is probably best opposed by "falsity" as these two words describe states.
I care about the falsity.
You want the falsity? You can't handle the falsity!
In this case, you are not talking about whether a specific thing is true, or sound, or logical. You are commenting on the concept of a state of reality; truth itself is the thing you care about. Therefore, the opposition is not properly "I care about lies" but rather "I care about the untruth."
So you could use untruth (it is a word after all). I choose falsity because it represents its own state, rather than the "un" existence of truth.
A few options:
He speaks lies!
This deception affects everyone
Deception
Falsity
Lies
Untruth
Lie
Of the above, I prefer 'falsity' personally.
One of the best words I could find was
falsity
There are several synonyms for "falsehood" "I care about the false" is correct, however it doesn't seem to sound right. Perhaps you are looking for this:
I care about the falsities!
Here are some other suggestions:
I care about the illusory!
I care about dishonesty!
I care about the deception!
In which case, there are several ways of stating it:
He speaks the factitious!
Or another way:
He speaks of the truthless!
This really shorten things:
He prevaricates!
However, this was the only example that was fitting for the last sentence:
This one falsity is important to all
Overall, I would use "falsity" and "falsehood" as a generic for "the false".
"true" and "false" are both adjectives.
"truth" is a noun, so you'd need a noun form of "false". Two options are "falsehood" or "lie"
"I care about the bullshit."
The rest of this answer is just filler.
How about fallacy? I would say that the word falsehood implies that the fact has been proven wrong or that is being intentionally misrepresented, where a fallacy, in my opinion, is wrong irrespective of the fact that the person knows it is or not.
I was content to monitor this site until this statement was presented and incorrectly analyzed.
First, the reverse of I care about the truth is absolutely not I care about the false. One's care about the truth is an active manifestation or quest for the truth. Lack of care is entirely different from active support. This is similar to the false presumption made by theists that the statement I dispute the claim of the existence of a supernatural being somehow equates to I disbelieve in supernatural beings.
Lack of care about the truth does not equate to care about falsity. There are other possibilities involved such as unknown and apathy. The reversal of I care about the truth might manifest itself as I do not care about the truth or I do not care at all or I do not know. We are not given enough information to know. Until the claimant makes a specific statement as to their intentions, we must conclude that Unknown or I do not care are possibilities.
Thus, if this is an exercise in deductive reasoning, you cannot deductively conclude that one that does not care about truth, actively cares about falsity.
I care about the truth is, as you say, I do not care about the truth, but this does not automatically mean that the I in question only speaks untruths.
Commented
May 26, 2011 at 11:03
I think falsehood would work. Wiktionary says it is both countable and uncountable. Mendacity looks good too, but it appears to be archaic. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/falsehood#Noun
mendacity is a great word for untruthfulness (though 'untruthfulness' is another possibility):
The quality of being mendacious; untruthfulness; tendency to lie.
You could say:
I care about mendacity.
That would mean that you care about untruthfulness.
It's worth noting that in Western philosophy, at least since Frege's Über Sinn und Bedeutung, 'the true' and 'the false' have been used as objects.
So in that context it would be quite correct to say:
I care about the false.
"Falsehood" does not imply a lie (a deliberate deception). It may be preferred usage to avoid implicit accusation.
I wasn't expecting so many answers to this question and it took me a while to process each of them. I chose to accept the answer I did because I consider it to have most closely resolved the entire issue. My answer here goes through and aggregates the relevant information from across the answers so as to directly address the questions and examples in my original question and help explain why I chose the answer I did.
The first notable problem was question's misidentification of truth as the relevant term. This is admittedly my fault. As it turns out, the truth is more relevant in the first and second examples:
I care about the truth
He speaks the truth!
While antonyms to truth include words such as lie or lies, they don't work in the original context:
I care about the lie
I care about the lies
Each of these mean something drastically different from my original intent. Namely, the concept of the truth is different from that of a truth. Lie parallels with a truth. This does, however, make it applicable for the second and third examples which could be why so many answers focused on this style of antonym:
He speaks lies!
This one lie is important to all
But it again doesn't quite convey what I was looking for. As such, I am unsatisfied with lie as an answer.
Falsehood is much, much closer:
I care about falsehood
He speaks falsehood!
This one falsehood is important to all
Unfortunately, most suggestions of falsehood were paired with lie and it isn't obvious that falsehood also works as an antonym to the truth. I wasn't able to determine if people were thinking of these examples instead:
I care about falsehoods
He speaks falsehoods!
Which again brings us to the problem with using lie. While falsehood would work, I don't think people were realizing why — or, at least, they weren't explaining why.
The major alternative to falsehood was falsity:
I care about falsity
He speaks falsity!
This one falsity is important to all
This is dead on in meaning and is included as a noun under the definition of false. Falseness also happens to be there: "I care about falseness."
All of this heads into a clash between three acceptable terms: Falsehood, falsity and falseness. The last two seem a little outdated or unused and the prevalence of answers suggesting falsehood tilt acceptance toward an answer that includes it.
Unfortunately, the only answers that explicitly note falsehood being usable as "I care about falsehood" were a short answer that only said this. The highest voted answer merely had the word, a link to the dictionary and included lie which I consider an incorrect answer (through no fault of the answerer; it appears that my question was unclear in its goal.)
In my opinion, the answer chosen deserves it because:
Of note, one editor pointed out that "the false" is acceptable with regards to the philosophical concept. This again matches perfectly with the desired meaning. I did not accept that answer, however, due to its limited scope and other answers contesting that "the false" is incorrect or ungrammatical.
And, in other news, it turns out the word bullshit works surprisingly well.
You commented how you will use the answer to your question:
I was presenting an opinion that a certain group of people should care about the truth, not about the [word goes here]. They were specifically going out of their way to address someone's incorrect belief system and I wanted to point them back on target. "Our concern is the truth, not falsity."
Given this clarification, I have a new angle for you:
Here are some synonyms of delusion that could be useful (do I need to attribute the source, thesaurus.com?):
apparition, blunder, casuistry, chicanery, daydream, deception, deceptiveness, dream, eidolon, error, fallacy, false impression, fancy, fantasy, figment, fool's paradise, ghost, hallucination, head trip, ignis fatuus, illusion, lapse, mirage, misapprehension, mistake, optical illusion, oversight, phantasm, phantom, pipe dream, self-deception, shade, speciousness, spuriousness, trickery, trip, vision
