patrick4

Legitimacy and proof we've done something or that we've reached some milestone is a source of pride and embarrassment. Therefore, if we shame people for not having attained our ideal of legitimacy, then they will lie to us so we don't embarrass them with our unwarranted need to scrutinize their worth.

Okay, that is a good point and that is my understanding. Tautologies are circular assumptions (e.g., appearances appear) that are required in order to derive an analytic or empirical truth.

Because something is always true does not mean it is always trivial (unimportant). Tautological thinking is not only inescapable and necessary, but it is also maddeningly circular. Circular reasoning is something we all do, always. Trivial? I'm not sure if anything is objectively and scientifically non-trivial. Some lines of thinking are apparently more exciting than others. Evaluations of importance require circular, non scientific reasoning. But science can certainly help determine what is of value.

Tautology is a category of truth, and is also known as an analytic truth. Words like "total" are very tautological, because how can you scientifically confirm the totality of a thing, or the totality of everything, or the totality of time? Science (empirical truth) requires basic tautological truths, because how can you make a scientific inquiry without definitions like 2+2=4, total, or even "time"? Before you can study the color red, you first need to tautologically define the color red. How do you know red is red? You simply identify it tautologically. Tautologies exist only in the mind. By doing scientific inquiry with the interior tautological premises, you create a more nuanced and varied empirical landscape of the exterior. Therefore, the tautology of "red" expands into scientific modelling of light and wave lengths and how that interacts with the eye. I'm not entirely confident that I've explained that as well as I could.