Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
If there's not a fixed truth table, the truth of the proposition is not well-defined.
How can you defend the superior as being truthful when you can't even define a formal standard for the truth of his responses?
"X is a prime number."
Does this proposition have a well-defined truth value? According to you - no, because it does not have a fixed truth table.
Now combine it with the statement "X = 3". See what I mean?
In order to create a truth table for WHILE (which, incidentally, is not a conjunction like AND/OR/NOR - but starts off a subordinate clause), one would need:
1. A kind of temporal logic that includes a time element.
2. A way of representing context and literary connotations/implications.
The human reader picks up both these, as well as the irony of the situation, which is why the joke (and it is a joke) works.
The absence of a formal, universal standard of truth does not imply that one cannot determine the truth of the superior's statement in this given context.