The idea that breaking a promise is self-contradiction rests on a false linguistic analysis

Evidence

There is a long tradition of claiming that to break a promise is logically to contradict oneself. To make a promise is to proclaim an obligation; to break it is to prove that proclamation false. In more recent writings, the logical entailment of an obligation to keep a promise is tricked up out of the meaning of the ordinary expression “I promise,” which is taken to entail fulfillment as though the statement were not merely an instance of presentiation but of actually taking the future action now. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 330

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes the conventional and logical accounts of promise obligation that Hardin rejects before contrasting trust, which has no such analog.