If Somenoe Ever Asks You to Do Something Do It Really Badly So You Never Have to Do It Again

Lying and truth-telling

Lying

A liar should have a practiced memory

Quintilian

O what a tangled spider web we weave when commencement nosotros practice to deceive.

Sir Walter Scott, Marmion

Lying is probably i of the most common wrong acts that we carry out (i researcher has said 'lying is an unavoidable part of homo nature'), so it's worth spending fourth dimension thinking about information technology.

Almost people would say that lying is ever incorrect, except when there's a expert reason for it - which ways that it'south not always wrong!

Simply even people who think lying is e'er wrong have a problem... Consider the example where telling a lie would hateful that x other lies would not be told. If ten lies are worse than 1 lie then it would seem to exist a good affair to tell the starting time lie, simply if lying is ever wrong then it's wrong to tell the kickoff lie...

Acknowledgement

Nobody who writes well-nigh lying nowadays can do and so without acknowledging an enormous debt to this groundbreaking volume: Lying: Moral choice in public and private life, by Sisela Bok, 1978.

What is a lie?

Lying is a form of deception, but not all forms of deception are lies.

Lying is giving some information while assertive it to be untrue, intending to deceive past doing so.

A lie has three essential features:

• A lie communicates some information
• The liar intends to deceive or mislead
• The liar believes that what they are 'proverb' is not true

In that location are some features that people think are part of lying just aren't actually necessary:

• A lie does not take to give imitation information
• A lies does not take to be told with a bad (malicious) intention - white lies are an example of lies told with a good intention

This definition says that what makes a lie a prevarication is that the liar intends to deceive (or at least to mislead) the person they are lying to. It says nothing about whether the data given is true or false.

This definition covers ordinary cases of lying and these two odd cases as well:

• the case where someone inadvertently gives true information while assertive that they're telling a lie
  • I want the final helping of pie for myself, and then I prevarication to y'all that there is a worm in it. When I later eat that piece of pie I discover that there really is a worm in it
• the example where nobody is deceived by me considering they know that I always tell lies

Lying and statements

Some philosophers believe that lying requires a statement of some sort; they say that the liar must actually speak or write or gesture.

Sisella Bok, author of a major philosophical volume on the subject of lying, defines a prevarication as:

an intentionally deceptive message in the form of a statement

Others stretch the definition to include doing nil in response to a question, knowing that this will deceive the questioner.

Others include 'living a lie'; those cases where someone behaves in a mode that misleads the rest of us as to their true nature.

Why is lying wrong?

There are many reasons why people remember lying is wrong; which ones resonate all-time with you volition depend on the style y'all think about ideals.

• Lying is bad considering a generally truthful earth is a practiced matter: lying diminishes trust betwixt human beings:
  • if people generally didn't tell the truth, life would become very hard, as nobody could be trusted and nothing you heard or read could be trusted - you would have to discover everything out for yourself
  • an untrusting world is also bad for liars - lying isn't much use if anybody is doing it
• Lying is bad considering it treats those who are lied to as a ways to achieve the liar's purpose, rather than as a valuable finish in themselves
  • Many people think that information technology is wrong to care for people as means not ends
• Lying is bad considering it makes it difficult for the person being lied to brand a free and informed decision about the affair concerned
  • Lies pb people to base their decisions on false information
• Lying is bad because information technology cannot sensibly be fabricated into a universal principle
  • Many people think that something should only be accepted as an upstanding rule if it can be applied in every instance
• Lying is bad because it'south a basic moral wrong
  • Some things are fundamentally bad - lying is one of them
• Lying is bad considering it's something that Adept People don't do
  • Skilful behaviour displays the virtues institute in Practiced People
• Lying is bad because it corrupts the liar
  • Telling lies may become a habit and if a person regularly indulges in one form of wrong-doing they may well become more comfortable with wrong-doing in full general
• Some religious people contend Lying is bad because it misuses the God-given gift of human communication
  • God gave humanity speech and then that they could accurately share their thoughts - lying does the opposite
• Some philosophers say lying is bad considering language is essential to human being societies and carries the obligation to use information technology truthfully
  • When people use linguistic communication they effectively 'make a contract' to use it in a particular way - one of the clauses of this contract is not to use language deceitfully

What harm practice lies practice?

Lies obviously hurt the person who is lied to (most of the time), but they tin also hurt the liar, and society in general.

The person who is lied to suffers if they don't find out because:

• They are deprived of some command over their future because
  • They tin can no longer make an informed choice about the issue concerned
  • They are non fully informed about their possible courses of action
  • They may brand a conclusion that they would not otherwise have made
• They may endure damage every bit a consequence of the lie

The person who is lied to suffers if they practise find out because:

• They experience badly treated - deceived and manipulated, and regarded as a person who doesn't deserve the truth
• They see the harm they take suffered
• They doubt their own ability to assess truth and make decisions
• They go untrusting and uncertain and this too damages their power to brand free and informed choices
• They may seek revenge

The liar is hurt considering:

• He has to call back the lies he's told
  • He must human activity in conformity with the lies
  • He may have to tell more lies to avoid beingness found out
• He has to exist wary of those he'due south lied to
• His long-term credibility is at risk
  • He will probably suffer harm if he's found out
  • If he's found out, people are more probable to prevarication to him
  • If he's constitute out he's less likely to be believed in future
• His own view of his integrity is damaged
• He may notice it easier to lie over again or to do other wrongs

Those who tell 'good lies' don't generally suffer these consequences - although they may exercise so on some occasions.

Society is hurt considering:

• The general level of truthfulness falls - other people may exist encouraged to lie
• Lying may become a generally accustomed practice in some quarters
• It becomes harder for people to trust each other or the institutions of society
• Social cohesion is weakened
• Eventually no-i is able to believe anyone else and club collapses

When is it OK to lie?

The philosopher Sissela Bok put forward a process for testing whether a prevarication could be justified. She calls it the exam of publicity:

The test of publicity asks which lies, if any, would survive the entreatment for justification to reasonable persons.

Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Option in Public and Private Life, 1978

If we were to utilize this test as a thought experiment we would join a panel of everyone afflicted by a particular lie - the liar, those lied to and everyone who might exist afflicted by the prevarication.

We would so put forrard all our arguments for telling a particular lie then ask that 'jury' of relevant and reasonable persons if telling this prevarication was justified.

Simply what could we do in the real globe?

• First audit our own conscience and enquire whether the prevarication is justified
• 2nd, ask friends or colleagues, or people with special ethical cognition what they retrieve about the particular case
• Thirdly, consult some independent persons about it

This sort of test is most useful when considering what we might call 'public' lying - when an institution is because just how much truth to tell about a projection - perhaps a medical experiment, or a proposed state of war, or an ecology evolution.

1 executive observed to this author that a useful test for the justifiability of an action that he was uncertain about was to imagine what the press would write after if they discovered what he had done and compared information technology to what he had said in advance.

In most cases of personal modest scale lying at that place is no opportunity to exercise anything more consult our ain conscience - only we should call up that our censor is usually rather biased in our favour.

A good way of helping our censor is to enquire how we would experience if we were on the receiving terminate of the lie. It's certainly not foolproof, but information technology may exist helpful.

Bok sets out some factors that should exist considered when contemplating a lie:

• Are there some true alternatives to using a lie to deal with the particular trouble?
• What moral justifications are there for telling this lie - and what counter-arguments can be raised against those justifications?
• What would a public jury of reasonable persons say nigh this prevarication?

Lying and ethical theory

Lying and ethical theory

Dissimilar theories of ideals arroyo lying in different ways. In grossly over-simplified terms, those who follow consequentialist theories are concerned with the consequences of lying and if telling a prevarication would pb to a better result than telling the truth, they will argue that it is proficient to tell the lie. They would ask:

'Would telling the truth or telling a lie bring almost the better consequences?'

In contrast, a dutybased ethicist would debate that, even if lying has the meliorate consequences, it is still morally wrong to lie.

Consequentialists (Utilitarians) and lies

Consequentialists appraise the rightness or wrongness of doing something by looking at the consequences caused by that human action. So if telling a particular lie produces a better outcome than non telling information technology, then telling it would be a good matter to do. And if telling a item prevarication produces a worse result than not telling it, telling it would exist a bad thing to do.

This has a certain commonsense appeal, simply it'due south also quite impractical since it requires a person to piece of work out in accelerate the likely practiced and bad consequences of the lie they are nearly to tell and balance the good confronting the bad. This is difficult to do, because:

• consequences are hard to predict
• measuring good and bad is hard
  • how exercise we decide what is good and what is bad?
  • for whom is it good or bad?
  • what arrangement of measurement can we use?
  • what consequences are relevant?
  • how long a time-menses should be used in assessing the consequences?
• information technology requires a person to value everyone involved equally and non to give extra value to their own wishes
• information technology requires a person to consider the consequences to social club in general of telling lies as well as the consequences for those actually involved

So about Commonsensical thinkers don't apply it on a case by case basis but use the theory to come up up with some general principles -- perhaps along the lines of:

• Lying is bad, because
  • it causes harm to people
  • it reduces society'due south general respect for truth;
• but at that place are some cases - white lies or mercy lies - where it may be OK to tell lies.

This is an instance of 'rule-utilitarianism'; because every single action separately is 'human activity-Utilitarianism'.

These ii forms of Utilitarianism could lead to different results: An act-Commonsensical might say that telling a prevarication in a particular case did lead to the all-time results for everyone involved and for society as a whole, while a rule-Commonsensical might argue that since lying fabricated club a less happy identify, it was wrong to tell lies, even in this particular example.

Deontologists

Deontologists base their moral thinking on general universal laws, and not on the results of detail acts. (The word comes from from the Greek give-and-take deon, meaning duty.)

An act is therefore either a correct or a wrong deed, regardless of whether information technology produces skilful or bad consequences.

Deontologists don't always hold on how nosotros get in at 'moral laws', or on what such laws are, but ane generally accepted moral law is 'do not tell lies'.

And if that is the law and then lying is ever incorrect - even if telling the truth would produce far amend consequences: and so if I lie to a terrorist death squad nigh the whereabouts of the people that they're hunting, and so save their lives, I take in fact done wrong, because I broke the rule that says lying is wrong.

Almost of united states would accept that an unbreakable rule against lying would be unworkable, simply a more sophisticated rule (perhaps i with a listing of exceptions) might be something we could live with.

Virtue ethics

Virtue ethics looks at what good (virtuous) people do. If honesty is a virtue in the particular system involved, then lying is a bad affair.

The difficulty with this approach comes when a virtuous person tells a lie every bit a result of some other virtue (compassion perhaps). The solution might be to consider what an platonic person would accept done in the particular circumstances.

Philosophers on lying

Philosophers on lying

Immanuel Kant, 18th century portrait ©

Immanuel Kant

Some philosophers, about famously the German language Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), believed that that lying was always wrong.

He based this on his general principle that we should treat each homo as an finish in itself, and never equally a mere ways.

Lying to someone is not treating them as an end in themselves, but merely equally a means for the liar to become what they want.

Kant also taught 'Human activity so that the maxim of thy will tin can always at the same time agree good every bit a principle of universal legislation.' This roughly means that something is just good if it could become a universal police force.

If there was a universal law that it was generally OK to tell lies and then life would apace become very difficult as everyone would feel free to lie or tell the truth as they chose, it would exist incommunicable to take any statement seriously without corroboration, and society would collapse.

St. Augustine

Every liar says the reverse of what he thinks in his eye, with purpose to deceive.

St Augustine, The Enchiridon

Christian theologian St. Augustine (354-430) taught that lying was always wrong, but accepted that this would exist very hard to live upwards to and that in real life people needed a become-out clause.

St Augustine said that:

• God gave human beings speech communication so that they could brand their thoughts known to each other; therefore using voice communication to deceive people is a sin, because it'due south using speech to do the contrary of what God intended
• The true sin of lying is contained in the desire to deceive

Augustine believed that some lies could be pardoned, and that in that location were in fact occasions when lying would be the correct thing to practise.

He grouped lies into 8 classes, depending on how difficult it was to pardon them. Hither'southward his listing, with the least forgivable lies at the top:

• Lies told in pedagogy organized religion
• Lies which hurt someone and help nobody
• Lies which hurt someone just benefit someone else
• Lies told for the pleasure of deceiving someone
• Lies told to please others in conversation
• Lies which hurt nobody and benefit someone
• Lies which injure nobody and benefit someone past keeping open the possibility of their repentance
• Lies which hurt nobody and protect a person from concrete 'defilement'

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas also idea that all lies were wrong, simply that there was a hierarchy of lies and those at the bottom could be forgiven. His listing was:

• Malicious lies: lies told to practise harm
  • Malicious lies are mortal sins
• 'Jocose lies': lies told in fun
  • These are pardonable
• 'Officious' or helpful lies
  • These are pardonable

Lying under serious threat

Lying nether serious threat

In a prison army camp, lying can exist used to gain an reward ©

The reason for lying that gets most sympathy from people is lying because something terrible will happen if y'all don't prevarication. Examples include lying to protect a murderer'south intended victim and lying to save oneself from expiry or serious injury.

These lies are thought less bad than other lies because they foreclose a greater harm occurring; they are basically like other actions of justified self-defense or defence force of an innocent victim.

The reasons why we think lies in such situations are acceptable are:

• The skilful consequences of the lie are much greater than the bad consequences
• Such lies are told to protect innocent persons who would otherwise suffer injustice
• Such lies are told to forbid irreversible harm being done
• Such situations are very rare, so lying in them doesn't damage the full general presumption that information technology's incorrect to prevarication

Since such lies are frequently told in emergencies, another justification is that the person telling the lie often has not time to retrieve of any culling course of action.

Threatening situations don't just occur equally emergencies; there can be long-term threat situations where lying volition give a person a greater gamble of survival. In the Gulag or in concentration camps prisoners tin proceeds an advantage by lying about their abilities, the misbehaviour of young man-prisoners, whether they've been fed, and so on. In a dearth lying well-nigh whether you have any food hidden abroad may exist vital for the survival of your family.

Lying to enemies

When ii countries are at war, the obligation to tell the truth is idea to exist heavily reduced and deliberate deception is generally accepted as part of the way each side will try to send its opponent in the wrong direction, or fool the enemy into not taking detail actions.

In the aforementioned way each side accepts that there will exist spies and that spies will lie under interrogation (this acceptance of spying doesn't benefit the individual spies much, as they are commonly shot at the finish of the day).

There are 2 primary moral arguments for lying to enemies:

• Enemies do not deserve the aforementioned handling as friends or neutrals, because enemies intend to exercise us damage and can't grumble if we harm them in return by lying to them
• Lying to enemies volition forbid harm to many people, and so the good consequences outweigh the bad ones.

Other types of lying

Other types of lying

Mental reservations

This legalistic device divides a argument into ii parts: the showtime part is misleading, the two parts together are truthful - however just the first part is said aloud, the second function is a 'mental reservation'.

Here are some examples:

• "I take never cheated on my wife" (except concluding Thursday)
• "I did not steal the cakes" (on Th afternoon)
• "I did not touch the painting" (but my glove did)

This device seems outrageous to the modern mind, but a few centuries ago information technology was much used.

One common occasion for mental reservations was in court, when a person had sworn an adjuration to tell the truth and expected God to punish them if they lied.

If they'd stolen some sheep on Tuesday they could safely tell the court "I did not steal those sheep" as long equally they added in their mind "on Monday". Since God was believed to know every thought, God would hear the mental reservation as well every bit the public statement and therefore would not have been lied to.

Sissela Bok says that this device is recommended to doctors by one textbook. If a feverish patient, for example, asks what his temperature is, the doctor is advised to answer "your temperature is normal today" while making the mental reservation that it is normal for a person in the patient'south precise physical status.

Lying to those with no right to the truth

The Dutch philosopher and lawyer Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) taught that a prevarication is non really wrong if the person being lied to has no right to the truth.

This stemmed from his thought that what made a wrong or unjust activeness wrong was that information technology violated someone else's rights. If someone has no right to the truth, their rights aren't violated if they're told a lie.

This statement would seem to teach that it's not an unethical lie to tell a mugger that y'all have no money (although it is a very unwise matter to do), and it is not an unethical lie to tell a decease squad that you don't know where their potential victim is hiding.

In practice, most people would regard this every bit a very legalistic and 'small print' sort of statement and not retrieve it much of a justification for telling lies, except in certain extreme cases that tin can probably be justified on other grounds.

Lying to liars

If someone lies to you lot, are you entitled to lie to them in render? Has the liar lost the right to be told the truth? Human behaviour suggests that nosotros practice feel less obliged to be truthful to liars than to people who deal with us honestly.

Most moral philosophers would say that you are not justified in lying to another person because they have lied to y'all.

From an upstanding point of view, the first thing is that a prevarication is still a lie - even if told to a liar.

Secondly, while the liar may be regarded equally having lost the correct to be told the truth, lodge equally a whole still retains some sort of right that its members should use language truthfully.

Just is it a pardonable lie? The old maxim '2 wrongs don't brand a right' suggests that information technology isn't, and it'south articulate that even if the liar has lost their correct to be told the truth, all the other reasons why lying is bad are yet valid.

But there is a existent change in the ethics of the state of affairs; this is not that a prevarication to a liar is forgivable, but that the liar himself is not in a morally strong position to complain virtually beingness lied to.

Simply - and it'south a large 'merely' - even this probably simply applies in a particular context - if I tell you lies about the number of children I have, that doesn't entitle you to lie to me virtually the fourth dimension of the next railroad train to London, although it would brand it very hard for me to complain if y'all were to prevarication to me most the number of children in your family.

Nor does information technology justify lying to someone because you lot know they are an habitual liar - once more all the other arguments against lying are still valid.

Mutual agreed charade

At that place are cases where two people (or groups of people) willingly appoint in a mutual deception, because they think it will benefit them. Sisela Bok puts information technology like this:

Such deception can resemble a game where both partners know the rules and play by them. It resembles, then, a pact of sorts, whereby what each can exercise, what each gains by the arrangement, is conspicuously understood.

Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Individual Life, 1978

An instance of this is a negotiation in which both parties will prevarication to each other ('that'southward my best price', 'I'll have to leave it and then') in a way that everyone involved understands.

Lies that don't deceive are not sinful lies...or are they?

If both parties know that the liar'due south statement is NOT intended to be taken as a definitive and important statement of the truth then it may not count as a sinful lie, considering there's no intention to deceive.

There are many cases where no reasonable person expects what is said to them to be genuinely true.

That may allow u.s.a. off the hook for things similar:

• Flattery: 'you lot await lovely'
• Gratitude: 'that'southward just what I wanted'
• Formal language conventions: 'sincerely yours', 'pleased to meet you'
• Bargaining: 'my best price is £500'
• Generalisation: 'it always rains in Manchester'
• Advertising: '#### washes whitest'
  • If believing the advertizement might lead to bad consequences - for example in medical advertising - this would not count as a guilt-gratuitous lie.
• Jokes: 'there was an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman'
• Unpredictable situations: 'it won't pelting today'
• Sporting tips: 'Pegleg is unbeatable in the 3:30 race'
• Imitation excuses: 'he's in a coming together'
• Conjuring tricks: 'There'due south nothing up my sleeve'

It'due south not always easy to see the departure betwixt these statements and white lies.

Incidentally the Ideals web team disagreed amongst themselves every bit to the condition of lies that don't deceive - your thoughts are very welcome.

White lies

A white lie is a lie that is not intended to harm the person being lied to - indeed information technology'due south ofttimes intended to benefit them by making them feel practiced, or preventing their feelings being hurt.

For example, I go to a dinner party and my hostess asks how I similar the dish she's prepared. The true answer happens to be 'I think it tastes horrible' merely if I say 'it's succulent' that'due south a white lie. Most people would approve of that white lie and would regard telling the truth as a bad thing to practice. (But this lie does do some harm - the hostess may feel encouraged to make that dish again, and and so time to come guests volition have to suffer from it.)

White lies normally include most of these features:

• they are not intended to harm the person lied to
• they are not intended to impairment anyone else
• they don't actually damage anyone (or simply do niggling harm)
• the lie is virtually something morally trivial
• they aren't told so often that they devalue what you say

White lies are not a totally good thing:

• the person being lied to is deprived of information that they might find useful even if they found it unpleasant
• the person telling the lies may observe information technology easier to lie in future and they may come to blur the purlieus between white lies and more blameworthy lies

White lies weaken the general presumption that lying is incorrect and may go far easier for a person to tell lies that are intended to damage someone, or may brand it easier to avoid telling truths that demand to be told - for case, when giving a performance evaluation it is more comfortable not to tell someone that their work is sub-standard.

Lying and medical ideals

Patients must have the facts and understanding they demand to make an informed selection ©

Lying and medical ethics

Health professionals have to reconcile the general presumption against telling lies with these other principles of medical ethics. While healthcare professionals are as concerned to tell the truth as any other group of people, there are cases where the principles of medical ethics can conflict with the presumption against lying.

The fundamental principles of medical ethics are:

• Respect for autonomy: acknowledging that patients can brand decisions and giving them the information they need to make sensible and informed choices
• Doing no harm: doing the minimum harm possible to the patient
• Beneficence: balancing the risks, costs and benefits of medical action so as to produce the best result for the patient
• Justice: using limited medical resources fairly, legally and in accordance with homo rights principles

Telling the truth is not an explicitly stated principle of most systems of medical ethics, only it is clearly implied past the principle of respect for autonomy - if a patient is lied to, they can't brand a reasoned and informed pick, because they don't have the data they need to practise so.

Respect for patient autonomy is particularly important in the case of people who are terminally ill, as they are probable to be peculiarly vulnerable to manipulation of the truth.

And so why might healthcare professionals want to lie 'for the good of patients', and what are the arguments against this sort of lying?

• Lying may exist good therapy: the doctor may believe that the patient should simply be given information that volition help their treatment
  • Lying deprives the patient of the chance to decide whether they want the treatment - highly intrusive treatment near the stop of life may prolong life, but at greatly reduced quality, and the patient, if properly informed, might decline such handling
• The truth may harm the patient: a patient may, for case, requite up promise, go into a reject or suffer a eye attack if given a depressing diagnosis and prognosis - they may fifty-fifty choose to kill themselves
  • Such data should exist given in a fashion that minimizes impairment -- the patient should be accordingly prepared to receive the information and given proper support after existence given bad news
  • Surveys suggest that patients don't in full general go into a severe decline or choose to kill themselves
  • Respect for autonomy requires the patient to be given the chance to consider all legal courses of activeness, no matter how undesirable other people may retrieve they are
  • Lying deprives the patient of the opportunity to take meaningful decisions most their life, based on authentic medical information
  • The patient may realise that the symptoms they experience and the mode their disease progresses don't fit what they accept been told. They and then experience all the bad consequences of being lied to
• The patient wants to be lied to
  • Surveys advise that the bulk of patients want to be told the truth, fifty-fifty if it'due south bad
• The patient won't properly understand the truth
  • Information technology'southward the duty of the professional to communicate the truth in a mode that each particular patient can sympathise, and to check that they really have understood it. (Honesty and intelligibility are peculiarly important when obtaining patient consent for a particular handling or procedure.)
• The patient would go into denial and resist the truth if they were told information technology
  • Many patients don't get into denial
  • The patient however has the choice to go into denial
  • Denial may exist an important stage of coming to terms with the inevitable; the patient should not exist deprived of the chance of working through information technology and dealing with their life-state of affairs
• There is no sure truth: the futurity course of a disease is nigh always uncertain
  • The professional should requite the patient the range and likelihood of possible outcomes
• The doctor doesn't want to bring the patient bad news
  • This seems more for the benefit of the doctor than the patient
• Telling the patient the truth may cause the patient to utilise upwardly more than of the healthcare professional person's time than telling a lie, when this fourth dimension could more beneficially be spent on other patients
  • Putting proper patient support systems in identify will deal with this

Obtaining informed consent

Healthcare professionals must tell the truth and make certain that the patient understands it properly when they are obtaining the patient'due south consent to a procedure or treatment.

If the patient is non told the truth they cannot give 'informed consent' to the proposed course of action.

A patient can only give informed consent if they know such things as the truth about their illness, what course the treatment volition take, how it volition benefit them, the probabilities of the possible outcomes, what they will experience during and after the treatment, the risks and side-effects, and the qualifications and track-record of those involved in the handling.

There is also evidence that patients exercise better subsequently handling if they have a full agreement of both the treatment and the affliction, and have been allowed to take some participation and control of the course of their treatment.

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Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/lying/lying_1.shtml

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