Lying

A liar should have a good memory
Quintilian

O what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
Sir Walter Scott, Marmion

Lying is probably one of the most common wrong acts that we carry out (one researcher has said 'lying is an unavoidable part of human nature'), so it's worth spending time thinking about it.

Most people would say that lying is always wrong, except when there's a good reason for it - which means that it's not always wrong!

But even people who think lying is always wrong have a problem... Consider the case where telling a lie would mean that 10 other lies would not be told. If 10 lies are worse than 1 lie then it would seem to be a good thing to tell the first lie, but if lying is always wrong then it's wrong to tell the first lie...

Acknowledgement

Nobody who writes about lying nowadays can do so without acknowledging an enormous debt to this groundbreaking book: 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 believing it to be untrue, intending to deceive by 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 'saying' is not true
There are some features that people think are part of lying but aren't actually necessary:

A lie does not have to give false information
A lies does not have 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 lie is that the liar intends to deceive (or at least to mislead) the person they are lying to. It says nothing about whether the information 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 believing that they're telling a lie
I want the last helping of pie for myself, so I lie to you 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 case where nobody is deceived by me because 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 book on the subject of lying, defines a lie as:

an intentionally deceptive message in the form of a statement
Others stretch the definition to include doing nothing in response to a question, knowing that this will deceive the questioner.

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

Why is lying wrong?

There are many reasons why people think lying is wrong; which ones resonate best with you will depend on the way you think about ethics.

Lying is bad because a generally truthful world is a good thing: lying diminishes trust between human beings:
if people generally didn't tell the truth, life would become very difficult, as nobody could be trusted and nothing you heard or read could be trusted - you would have to find everything out for yourself
an untrusting world is also bad for liars - lying isn't much use if everyone is doing it
Lying is bad because it treats those who are lied to as a means to achieve the liar's purpose, rather than as a valuable end in themselves
Many people think that it is wrong to treat people as means not ends
Lying is bad because it makes it difficult for the person being lied to make a free and informed decision about the matter concerned
Lies lead people to base their decisions on false information
Lying is bad because it cannot sensibly be made into a universal principle
Many people think that something should only be accepted as an ethical rule if it can be applied in every case
Lying is bad because it's a basic moral wrong
Some things are fundamentally bad - lying is one of them
Lying is bad because it's something that Good People don't do
Good behaviour displays the virtues found in Good 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 general
Some religious people argue Lying is bad because it misuses the God-given gift of human communication
God gave humanity speech so that they could accurately share their thoughts - lying does the opposite
Some philosophers say lying is bad because language is essential to human societies and carries the obligation to use it truthfully
When people use language 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 do lies do?

Lies obviously hurt the person who is lied to (most of the time), but they can 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 control over their future because
They can no longer make an informed choice about the issue concerned
They are not fully informed about their possible courses of action
They may make a decision that they would not otherwise have made
They may suffer damage as a result of the lie
The person who is lied to suffers if they do find out because:

They feel badly treated - deceived and manipulated, and regarded as a person who doesn't deserve the truth
They see the damage they have suffered
They doubt their own ability to assess truth and make decisions
They become untrusting and uncertain and this too damages their ability to make free and informed choices
They may seek revenge
The liar is hurt because:

He has to remember the lies he's told
He must act in conformity with the lies
He may have to tell more lies to avoid being found out
He has to be wary of those he's 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 likely to lie to him
If he's found out he's less likely to be believed in future
His own view of his integrity is damaged
He may find it easier to lie again or to do other wrongs
Those who tell 'good lies' don't generally suffer these consequences - although they may do so on some occasions.

Society is hurt because:

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

When is it OK to lie?

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

The test of publicity asks which lies, if any, would survive the appeal for justification to reasonable persons.
Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, 1978
If we were to apply this test as a thought experiment we would bring together a panel of everyone affected by a particular lie - the liar, those lied to and everyone who might be affected by the lie.

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

But what could we do in the real world?

First inspect our own conscience and ask whether the lie is justified
Second, ask friends or colleagues, or people with special ethical knowledge what they think 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 considering just how much truth to tell about a project - perhaps a medical experiment, or a proposed war, or an environmental development.

One executive observed to this writer that a useful test for the justifiability of an action that he was uncertain about was to imagine what the press would write afterwards if they discovered what he had done and compared it to what he had said in advance.

In most cases of personal small scale lying there is no opportunity to do anything more than consult our own conscience - but we should remember that our conscience is usually rather biased in our favour.

A good way of helping our conscience is to ask how we would feel if we were on the receiving end of the lie. It's certainly not foolproof, but it may be helpful.

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

Are there some truthful alternatives to using a lie to deal with the particular problem?
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 about this lie?

Lying and ethical theory

Different theories of ethics approach 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 lie would lead to a better result than telling the truth, they will argue that it is good to tell the lie. They would ask:

‘Would telling the truth or telling a lie bring about the better consequences?’

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

Consequentialists (Utilitarians) and lies

Consequentialists assess the rightness or wrongness of doing something by looking at the consequences caused by that act. So if telling a particular lie produces a better result than not telling it, then telling it would be a good thing to do. And if telling a particular lie produces a worse result than not telling it, telling it would be a bad thing to do.

This has a certain commonsense appeal, but it's also quite impractical since it requires a person to work out in advance the likely good and bad consequences of the lie they are about to tell and balance the good against the bad. This is hard to do, because:

consequences are hard to predict
measuring good and bad is hard
how do we decide what is good and what is bad?
for whom is it good or bad?
what system of measurement can we use?
what consequences are relevant?
how long a time-period should be used in assessing the consequences?
it requires a person to value everyone involved equally and not to give extra value to their own wishes
it requires a person to consider the consequences to society in general of telling lies as well as the consequences for those actually involved
So most Utilitarian thinkers don't apply it on a case by case basis but use the theory to come up with some general principles -- perhaps along the lines of:

Lying is bad, because
it causes harm to people
it reduces society's general respect for truth;
but there are some cases - white lies or mercy lies - where it may be OK to tell lies.
This is an example of 'rule-utilitarianism'; considering every single action separately is 'act-Utilitarianism'.

These two forms of Utilitarianism could lead to different results: An act-Utilitarian might say that telling a lie in a particular case did lead to the best results for everyone involved and for society as a whole, while a rule-Utilitarian might argue that since lying made society a less happy place, it was wrong to tell lies, even in this particular case.

Deontologists

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

An act is therefore either a right or a wrong act, regardless of whether it produces good or bad consequences.

Deontologists don't always agree on how we arrive at 'moral laws', or on what such laws are, but one generally accepted moral law is 'do not tell lies'.

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

Most of us would accept that an unbreakable rule against lying would be unworkable, but a more sophisticated rule (perhaps one with a list 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 thing.

The difficulty with this approach comes when a virtuous person tells a lie as a result of another virtue (compassion perhaps). The solution might be to consider what an ideal person would have done in the particular circumstances.