I'm looking for cases of justified deception. If you see anything reported in the news, would you kindly provide a link? If you have a story to tell or an opinion to share, I'd also be very curious.
Is it always (morally) wrong to lie?
An example may include an episode on This American Life "In Defense of Ignorance" in which " Lulu Wang tells the story of an elaborate attempt to keep someone ignorant — her grandmother — and how her family pulled it off". The grandmother (who lived in China) was not told of her terminal illness. One important fact was concealed from her: she had cancer and her doctor predicted she only had 6 months to live. This morally debatable act of withholding the diagnosis (at least in the North American context of the 21st century) is apparently customary in China, and some other parts of the world (Russia, for instance). Apparently it was common in patience care in Canada in 1950s as well. The lies is told as justifiable since the Chinese grandmother lived another 3 years after the diagnosis but who knows how the knowledge of her terminal illness would have impacted her, had she been told the prognosis. This is just one example.
Another one is found in the Guardian by an American philosopher (based in the UK), James Garvey in his article "Peter Gleick lied, but was it justified by the wider good?" (Feb., 27, 2012).
I'm aware of the philosophical debate on whether lies are justifiable (e.g., the murderer at the doorstep question: would you lie about your family members sleeping in the house?). But what's I'm looking for is recent examples documented in the press in which lying may be acceptable for a reason. I would much appreciate the help of the ResearchGate community to trace them down. Thank you very much!
VR.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/585/in-defense-of-ignorance
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/27/peter-gleick-heartland-institute-lie?commentpage=1#start-of-comments
Victoria,
The example that comes to mind for me is not recent, but I think was very important in world affairs.
When Henry Kissinger, advisor the American president Richard Nixon, first went to China in 1971, it was a secret trip. The news media, and thus the American public, was told that Kissinger had a cold and would make no public appearances that day.
Kissinger's visit to China was only announced later.
Dear Michael Marek,
Thank you for the historical perspective.Most secret visits are hardly justifiable (cheating spouses, illegal drugs, etc) but who could argue with a covert peace initiative... What an interesting case of concealment by collusion!
The following link offers declassified National Archives press releases that were carefully selected to cover the event. It's the kind of materials I'm looking for. Thank you for offering this insight! VR
Speaking from the perspective of emotions (happy, sad, etc.) learning the truth can ruin your whole day, if your expectations are built on a lie.
These times when lies seem acceptable are generally to continue supporting a person's emotional expectations in order to avoid the let down of learning that the truth is not as peaceful or kind as you expected.
But, then, who wants to tell their children the truth before they are ready to handle it? So, the question becomes, How long do you wait to tell them Santa isn't an actual living person.
Or you might ask, whose unrealistic view of reality are you supporting with those 'justified' lies?
Do you want it to be an influential lie? I'd argue that there are many inconsequential lies that people tell everyday that are perfectly justifiable. E.g. A waitress asks "How are you today?" you answer "Fine", even if you're miserable, simply because that's the acceptable answer in this situation. You could argue that "How are you?" isn't a real question, but then you're getting into deeper 'meaning of language' territory.
For more consequential, moral dilemma's in the news you could consider more recent media black-outs, where the press voluntarily held stories back for security reasons (e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/business/media/01harry.html?_r=0) or some of the 'classic' nazi cases (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/16/schoolgirl-who-fooled-the-nazis)
It was also common practice in the US in the 50's to conceal a person's diagnosis from him/her.. I was always scared that someone would keep an illness from ME and thus die very lonely.
Dear Victoria,
I defend in one of my papers that some patients with terminal illness are cases of justified deception. You will find more information in:
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00117
It depends on what moral theory you advocate.
In classic Kantian deontology lying is absolutely forbidden. Kant himself said that if a mad axeman came to the door saying "where is X, I want to kill him" (and you knew X to be in the back room) then you still could not lie. Most of us would feel this was not a good answer. Anne Frank et al would not have done well.
To utilitarians the only thing that matters is the consequence. thus Bentham gave an example where he maintained that it was better for an innocent man to hang than for certain truths to come out that would undermine confidence in the state or its system of justice. Most of us would feel this was not a good answer, although most of us live in states where our secret services probably do exactly this.
A virtue ethicist would want to find a path that defaulted to truth but would not necessarily exclude a lie in exceptional circumstances where the intention was good and justifyable and the consequences predictable. bear in mind also though that this does not justify us bludgeoning people over the head with "the truth" where they do not wish to know it.
As a medic this is a hot issue. the answer is "almost never". This was well discussed in Daniel Sokol's classic BMJ article, link below. An example in teaching ethics I also come up with when a relative says "did they suffer at the end Dr?" - frankly I may well be "economical with the truth" at this point when needed.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1867874/
71
Our notion of lying is perhaps not the best one for making decisions. It is based on an idea of truth which is a slippery and contentious concept.
Rather than focus on a lie as a statement, perhaps it is better to consider the act of speaking. The principles of right speech are described succinctly in the Vacca Sutta :
"Monks, a statement endowed with five factors is well-spoken, not ill-spoken. It is blameless & unfaulted by knowledgeable people. Which five?
"It is spoken at the right time. It is spoken in truth. It is spoken affectionately. It is spoken beneficially. It is spoken with a mind of good-will."
Truth is only one element of right speech. The speech must also be timely, spoken with affection, likely to benefit the hearer and spoken with the intention of benefit. The latter is important. In some Buddhist traditions, people make a commitment not to speak when angry, for example.
And, to return to the question - yes, there are times when the "truth" will bring no benefit but will bring suffering. Case in point: an elderly patient in hospital in the UK. Her sister, who has severe dementia and lives abroad, and whom she will never communicate with again, has died. Do you tell her?
You can easily think of circumstances under which you would not tell her, as the news would bring nothing but unhappiness.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an05/an05.198.than.html
I think there's a moral difference between lying and not telling "all the truth".
When talking about telling truth, it is important to communicate it in a manner that should be adecuate to the nature of the person who is listening. I cannot tell all the truth to my son about Santa Clause, since he's too young. Similarly, physicians have to tell the truth to patients with accuracy, respecting their situations. But it doesn't mean lying!
You ask: Do you agree that lying can be justified? If so, when, why or how? As I see it. answers to your estions greatly depend upon the moral theory you spouse or adopt. As you certainly know, there are four main orientations (or theories) to morality: Deontological theories such as Kant's and Kohlberg's approaches to morality, whose main moral injunction is that we should not treat others unfairly. Teleological or consequentialist theories, such as J. Bentham's or S. Mill's theories of morality, whose main moral principle is the principle of social utility or the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Moral theories (e.g., C. Gilligan) whose main moral injunction is the principle of care, responsibility, and benevolence, or in other words, the principle that states that we should not turn away from someone in need. And Aristotelian theories of morality (e.g., Den Wyl), whose main moral principle is the principle of eudaimonia, a Greek words that means self-fulfillment. According to these theories the more an action fulfills one's deepest and spiritual (not religious) needs the more moral that action is. To my knowledge, Kant's theory is the only one that would say that lying can never be justified. Although deontological, Kohlberg's theory states that lying (or stealing, for instance) is justified if it brings about more justice than not lying. In the same way, albeit for different reasons, lying is justified if it brings more good for a majority of people (consequentialist theories), if it accords with the principle of benevolence in Gilligan terms, or with the principle of eudaimonia, in Aristotle's sense.
All of this reminds me of philosopher Hume's idea that the concept of moral/immoral exists in all cultures, but what, when and how is moral/immoral depends on cultures and people. To me, the most justified and justifiable answer to your questions is given by Kohlberg's theory. Of course, all the above mentioned theories have strengths and limitations. For example, benevolence cannot solve conflicts of welfare; eudaimonia risks overvaluing one's self at the cost of other selves; consequentialism raises the problem of who decides what is the major good for the majority of people, and justice risks of being at times too formal, abstract, and decontextualized. I hope that my modest considerationsmay be of help for you to look for an answer to your interesting questions .
In the current election cycle it seems that even though the press and others call Donald Trump to account for his repeated half-truths and even outright lies, he receives little or no admonition from persons who are likely to vote for him. I wonder whether in an election whether people discount lies and half-truths as just part of the game, part of the pronouncements of braggadocio that are simply accepted as emblematic of the discourse. Nor is throwing insults at others during a campaign new. It has happened in our political history since its beginning. It seems, however, that once a person ascends to office that there becomes a legal aspect to any statement the elected official makes. Is that the issue? Is free political speech just that, completely free without consequence other than, of course, believability by the electorate? If so, what do we make of political speech? Into what theoretical ethical construct might we place it: deontology, utilitarian, virtue? Or, can we say that political speech, guaranteed by our first amendment, is not an ethical construct, but a legal costruct. Does it come with an implicit warning 'listener beware' but no other consequence? If this is the case what brings meaning to political speech? Is it emotion, passion, snarkyness--what gives it its lasting appeal and what use does it provide the electorate?
brainpicking has a great post about Hannah Arendt's view about 'lying in politics', quite illuminating ...
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/06/15/lying-in-politics-hannah-arendt/
Dear Victoria,
The multitudinous ways & reasons politicians lie have been discussed in great detail at the thread linked below:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_do_politicians_lie
I believe that every rational person who tells a premeditated lie must already have "justified" it against whatever set of individual/internal morals they may have been imprinted with or willfully subscribed to [that's a far-stretch from you-or-me buying-into their lie, or their concepts of justification, however]. I believe all people lie, always [this is not a harsh indictment of humankind, only my way of acknowledging the uncertainty principle, that is, the non-existence of absolutes = truth], to one-degree-or-another (even if only inadvertently in the sense that the human mind can never be truly objective and can never observe and relate anything truly objectively/honestly [and, moreover, without some level of innate or emotional bias; viz: see "Chinese whispers or the telephone game" wiki at the link below] as most decisions [and especially those taken about what/who to believe] are based on emotions and not logic), but that people who have a strong moral sense that lying is "wrong/evil" most-often lie to avoid a loss (whether, selfishly, for themselves or altruistically, to help other avoid loss ... and the loss being avoided most often by such lying is, again, an offense to the feelings/emotions/prestige/face/honor ... not a tangible loss, like avoiding a cost/fine or punishment), but that people who have a weak sense of moral prohibition against lying usually practice deception in order to gain something (once again, even in this case the lying is usually simply an emotional gain, like borrowed prestige/esteem/fame/notoriety, however, such people are generally the ones who most-often tell the reprehensible lies, calculated for their tangible gains by deceiving others, or calculated to cause tangible losses to others).
We all lie, and the person to whom we lie most regularly (and to whom we usually tell the biggest whoppers) is ourselves.
It is a very difficult task to discern deception from truth in real face-to-face life (even though provided with its abundant body language and verbal cues); performing that task is so-much-more-difficult (impossible in many cases?) with the written word.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers
Lying can only be accepted in 3 conditions:
1) If a man does not love his wife for some reason and he tells her that he loves her. This can make magic and change many things. Another example is if his wife is very upset because her neighbor got a new car or house, he can tell her that when I earn some money I will buy a new house and he knows very well this would be impossible.
2) If two persons relations are cut for some problem, it would be allowed to tell each of them that the other person is telling good words about you and likes you as a preparation to discuss the conflicts between them to make their relations return normal.
3) In wars lying is allowed; war is a trick and you should not trust your enemy.
I think the example you gave about the Chinese grandma was not told about her remaining lifespan is beyond the call for definition of deception. The core characteristics of deception is 'intentionality' that means a lie is told knowingly and intentionally. Therefore, genuinely forgotten information is not equal information concealment (of course, the task lies in how we can truly tell if a memory is gone, also rests in the presumption you made in empirical study: whether you assume the memory is still here but hard/unable to extract). Back to the grandma case, it is about how culture shapes the universal definition of deception. in On the ethics of deception in negotiation' by Alan Strudler, you can read about how deception is justified in terms of self-defensive mechanism when information is uncertain.
deception is also grounded in contexts and situations where sometimes, deception in other settings might not necessarily defined as lies. These situations could be negotiation when agents are well aware of the rules and how deception is lured to be used as a communication strategy. Thus, deception in these cases should be examined carefully and specifically to the types (concealment or falsification or fabrication). This leads to the nature of deception, because you can only judge on the basis of ground truth. Philosophically, if one is not aware of the ground truth, does it man he is still lying or simply being uncertain? Again, all these are grounded in communication specified in corresponding cultures.
Hope this gives you a bit of insights :) all the best!
Cyndi Banks illustrates some conditions are necessary for the police to lie, for example “to protect the innocent, to protect the image of the departments, or to bring calm in a crisis” (p. 60)
Banks, C. (2016). Criminal justice ethics: Theory and practice. Sage Publications.
Hi every body
In Shiite Islamic teachings honesty and truth telling is recommended and highly emphasized in almost every situations. In a wide variety of Shiite Hadith have been brought that "deliverance and salvation is in truth" and "lying is not of Islamic morality" and "all evil collected in a home that key for its entrance is lying" and a lots of other Hadith.
Generally, In Shiite Islamic teachings lying can be justified in a very limited conditions regarded that telling the truth would resulted in something much worse than lying. In this case we usually exemplified "killing of an innocent" while lying can save the innocent. In this regard, another particular case is the condition that lying could correct friendly relationship of two Muslims. in other cases we Shiites peruse this guideline which has crystallized in the Islamic teachings and then poem of Saadi Shirazi one the famous Persian poets and literary men of the medieval period: "say nothing but the truth, but it is not suitable to tell (reveal) any truth".
Hi Victoria,
You ask: Do you agree that lying can be justified? If so, when, why or how?
Let me start by saying that your question has been highly debated among philosophers (e.g., Kant and Arendt), psychologists (Piaget and Kohlberg), theologians (Augustine and Aquinas), politicians (N Mandela and M. L. King), and so forth. All these men/women did not espouse the same conception of morality, that is, they defended different ideas and viewpoints about we ought to/not ought to do, such as lying/not lying; obeying/not obeying and the like. In other words, they adopted different principles in name of which a certain action can be judged to be moral and just or immoral and unjust.
As far I know, though the history of ideas, we can find four main moral principles. The principle of justice, according to which we should not treat others unfairly, but rather we should treat them with respect regardless of their age, ethnicity, gender, nationality, political and sexual orientation, and so forth. This type of morality are known as deontological moralities. I. Kant and L. Kohlberg's theories are unanimously known as deontological theories, even though they have not the same idea about lying/not lying, stealing/not stealing, obeying/not obeying, etc. For example, for Kant we can never lie because by doing so one goes against his categorical imperative (i.e., act as if your action could become a universal law; you should always treat others as an end in themselves, never as a means. In contradistinction, for Kohlberg we are even obliged to lie, steal and the like, for example, to save a human life. In this case, or cases similar to this one, lying is not only justified, but even obligatory in moral terms a question arises: Would be it just to lie to save a human life, if such lying led to the loss of other lives? The principle of social utility, according to which the more an action brings about the greatest good or happiness to the greatest number, the more such an action is moral and just. This type of morality are known as consequentialist moralities. J. Bentham's theory is a typical example of a consequentialist moral theory. Those who espouse this types of moralities would respond to your question by saying that if such a lying produced a great good (e.g., physical and mental health) to a great number of people, then it would be justified. A question arises: Who decrees what action brings about the greatest good or happiness to the greatest number of people, the force of reason or the reason of force or power The principle of benevolence, according to which we should not turn away from someone in need. When one does not want this to be the case, lying is justified and justifiable. Carol Gilligan's ethic of care and responsibility, for example, is guided by such a principle. This principle, however, is not without problems either. As we do not live in a world of saints and perfectly altruistic people, there are many cases of conflict of interests. Benevolence, however, is not capable of solving conflicts of welfare. Moreover, those who are involved in a conflict of interests do not claim for benevolence, but rather for justice. The principle of eudaimonia, eudaimonia being a Greek word. According to this principle, the more an action fulfills one's deep desires and happiness, the more the action is moral and just. Accordingly, lying would be justified if it were helpful for one's self-fulfillment. Note, however, that one's self-fulfillment may conflict with others' fulfillment or sense of well-being and happiness.
As you can be see through this brief historical digression, answers to your timely, interesting, and debatable question heavily depends on what type of moral account you embrace.
I am sympathetic to Kohlberg's account of morality and moral development, and hence, think that it is not always morally wrong to lie. As mentioned above, there can be cases where to lie is not only the right thing to do, but also the obligatory thing one must to do.
Have you ever heard of the Portuguese Consul Aristides Sousa Mendes? During the World War II, he put a visa on the passport of many people, mainly Israeli, so as to save them from going into a concentration camp. He did that by lying and disobeying the Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar. You certainly agree with me and will say that his lying/disobeying was more than justified and justifiable from a moral point of view. Needless to say, when Salazar came to know of Aristides Sousa Mendes' act, he deprived him of his career as a Consul and Mr. Sousa Mendes lived the rest of his life as a poor, albeit highly decent, moral man.
I hope that I have got your question, and that my comments are helpful for you.
Best regards and good work.
Hi Victoria,
I am not agreeing nor am I disagreeing - ;) I am currently writing a paper about lying, whites lies and deception in dementia care. I am using three examples to discuss ethics, one being so called Illusory-Bus-Stops in care centres for patients suffering from dementia.
See for yourself:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheinbushaltestelle
I noticed a strong discourse about the element of deception in nursing science and moral philosophy (in Germany) whether to integrate lying and deception in the care of dementia patients or not.
If you are still interested, let me know. I could elaborate on different perspectives.
Best,
Jakob
Dear Jacob, thanks for reviving this older thread. I'd love to read something about lying in caring for elders. What would you recommend? Thanks, Vicki
Thank you, Susan. I'd imagine these lies are subtle, to some extent, though on average people tend to be oblivious to the fact of lying, overall. It sounds like admitting it in a professional capacity, and on tape, would be shocking. I wonder how lawyers look at lying in general, and how does that compare to politicians...
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Philosophy
- Moral Philosophy