Could humans have evolved to the position we’re in now without the ability to lie? Is it required for social interaction to be successful?
Do other animals lie? Some pretend to be injured or dead to lure prey, or to dissuade predators. Most “monogomous” animals have been discovered through DNA evidence to have offspring not genetically related to their mate. Is this lying?
What’s the evolutionary advantage to lying? If lying has an evolutionary advantage, does that mean it’s not wrong? Which trumps, ethics or evolution?
Will it ever be possible, or desirable, to eliminate lying as a behavior? How would this affect our evolution as a species?
I (of course) have some thoughts on this, but I’d like to hear what others think first.
Whether a non-human animal can lie very much hinges on your definition of ‘lie’ - if it involves a conscious decision, then we’ve got to resolve the question of whether any non-human animals possess consciousness in the same sense as humans (I think some do and some much more than others, but not everybody agrees).
If ‘lie’ just involves deception then yes, lots of animals do it all the time - insects deceive predators by appearing to be a leaf or some other inanimate object, predators lie in wait for their prey using similar tactics, even some plants carry out acts of deception; various types of carrion flower imitate rotting flesh in order to attract flies that can transfer pollen. They didn’t choose to perpetrate these acts of deception, but somewhere along the line, the deception was expedient and therefore more successful.
The problem is, even if we were able to eliminate any genetic causes for the act of lying (which is a pretty grim concept if you start thinking about how we would go about doing this - genocide? mandatory sterility on a massive scale?) there is still the relatively decent chance that someone, somewhere would have a “new” mutation in their dna that allowed for lying. This trait, especially in a world full of people who have come to trust one another implicitly because there are no lies, would really help out this one person and increase the chance that he or she can survive to propagate the “lying gene” and provide for his or her children to do the same. Humans can develop cultural practices to combat lying, but it is still going to be in the interest of some individual somewhere.
The ability to lie surely has had an impact on the development of civilization, even if you don’t buy the argument that linguistic abilities somehow added an evolutionary, biological pressure. And I’m sure that lies were told when we were still hunting and gathering.
Required for social interaction to be successful? Well, lying does certainly help satisfy a lot of personal motives - most of them having to do with getting the other guy to like you better. One of the functions of the lie is to help keep social interactions more satisfying. But satisfying or no, successful social interactions (communication, at least) are still needed. Lying isn’t an essential for supporting communication. But I’d argue that lying is an inevitable part of communication.
Color me skeptical about lying having anything to do with biological evolution. I believe the first lie was said not too long after the first sentence was spoken.
As far as pitting ethics against evolution: Evolution has always won. Natural selection favors arrangements that lead to survival, not what’s “right.” (you wanna ask about the rise of civilization, though, the discussion’s more interesting).
I’m sure that if we eliminated lying at this point (don’t worry about it, we can’t), we would die out. There’s no contraceptive more effective than perfect honesty.
Darwin’s Finch: I think thats a rather absolutist position to take and I’m sure most sociobiologists would disagree with you.
If we are talking about deception and not lying specifically, then many bird species commit adultery using quite sophisticated methods of deception to prevent their partner from finding out.
There is a theory floating around that the reason the human brain exploded in size was that there was an evolutionary arms race going on between lying and being able to detect lying behavior. And lying tends to be a fiarly integral part of game theory where many situations demand that you not only need to lie but to know when someone else is lying, know if someone else thinks your lying, know in someone else thinks that you suspect them of lying ad infinitum.
I would say that lying is an integral and desirable aspect of social interaction and is deeply genetically rooted.
I don’t think I agree with that. I can think of several instances in which the ability to lie would result in greater reproductive ability. As **Engywook **(great name, BTW) points out, “There’s no contraceptive more effective than perfect honesty.” Lying to gain more mates, or more chances to mate, would increase reproductive odds. Lying to trick others out the their food would increase nutritional well-being, which could lead to a longer period of fertility. Lying to gain sympathy could gain one medical, building shelter or social aid in rearing young.
In order to lie, you need to be able to grasp the idea that another individual can view things differently than you do. Most animals, and small human children, think that whatever they see or know, the other individual sees or knows. You can’t lie if that is the case. Or rather, it would never occur to you to try to lie. When a 1 year old plays peek-a-boo, and covers up his eyes, he thinks his partner cannot see him either, regardless of whether the partner’s eyes are covered or not.
Chimps have been shown to understand this concept, and I expect other apes have as well, but it’s a rare ability in the animal kingdom. So, no, I don’t think we could have our mental abilities without also having the ability to lie. Having the ability, it’s hard to imagine not using it. In order to eliminate lying, you’d have to eliminate a fundamental human capacity-- to see each other as individuals with differing knowledge.
DF is somewhat playing semantics, although he’s technically correct. He wants you to say “what reproductive advantage does lying give to those who are able to lie” or something like that.
Not sure if there’s a genetic basis for lying, but socially speaking, children learn to lie at an early age (as any parent knows).
Not that it’s a surprise; at around 3-5 years old, a kid in trouble soon discovers that giving Answer A will have negative repercussions, and that giving Answer B will not. Since they don’t know there’s a social/parental stigma against lying, they’ll give the answer that leaves them better off.
Hopefully, over time, the kid is taught that lying is A Bad Thing, and doesn’t rely on it in everyday life. But that lesson that Saying Something Different Can Get You What You Want has already been taught, and people who are willing to use it can have life-long careers as used car dealers, confidence men, and Presidents.
Which leads to the station on the train of thought which prompted me to ask the question: WhyKid is a terrible liar, and I don’t know whether to be pleased or upset by this!
Seriously, his first “baby lies” were adorable in their transparency, but he’s 12 next week, and he’s not any better at it. “Mom…I’m…going to stay after school for about an hour today to get ahead on some homework.” :dubious: Excuse me? Got detention? (He shuffles his feet for a bit.) “Yeah.” How come? “I left my bag in Mrs. Smith’s room once and she got mad when I went to get it?” Um…for some reason, I’m not buying it. A quick call to the teacher reveals that he’s been “forgetting” his bag (next to the desk of the girl he “doesn’t like”) all week, and causing a huge ruckus interrupting class to come fetch it. :smack:
Not doing homework, not cleaning his room - just terrible lies, which are easily and consistently busted by stealthy super-sleuth tactics like opening the bedroom door or looking at the spelling book.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I lied all the time as a 12 year old. But I was at least good at it.
It got me thinking that if passing his genes down was related to his ability to lie well, the Why family name may be dead in 80 years.
Just taking a common sense guess, I would say the genetic basis for lying is the same part of us that sets our own survival as top priority and just about everything else’s as second.
Lying is just another tool to achieve the goals embedded deep within us.
No, I want the OP to say, “There is no known genetic basis which produces the trait of ‘lying’, thus natural selection is very probably indifferent to the trait.” Unless, of course, the OP can produce evidence to the contrary.
Many behaviors exhibited by humans (and other naimsl) are the result of emergent properties of complex neural networks. That is, they arise as a direct result of the complexity of the system, not the genetics of the system. Consider that we only have on the order of about 10,000 genes. That is simply not enough for a 1:1 behavior:gene correlation.
Not that misdirection (in the sense of birds pretending to have broken wings to lure predators away from the nest, or similar behaviors) is not the same as lying.
I can easily conceive of situations where lying might produce a selective advantage. But conceiving is not the same as being. Just because the trait works in a sociological setting doesn’t make it evolutionary in origin.
If are talking about deception and not lying specifically, then we might as well include all forms of mimicry and camouflage, at which point we are pretty much talking about many varied traits, both physical and behavioral, which, indeed, does turn this into a semantics game.
Evolve to not lie? We’d become as the Thermians in Galaxy Quest.
(from IMDB)
[Trying to explain TV to the Thermians]
Gwen DeMarco: They’re not ALL “historical documents.” Surely, you don’t think Gilligan’s Island is a…
[All the Thermians moan in despair]
Mathesar: Those poor people.
It’s a very different thing to claim that there is no gene for lying and no genetic basis for lying. If the multitude of twin studies are to be trusted, quite complex behaviour can be genetically determined even though they are not directly expressed as a single or set of genes. I don’t know how familiar you are with modern evolutionary sociobiology but lying forms a pretty integral plank to human psychology and I would hazard a guess that modern sociobiologists would regard it as inconcievable for lying to not have a genetic basis and be selected for or against.
