As I mentioned, his answer had to do with his desire to be perfectly honest, to himself and to her.
The ingratitude is what gets my ire up, but note that ingratitude was not what prompted the response in the first place: It was his absolute, rock-solid conviction that to be honest to the point of rudeness is better than any small measure of dishonesty.
Perhaps that story could’ve been in the pit, but I was responding to the question of “Why should what honest people say matter so much to you?” and therefore was pertinent to the discussion at hand.
Well Lucius, thanks for this post.
If you’ve read my posts you see we have similar thoughts One point. You say to lie you have to state what is false with the intent to decieve and both elements have to be present.
What about political spin? If a politician uses selective info and a careful selection of words to deliberately lead people to believe something that he knows is not true. Does that qualify as a lie? To me the intent to decieve is the crucial factor.
A fine line I know. Withholding information and allowing someone to draw their own conclusions, or cherry picking information to deliberately lead people to a conclusion you know is false.
Motive is a factor but shouldn’t be in the judgement of truthfulness.
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I agree. I think telling the truth is an act of respect. Lieing is disrepectful even if done under the guise of consideration. Sometimes people will be hurt by the truth, but in many cases they will appreciate the act of respect. This is not to be confused with an inconsiderate and thoughtless expression of your opinion.
A good thought
Agreed. Science is a search for truth that requires a certain committment to the truth. I think if we made a committment to the truth in areas of communication and morallity we could make some advances there as well.
What I’ve noticed here is that most people will say it is better to tell the truth but in some cases lieing makes sense and is justified.
So when your girlfriend lies about sleeping with your brother to spare your feelings then when you find out you probably thank them for being so considerate.
When parents tell their kids they’re great at something that they are really fair or poor at thats an act of consideration? When the kid finds out that isn’t true are they grateful.
A committment to the truth forces us to think and grow. As you suggested we examine our motives and the degree in which we are honest with ourselves.
What about quality of life? What I object to is the assumptive conclusion that in certain cases lieing will save someones life. The goal of the lie may be that, but the assumption that it’s the only or obvious choice seems incorrect.
As Cain said "Faced with two evils any man must choose. In thinking about this I’ve yet to find a real or hypothetical case where a lie would be the only choice. But I get the point. Another example might be standing up to murderous prejudice in the south in days gone by.
“Have you seen any runaway slaves round here?” In that case I confess it makes sense that you might do more good pretending to be one of the prejudice faithful while working with the underground railroad.
In a court of law you swear an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. In an intimate union with a loved one I believe the same standard applies. In other situations the line isn’t that clear.
Are you insane??? What makes you think she wants her ass to look bigger?
Let’s take an example from my own life. I absolutely hate family gatherings, because, well, I hate most of my extended family. I’ve stopped celebrating my birthday just to get out of one family gathering a year. Now, I love my mother, she loves me, and she loves family gatherings, and she loves having as much of the family as possibly present at them, especially her children. So far, I haven’t told her how much I hate it, nor have I stopped going, although the thought has crossed my mind (and crossed it again, and kept going back and forth through it). Should I tell her the truth and break her heart after she spent a lifetime taking care of me? What value is there in that?
Why do you believe all these things?
Absolutely, under most circumstances. It hurts nobody.
But why would you bother? Why try to get cute misleading the Nazis? Why not just lie?
Again: what is so damn good about truth? Why do you advocate risking lives just to avoid lying? How can this even be a question for you?
I’d say that it is principles that are pretty much nothing, really. Antiquated and useless concept.
The reason I say personally to me to lie requires both intent to deceive and actual falsehood, is firstly to get rid of cases of sarcasm and exaggeration (“its raining cats and dogs” etc.) and secondly, because I believe the word is more useful if we restrict it to directly not telling truth, whereas deceive can be used in a more general sense. That’s not to say of course (although I don’t believe it) that someone could not hold the view that someone should never try to deceive in the way of the example of the politician you presented.
As for the political spin argument you mention… Hmm, well I guess what I’d want to say is that, presuming all the facts they’re presenting are true, just carefully selected - then yes, they’re attempting to decieve. I wouldn’t call it a lie, but I would call it a morally bad thing. Which is to say, I don’t think it should be done, but I wouldn’t put an absolutist position on it and accept that there are times in national security where it may be necessary, although probably far, far less than politicians currently feel is justified…
I guess in fifty years I’d want to be able to look back it as a historian with all the facts, and think, well that politican manipulated his public for a greater motive, but he never directly lied.
Yes, I’d agree with that, I think. I struggle to think of real world examples where there is not another option. OTOH, if we do try and think of a thought experiment where we do not allow another option, then it becomes more complicated, but not unsolvable I hope. But yeah, even if one did want to say that in this case maybe you should lie, I would be very, very reluctant to extend that precedent out to any other cases.
No, you should say nothing, if that’s what you find easiest.
Nobody said you had a duty to always declare the truth at all times.
Because I do… Most of them I think are fairly self explanatory, but I’ll try and go more into that in a second.
I think this pretty much sums up your objections - you don’t believe in this notion of principles, and so I’m gonna have to answer why as a whole to me they might be valuable , before I get into why truth specifically might be valuable, so valuable even as to weigh against a human life.
First, I’m going to go back to the idea of faith as an example, mostly because I think its easier to understand.
Let’s take the case of Christians in Roman times who became martyrs for the cause - killed because they would not deny their faith. Do you not think there is something noble in what they did?
I’m gonna make a huge assumption and assume you did (although, if you didn’t, that’s okay - I’ll be trying a different tack later) - and so I want to extend the principle. What if there were two such Christian martyrs. Noble, again. Now what if they were threatened to deny their faith or the other would die. There isn’t, arguably, a big difference here to the earlier situation in that they were both willing, so presumably that might be okay, too.
Alright, now how do we possibly extend that idea to justify a Christian martyring someone else, perhaps an atheist, for their faith?
Firstly, I should say that I do feel this is a ridiculous question, because I do feel that’s what a Christian ethic would call for. To get incredibly cliched and WWJD and all that, I very much doubt an important figure in the Bible would have denied their faith to save someone’s life. They’d say that God is too important, too majestic, so unbelievably more significant than a single human’s life, that even is his name is worth protecting above someone’s life.
And that’s more or less the direction I want to go in with the concept of truth. I want to argue as a concept its worth more than life itself. Right, more slowly (and forgive me, if I appear patronising - I really don’t mean to,I’m just trying to write this out step by step).
I’m gonna guess that from your strict criticism of principles as antiquated, that you follow a consequentalist moral ethic. That any action is only bad to the extent of negative effects it has in the world. From this point of view, it seems nonsensical to say that lying is ‘bad’ as such - all that we can say is that it tends to have bad effects. However, in the Nazi case, it obviously has the complete opposite effect, so is not only allowed and that probably we are obligated to lie.
The first big problem with that is that we are not omniscient. We never have any idea of the full effects of each our actions. It’s for that reason we tend to simplify the matter by making some general rules, such as “Do not steal,” “Do not kill”, “Do not lie” and so on. Unless we can be absolutely sure of the reverse we act on the assumption that one of those actions will have bad effects.
The first strand of my argument then follows that idea, and claims that we are never really in a good enough position to judge the effects of some actions, in particular, lying, and therefore we should avoid it in any cases.
(or at least that as Cosmosdan said, there is almost always an alternate action which we can take)
The second strand of my argument goes back to the Christian example, and in many ways is more metaphyiscal.
I think the core of it is, does life need to have a purpose?
From what I’ve read you seem to be saying that it doesn’t, and that it’s just about being as happy as possible, and making everyone else happy too. (Which of course could be called a purpose in its own right, but that’s really just semantics)
The other view is that, yes, it does. That without it life is empty, pointless, meaningless. And that for some people, happiness in itself is not enough. They want human existence to be more than just a desperate struggle for survival and gluttonry. In other words life for its own sake is pointless.
I always think of the thought experiment of the possibility of being in an unthinking eternal nirvana of simple perfect ectasy. And call me crazy - but that’s not entirely an appealing picture to me. I want some choice, some freedom, some ability to develop. I value things other than happiness. Other than life.
So, why is truth one of those things?
And to that, I come back to my idea of truth as a noble thing, as a concept that separates us from the rest of the nature. Of being a solid foundation that lets us understand the world. About being the core link that allows a society to happen, that allows relationships. If I lie about something, I deny myself and everything I’ve ever been.
So, yeah, its a kind of faith. And for that reason it may not seem to make a lot of sense - which is probably why this post has ended up as incoherent as it has… - but I do believe in it, I think. And this post has gone long enough already to be going on with, so I think I’ll leave it there.
And if she asks me outright if I want to keep going?
That depends on your definition of “noble”, but my answer is probably “no”, and even if it’s “yes”, that doesn’t mean it’s any good, again, depending on your definition of “noble”.
Given the premise that dying for your faith is good, I agree that causing someone else to die for your faith is also good, all other things being equal.
Correct.
Yep.
I’m with you on these points. I also agree that the law should be rule-based (but not because I believe in principles, but because I believe a rule-based law has better consequences than a wholly situation-based law).
We are never in a good enough position to judge the effects of telling the truth either, and so, by this logic, should avoid it. This goes for any action, including breathing in and out.
Happiness is a purpose. It’s not semantics.
Then they don’t have happiness. Happiness is always enough, by definition. If happiness doesn’t make the person happy, then it isn’t happiness. If they yearn for more than what they have, they are not happy.
You want that now, but if you were in an unthinking eternal nirvana of simple perfect ecstasy, you wouldn’t. Do you disagree?
We’ve had a few thoughts on this but let me add a few more.
It’s interesting that you say
We can’t really get into the whole “what is happiness?” thing. It seems to fluctuate from person to person, but in general, peace of mind, contentment, even love. There are lots of things in life that bring us a tempoary rush of happiness and then fade. We can spend our time looking for our next fix of that kind of happiness or look for something more more substantial and lasting.
Let’s look at our closest relationships. Spouse or significant other. In those relationships can we seperate honesty from happiness? If we don’t have a truthful and honest relationship then can there be real lasting happiness?
If we think that truthfulness and honesty are a necessity in our closest relationships then why dismiss it in other relationships. Convienience? Dishonesty might be the easier choice but not the better one. Here are a few things associated with happiness that come from a committment to truthfulness and honesty. A clear conscience; you never have to worry about getting busted for lieing. A good reputation or simple trust. Even the people who don’t like you will tend to trust and respect you. Dishonesty always raises a barrier between people once trust is violated.
Regarding the siruation with your Mom.
Years ago my girlfriend and I would go to spend Christmas Eve with her family every year. She hated it. She didn’t get along with one of her brothers and there was no real joy there. Just polite observance of a family tradition. One year I told her I wasn’t going and encouraged her to what was best for her instead of going out of guilt. She called her Mom and told her she wasn’t going to be there and the Sh** hit the fan. They accused her of being inconsiderate and responsible for her Mom being upset simply because she chose to do what made her happy instead of them. They refused to open her gifts for them and wouldn’t give hers to her. How incredibly childish. The good news is that with the passing of time family bonds were patched up and a new and healthier precedent was established.
I wouldn’t presume to know what’s best or right in your situation but let me suggest a few things.
The truth is you hate those family gatherings and you love your Mom. Perhaps there is a way to share both these truths with her and set a new precedent.
I suspect that she loves you in return and wants you to be happy.
Perhaps an honest and loving discussion of things can lead to something new and better for both of you, such as you get to have more private quality time with her instead of dealing with people you don’t care to be around.
This is one of those situations where I think honesty tempered with a little wisdom and compassion can help people grow. There may indeed be growing pains.
Let me also say that I’ve been in situations where I’ve made a conscious decision to go do something I’d rather not do for someone else’s sake. In that case I take responsibility for my own choice and see it as an act of consideration. It’s not dishonest unless I’m fuming inside or blaming the other for “making” me go and refuse to express my feelings.
Again, it is the process of being truthful with ourselves and others that leads to personnal and community growth. The study of Psychology is searching for the truth of what moves and motivates us so that our subconcious motives no longer control us. Our choices become conscious, which is to say, more honest.Even if you believe that happiness is all that is worth striveing for then questions arise that require an honest answer. What is happiness for me? What do I really want.
All principles? then what? Lie or tell the truth, cheat or not, steal or not, whatever suits your purpose at that moment?
Interesting, perhaps a good subject for another thread.
To lie is to deceive, and deception is usually to the advantage of the deceiver or the detriment of the deceived. But besides the examples of sparing people’s feelings, there are situations where lying is moral.
Firstly, when the lie is to the detriment of an agent of evil. Never mind harbouring Jews - how about the example of Oskar Schindler telling the soldier that he needed the small hands of children to polish the insides of shell casings? Pure bullshit, a blatant lie that he volunteered - he wasn’t even asked a question. I don’t know if that part of the movie had a factual basis, but if so I salute him for his courageous and risky lie.
Secondly, when a lie counters unproductive anxiety. Anxiety fulfils a function of making people avoid dangerous or painful situations. But when the danger or pain is unavoidable, it’s of no benefit letting someone worry about it, and may even be harmful. When someone is halfway across a rickety bridge and has a panic attack, lie to them. Tell them they’re nearly across, just a few more steps. Tell them these bridges never break, they can support a hundred people. The truth can wait for a bit.
I’m still not quite sure why this particular example is such a big issue, but anyway…
You’d say yes presumably, which has the happy coincidence of being both the truth and what she’d want you to say. Presumably you wouldn’t explain that the reason you want to keep going is that you know to stop doing so would upset her…
I’m in an unthinking eternal nirvana. By definition, I don’t want anything because I don’t think anything. Which isn’t really relevant to the issues at hand.
The question is, what do I want now.
You seem to be employing circular reasoning here. If you define the only thing valuable to be happiness before the debate already begins, then of course the only thing you’re going to care about is happiness.
What you need to do first is argue exactly why, firstly, happiness is desirable (not really that hard), and secondly why happines is the * only * thing desirable without bringing in the idea of happiness itself as a justification (an awful lot harder). It would also probably be helpful to clarify whether you’re referring to happiness in the strict Millsian pleasure & absense of pain sense, or something broader.
The more dangerous tendency and one we see more likely to be a temptation is to lie - that’s why it makes more sense to guard against it. In other words, the cases where a lie might conceivably be helpful from the POV of this argument are a tiny, tiny majority which it is safer just to ignore, a not unreasonable position. Defending the alternative view that only in a tiny minority of cases should one tell the truth I feel is likely to be a good deal harder.
This sounds a little like. The gasoline itself has no value. Driveing my new sports car does. .
And that is very telling. As in other examples. You won’t know if being truthful will eventually make things better until you actually try it.
It’s not an easy situation. I hope it works out okay.
There’s a book titled “ON Bullshit” by Harry Frankfurt. I saw him being interviewed on The Daily Show. He said we seem to have lost our respect and reverence for the truth. I agree and it saddens me. If lieing serves your purpose or the purpose of the group you are a part of then go for it. So as our leaders argue about principles both parties lie in order to “win” Even in some Christians who claim to worship truth in the form of Christ.
Where do we draw the line? At honesty I think. It’s honesty or it isn’t. The process of thinking about being truthful. Striveing to be truthful will be the kind of self examination that makes us grow as people.
If we occasionaly slip up because we’re human then we can forgive ourselves and forgive others and move on. It’s the concept dishonesty as an acceptable part of life that disturbs me.
It’s a real-world, here-and-now example of a situation where a lie is preferable.
It’s not the truth. I don’t want to go.
So omitting a crucial part of the truth isn’t the same as lying, to you?
I disagree. You were using the “I don’t want to be in an unthinking eternal nirvana” bit to show that there are other valuable things than happiness. I pointed out that while the idea of being in an unthinking eternal nirvana doesn’t make you happy now, actually being in one would.
Absolutely, so let’s try and find other valuable things.
It appears that we agree that happiness is desirable.
I say that happiness is the only thing desirable because I cannot think of one, nor has anyone ever been able to tell me one, single thing that has value without gaining that value through causing happiness.
Broader. Anything that causes a person to say “I’m happy about X” or even “I’m not suffering as much as I was five minutes ago”.
It’s not an unreasonable position, I just disagree with it. When it comes to personal morals, I see no point in rule-based ethics.
That’s not the alternative view. The alternative view is that you tell the truth when that gets the best results, and lie when that gets the best results.
If we were to compare the values of gasoline and driving a car, then the argument “But gasoline helps you drive a car, so therefore gasoline is better than driving a car” would be similar to the one you’re giving in favour of truth.
Again, you’re using circular reasoning - ‘being happy makes you happy’. You don’t say
Yes, but I want to see your reasoning for it - because then we can see if the same reasoning can be extended to find something else that is desirable. The usual reasoning is that the only proof something is desirable is that people desire it - but people desire truth, too. Is that the line of thought you want to go down?
Which begs the question, what do you mean by value?
Okay, I’m slight wary about taking that route because then I worry that the concept can be extended so far as to become meaningless (ie. I could claim that my happiness requires truth, and so that there can be no happiness without it). Could you put some more definite limits on it?
I feel you’re grasping at straws. “I want to go because I like it” and “I want to go because otherwise you’d be sad” are very different statements.
Exactly my point. Whatever you may say you want now you wouldn’t want that if you were perfectly happy.
I don’t accept that people desire truth. People desire what makes them happy. If a lie that they think is the truth makes them happy, then that’s what they want. If the truth makes them happy, then that’s what they want.
This is where we run into circular reasoning, though, because I truly can’t think of anything that has value besides happiness. If someone doesn’t agree that physical and mental pleasure is “good” whereas physical and mental pain is “bad”, then utilitarianism is not for them. It is not a position that can be reasoned into or out of. Pleasure and pain are ultimately just electrical signals, no different from the electrical signals in your monitor. Pleasure isn’t good in any objective sense, it’s just my experience that pleasure is good. I’d wager every human and many many other living creatures share that experience. If you don’t, please inform me.
Well, once again, if you do claim that your happiness requires truth, it doesn’t really matter for the purpose of this discussion. You still haven’t showed that truth has any value besides its promotion of happiness.
Strange question. I obviously cannot limit the concept of happiness, when that concept is what I build my ethics on.
Since you haven’t tried the truth yet you are assuming this position without evidence.
In thinking about these posts I think I have a clearer understanding of the points you’ve been making and consequentalist moral ethic. I think our differences may be a problem of interpertation or in the order in which we arrange the key points.
Not exactly. I’m not saying gasoline is better than driving. I’m saying gasoline is an essential element of driving. I agree that gasoline by itself appears to have no value until one considers its purpose and/or application. What I desire is to drive. Since I can’t drive without gas then I desire that too.
Principles and rules are guidelines, not the goal. In the driving analogy they help to prevent us from crashing into each other. Another analogy; If happiness is a house we wish to build and live in then truth is the best foundation. We may not recognize this or believe it and so we try other foundations. All of them are only temporary. Rules and principles are the tools we use to build with. We don’t all use the same tools. Tools can be picked up or cast aside. They can be improved and updated. We may drive nails with a rock until we discover a hammer and learn how to use it.
Ahhhhhhh, I see this as two things. We might be perfectly happy pushing the car “Hey look I’m driving” Eventually we will wonder if there’s a better way. Science is a good example of this. We might build our house on sand and be perfectly content when we move in but eventually it crumbles. At which point we might wonder “WTF happened?” Ignorence may be bliss, temporarily.
As I mentioned before. Happiness as a goal leads us to questions we have to answer truthfully. Am I happy? What will make me happy? Why didn’t that feeling of happiness last? What can I do about it?
. I think another question is do I want the best short term results or the best long term results.
I think we disagree less than I originally thought. I can agree that happiness, or whatever term one might use, is a desired consequence. My position is that truth is the only solid foundation for happiness in the long term. This applies to the individual and by effect, our society and all of humanity. If and when we recognize that the car isn’t driving to good because the gas has too many impurities, then we might change the process of refinement.
If truth is the only solid foundation, then making a personnal commitment to be truthful makes perfect sense. It’s not truth for truths sake or for principle’s sake. It’s truth as whats best for me as an individual and humanity collectively.
Evidence? my previous point about our closest relationships and the link I provided. I recognize this is an unproveable position except by personnal experience.
Now we’re getting somewhere. Two questions for you.
Do you agree that happiness is not only a desired consequence but the desired consequence?
If it were somehow proven to you that lies were more effective than truth in promoting happiness, would you then advocate lying?
[sub]Oh, and one other little thing: could you please consider your coding? You’ve made exactly the same coding error in every single post so far, and while I hesitate to bring it up, it is annoying. Start the first quote with
