Under what circumstances is lying morally acceptable?

Great Debates
1

I’m pretty much a situational ethicist, though I prefer the tem contextual morality. It’s not so much that I believe that the ends DO justify the means; it’s that I believe the ends SHOULD justify the means. That is, no action has any moral value except in reference to the motives of the actor and the necessary and predictable consequence of the action. In such a system, lying to a SS officer if he asks you if you know where the Franks are hiding isn’t choosing the lesser of two evils; it’s a positive and umambiguous good, while telling the officer the truth isn’t a good action with unfortunate consequences, but a definite and unambiguous sin.

But that’s just me. In your judgment, are lies ever moral? Why or why not?

2

Get the obvious ones out of the way: lying to protect someone else or yourself from unwarranted harm.

Justification: the greater good. Plus, “truth” is not necessarily a virtue in itself, or fiction would be immoral. “False statements that unfairly hurt others” are what we can all agree on as the bad kind of departure from truth.

3

Clearly, lying your ass off to get elected to political office is not only acceptable, but seems to be required.

4

Dex, leave the smart-alec remarks to a professional, okay? I am an asshole; you are not. Best not overexert yourself.

I was actually thinking of the presidential campaign when I began the thread, though I left any mention of Senators McCain, Obama, & Biden (and Governor Palin) out. I’m distressed by McCain’s deciding to put ambition ahead of honor. But I don’t to add to the current cornucopious of clusterfucks.

5

Undetectable lies that have no chance of hurting anyone are not morally wrong. They may indicate something wrong with the mental functioning of a person if there is no reason for telling them (i.e. if I tell people I had a dream that my head turned into a watermelon and that’s not true), but I don’t think they are wrong.

Undetectable lies that have no chance of hurting anyone and benefit someone are morally right. I think it is your obligation to tell such a lie as there is no harm done and good is done.

Undetectable lies that do harm or risk harming someone and do no good to anyone are wrong.

Undetectable lies that do harm or risk harming someone but do benefit someone are a grey area. It’s based on the balance of harm done and towards whom vs. the benefit and to whom the benefit applies. if the harm is done to someone who has no trust or relation to the liar, or that the liar has no moral obligations towards, and the harm is much smaller than the benefit to someone else, it is probably morally OK. Lies that hurt someone who should be able to trust the liar or whom the liar is obligated to protect to help another can only be justified if the good caused by the lie is significantly greater than the harm (i.e. if I lied to my wife and told her I cheated on her years ago to prevent the undeserved murder of another person, that would probably be morally justifiable).

6

I think Skald has it right , and would suggest this formulation of the standard: Lying is morally acceptable when the consequences of telling the truth are not morally acceptable.

7

Isn’t this the only possible justification?

All that remains is deciding how loosely to define harm. Is it harm to your wife to know that there is apparel that makes her look fat? Is it harming your countrymen to allow your political opponents to get into office?

(My answers to these: no and YMMV.)

8

Only because we as voters don’t hold them to account for it. They lie, we say, “so what else is new” and the world carried on.

In Canada we had a politician who said, “If my party, once elected, doesn’t abolish this tax (the GST) then I will resign…” ← not a direct quote but a very fair approximation.

When the party was elected and made no move to get rid of the tax she made no move to resign. When called on it she said “I didn’t say I’d resign.” ← same as before.

When the clips of her saying she’d resign were played for her she said, “Well resign can mean different things.” <–ibid

After two weeks of lying, fudging and general mendacity she slunk angrily onto the moral highground and said, “I said I would resign if we didn’t get rid of the GST. I’m a woman of my word - I’m resigning.” ← last one, honest.

Her seat was put up for by-election and her constituents voted overwhelmingly in her favour.

No wonder they lie, we make it easy for them.

9

Lying by itself is unequivocally a bad thing, in my view. My goal in life is to learn as much as I can about Reality and The Universe. Anything that detracts from that goal is a negative action, in my view. Obviously, other people have different priorities.

The rule is absolute, but its effects are not. Consider the SS/Anne Frank scenario brought up earlier:

|Lying|<|assisting Hitler in the Holocaust|

Therefore,

(Saving Anne Frank)+(Lying)= a net good,

even though lying by itself is bad.

The reason they don’t teach this moral calculus in math class is precisely because it is so imprecise and inconsistent. For some small few, the benefits of saving Anne Frank do not outweigh the detriments of lying.

A much larger number might argue that the negative aspects of lying outweigh the positive aspects of, among other things, boosting self esteem or letting a competitor’s inferior idea prevail. I am one of those. And since I define lying as ‘obscuring truth, or withholding information in order to influence one to make choices one wouldn’t have if one had all relevant information,’ I consider most advertisers and politicians professional liars.

Anyway, the answer to the thread title is “when the beneficial effects of lying outweigh its inherent negative effects.” Which isn’t helpful, because people like me will place lying extremely low on the high-is-good-low-is-bad scale, while people like GW Bush will place lying into neutral or even inherently good territory.

Legally, lying should be almost always allowed, because the benefits of much more freedom outweigh the benefits of a little more truth. Morally, you can say lying to your wife to make her feel prettier is okay, while I can despise politicians and advertisers to my heart’s content.