Online research in philosophy

The view that lying is morally worse than merely misleading is a very natural one, which has had many prominent defenders. Nonetheless, here I will argue that it is misguided: holding all else fixed, acts of mere misleading are not morally preferable to acts of lying, and successful lying is not morally worse than merely deliberately misleading. In fact, except in certain very special contexts, I will suggest that – when faced with a felt need to deceive – we might as well just go ahead and lie.

The pervasiveness of lying -- Why the lie? The reasons and justifications for lying -- How and why different types of people lie -- Taking the Lie-Q test : learning where you fit -- Everyday social lies -- Lying in public -- Lying at work -- Lying in business -- Lying to friends & relatives -- When men & women lie-the dating game -- Lies with husbands, wives, & intimate others -- The lies of parents & children -- Lying to oneself -- The strategy of deceiving and perceiving (or how to detect when someone is lying) -- Conclusion (or how to deal with different kinds of lies and liars).

What is lying? -- Why do people lie? -- Little lies -- Lying hurts! -- When someone lies to you -- What if you tell a lie? -- What if you get caught? -- Making it right -- Put an end to lying -- Start telling the truth.

This article first examines a number of different definitions of lying, from Aldert Vrij, Warren Shibles, Sissela Bok, the Oxford English Dictionary, Linda Coleman and Paul Kay, and Joseph Kupfer. It considers objections to all of them, and then defends Kupfer’s definition, as well as a modified version of his definition, as the best of those so far considered. Next, it examines five other definitions of lying, from Harry G. Frankfurt, Roderick M. Chisholm and Thomas D. Feehan, David Simpson, Thomas Carson, and Don Fallis. It finds reason to reject these definitions, in favor of the two definitions of lying previously defended, namely:(i) To lie (to another person) = df. to make a believed-false statement (to another person) with the intention that that statement be believed to be true (by the other person).(ii) To lie (to another person) = df. to make a believed-false statement (to another person), either with the intention that that statement be believed to be true (by the other person), or with the intention that it be believed (by the other person) that that statement is believed to be true (by the person making the statement), or with both intentions.

It is common for people to misstate their bargaining positions during business negotiations. This paper will focus on cases of the following sort: I am selling a house and tell a prospective buyer that $90,000 is absolutely the lowest price that I will accept, when I know that I would be willing to accept as little as $80, 000 for the house. This is a lie according to standard definitions of lying-it is a deliberate false statement which is intended to deceive others. I will defend the following two theses:a. Appearances to the contrary, this kind of bluffing typically does not constitute lying. (I will argue that standard dictionary definitions of lying are untenable and defend an alternative definition hinted at, but never clearly formulated by, W. D. Ross. On my definition, deliberate false statements about one's negotiating position would rarely constitute lies in this society.)b. It is usually permissible to misstate one's bargaining position when one has good reason to think that one's negotiating partner is doing the same and it is usually impermissible to misstate one's negotiating bargaining if one does not have good reason to think that the other party is misstating her position.

Bush and Cheney lied and attempted to deceive the public in a number of their public statements before and during the Iraq War of 2003. I defend definitions of deception and lying. Roughly, deception is intentionally causing others to have false beliefs. My definition of lying has two noteworthy features. First, I reject the standard view that lying requires the intention to deceive others. Second, I claim that telling a lie involves warranting the truth of what one says. Then, after summarizing some of the most well known cases in which it is alleged that Bush and Cheney lied or attempted to deceive the public, I argue that both Bush and Cheney are guilty of lying and deception, despite giving them every benefit of the doubt. In some of the cases it is clear that they tried to deceive the public, but unclear whether or not they lied. My view that lying involves giving a warranty or guarantee that what one says is true is salient in several of these cases and helps to show that Bush and Cheney lied and attempted to deceive the public—they strongly warranted the truth of claims that they knew were open to serious doubts. Their claims to the effect that it was certain that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction” were particularly egregious.

In order to lie, you have to say something that you believe to be false. But lying is not simply saying what you believe to be false. Philosophers have made several suggestions for what the additional condition might be. For example, it has been suggested that the liar has to intend to deceive (Augustine 395, Bok 1978, Mahon 2006), that she has to believe that she will deceive (Chisholm and Feehan 1977), or that she has to warrant the truth of what she says (Carson 2006). In this paper, I argue that none of the existing definitions of lying identify a necessary condition on lying. I claim that lying is saying what you believe to be false when you believe that the following norm of conversation is in effect: "Do not say what you believe to be false" (Grice 1989, 27). And I argue that this definition handles all of the counter-examples to the existing definitions.

The paper argues that the correct definition of lying is that to lie is to assert something one believes to be false, where assertion is understood in terms of the notion of the common ground of a conversation. It is shown that this definition makes the right predictions for a number of cases involving irony, joking, and false implicature. In addition, the proposed account does not assume that intending to deceive is a necessary condition on lying, and hence counts so-called bald-faced lies as lies.

In this essay I criticize recent attempts to prove that the concept of lying does not include the intent to deceive. I argue that examples by Isenberg and Carson fail to prove that one can lie without intending to deceive and, furthermore, that untoward consequences would follow if these authors were correct. I conclude that since intending to deceive is indeed a necessary condition of lying, the class of statements that constitute lies is smaller than what Isenberg et al. would suggest. Hence the class of deceptive advertisements is also correspondingly smaller.

According to the standard philosophical definition of lying, you lie if you say something that you believe to be false with the intent to deceive. Recently, several philosophers have argued that an intention to deceive is not a necessary condition on lying. But even if they are correct, it might still be suggested that the standard philosophical definition captures the type of lie that philosophers are primarily interested in (viz., lies that are intended to deceive). In this paper, I argue that the standard philosophical definition is not adequate as a definition of deceptive lying either. I then suggest two plausible alternative definitions of this concept.