Lying as a necessity

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Eduk
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by Eduk »

Well normally if you said it was necessary to lie to achieve a goal what you really mean is there would be no other way to practically achieve the goal. It's not strictly necessary but it is either practically necessary or at the very least a very key component. So I was going with the normative meaning rather than the pedantic meaning.

For example if you wish to build a house then it is necessary to employ an architect to draw up blue prints.
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Chili
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by Chili »

Eduk wrote:Well normally if you said it was necessary to lie to achieve a goal what you really mean is there would be no other way to practically achieve the goal. It's not strictly necessary but it is either practically necessary or at the very least a very key component. So I was going with the normative meaning rather than the pedantic meaning.

For example if you wish to build a house then it is necessary to employ an architect to draw up blue prints.
Most of what we do is unconscious or instinctive. If we notice at some point that we are lying or killing, say, we may find it helpful or rewarding to reduce this behavior.

If one were designing a person or a society from scratch, with all beings cooperating like bees, perhaps lying could be omitted.
Eduk
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by Eduk »

I was simply pointing out a belief that most people would do better if they lied less (especially to themselves).
For example your example of a Nazi. Perhaps they believe that the Jewish people are indeed plotting against them and causing them to live in deprived circumstances. I don't know I wasn't there, but that is the rumour. Now that is a clear lie and they would have done better to not believe it. The actual cause of deprivation is what is the key thing.
Now I don't know the real reasons, I am sure it is complex. But let us imagine that part of the problem is a relatively small group of people taking more than their fair share. Now that small group would no doubt need to lie about things in order to get away with those actions. Which brings us back to the other point I was making about it depending on how you defined success. As, I for one, would find such behaviour not to be worth the cost. Of course everyone is different, it could be that some people genuinely like to live their lives like this. Now this brings me to your point about survival. Of course for the unethical man lying can be a boon and it his nature so there are no problems there. But I would argue that this unethical man is reducing the long term survivability of his progeny. Now there is reason for this to be a goal. But this again brings me back to the point about it depending on how you define success.
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Maxcady10001
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by Maxcady10001 »

My definition of success included a life within society, which lying is necessary for. To live within society one must lie, especially to obtain rank. The only way to live without lying is not to have ever been a part of society. Ex:Feral children
Can one succeed if they have not been apart of society, when they have no concept of success?
There has never been a person who lived until adulthood in society without lying.
Eduk
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by Eduk »

I live in society with a non feral child. I manage to not lie too much or too often. I am relatively unique. But not due to any incredible expertise on my part.
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Chili
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by Chili »

Eduk wrote:I live in society with a non feral child. I manage to not lie too much or too often. I am relatively unique. But not due to any incredible expertise on my part.
Like in an intimate tribe, in a family people often struggle to limit lying as much as possible.
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Atreyu
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by Atreyu »

OP, you are quite correct.

Yes, we must lie at times. Therefore, when we do it we should make sure that we do it convincingly and effectively. If you have to lie, you might as well lie well...
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RareVlad
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by RareVlad »

In reply to Spectrum:
I don't believe in some fundamental evilness of lying, therefore I am not in favour of promoting "an absolute moral rule" which prohibits lying. This will only work if it is akin to a religious belief, and then only within a small proportion of people who subscribe to it. It will be a small proportion because such rule is not practicable. People will have to break it from time to time. First time they will feel guilty, second time they will realise it's not absolute, and then it will become just "one of those ideas" and lose significance in people's minds. Further promotion of such rule will cause rejection because calling it "absolute" is evidently wrong.

My view is that there is nothing fundamentally bad about lying as it is only as bad as its consequences. There are enough examples of lying in this discussion which are seen as acceptable, and in each case the argument is built on the comparison of consequences of lying vs saying truth. Such considerations, I believe, are not alien to most people which makes application of any absolute rule problematic. The decision to lie or say truth is situational and involves judgement.

At the same time, lying is generally considered bad. The usual purpose of lying is to achieve a personal benefit at someone's expense. Universal application of lying would destabilise a society, and recognition of this view results in introduction of legal and moral norms which aim at minimising such behavior. This is compounded by the fact that it is hard to provide any hard and fast rules for the situations where lying is acceptable. Even if there were such rules, they wouldn't be useful as the targets of lying would simply avoid situations in which the rules could be applicable. Together these factors lead to the situation where one doesn't hear much about exceptions to the general rule which prohibits lying, making it easy to stretch it from "generally bad" to "universally bad".

Notwithstanding my arguments above, there is at least one case in which absolute prohibition of lying is effective; it's children education. Before a certain age children lack experience and reasoning ability to recognise situations where exceptions are applicable, therefore it makes sense to provide them with hard rules which will make their behavior generally safe and applicable by society.

The debate about "absolute moral rule" vs "general moral rule" represents the difference between deontology and consequentialism. Although both have their applications, I believe that a society of educated people is more likely to adopt a consequentialist point of view.

Returning to the original question from maxcady10001, I agree that there are many situations where lying is beneficial for all parties involved. At the same time, there are solid reasons why society would not promote even white lies. Morals and laws are blunt instruments; introducing subtleties and exceptions diminishes their guiding effect.
Eduk
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by Eduk »

Morals and laws are blunt instruments; introducing subtleties and exceptions diminishes their guiding effect.
But you were just talking about consequentialism and about general rules providing more guiding light than absolute rules? For example possibly the most famous moral rule is the golden rule. But this is far from what I would call absolute?
I agree that there are many situations where lying is beneficial for all parties involved
I can't think of many. Sure possibly I could contrive some extreme cases. Can you list some normal examples where lying is beneficial for all parties involved?
Before a certain age children lack experience and reasoning ability to recognise situations where exceptions are applicable, therefore it makes sense to provide them with hard rules which will make their behavior generally safe and applicable by society.
I don't think this is a given. Children rule break all the time in order to make sense of the world. Then they look about to see what the consequences of the rule breaking is. Don't get me wrong I do try to give my child simple rules which he can follow, I just leave the door open slightly (which is something children work out pretty fast anyway).
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Flassaw
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by Flassaw »

Without being too pedantic, I do suggest that lying is a foundational tool of modern human communication. It is a means of resolving reality in a way that permits coordinated action. Humanity has never before been so interconnected, to the extent that meetings are possible between individuals who have developed under dramatically different circumstances, and for whom truth is contextual. They had to learn to lie in order to get along.

On a more personal note, I don't approve of lying as a means of getting what you want. Lies become a part of who you are, and soon you begin to forget their presence. You'll lie to your closest friends and family, and even to yourself.

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RareVlad
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by RareVlad »

Eduk wrote:
Morals and laws are blunt instruments; introducing subtleties and exceptions diminishes their guiding effect.
But you were just talking about consequentialism and about general rules providing more guiding light than absolute rules? For example possibly the most famous moral rule is the golden rule. But this is far from what I would call absolute?
Just to confirm that I understood you correctly: you see a contradiction between my view of absolute rules as undesirable and the statement that rules with exceptions have diminished effect, hence introducing such exceptions is also undesirable.

A short answer is: I object to declaring the rule against lying absolute, but I do not object to rules in general.

Let me expand it. Firstly, rules are useful. They are generalisations which most of the time may be followed without thinking. To be practical they have to be simple which makes them, as I said, blunt. The same requirement prevents them from being universal. If we include all exceptions and edge cases, the rules will lose simplicity and, consequently, usability in everyday life. Therefore, it is implied that rules have exceptions. If such rule is declared absolute then it will remove such implication and leave no wiggle room around the edges. This is not helpful for the reasons I described before and may lead to a rejection of an otherwise useful instrument.

Secondly, taking a consequentialist point of view does not mean opposing rules per se; it rather defines a person's attitude towards them. Such person may accept and follow rules but it will be a conscious decision based on the merits of doing so. General rule, even a rather blunt one, still implies some freedom of judgement which a person may choose to exercise as he sees fit. But an absolute rule does not provide such flexibility, and a consequentialist, maybe even agreeing with the rule itself, would object to implied prohibition of its critical assessment.

Does this address your question, Eduk?
Eduk wrote:
I agree that there are many situations where lying is beneficial for all parties involved
I can't think of many. Sure possibly I could contrive some extreme cases. Can you list some normal examples where lying is beneficial for all parties involved?
In a completely rational setting I can't see how a lie can be beneficial for all parties. If anyone has examples I'll be curious to hear them. Therefore, we need to look at circumstances where emotions are involved. It is well-known that emotions interfere with rational thinking.
This leads to situations in which decisions made under the influence of emotions are different from the ones made after sober deliberation. Using lies to prevent or, on the contrary, evoke an emotional response may be used to influence a person's decision and achieve a beneficial outcome for everyone involved. I'll give examples for both cases.

Let's start with preventing emotions. A rather common category is white lies. One of its purposes is to spare another person's feelings which is beneficial for that person. A common setting for such lies is family life. One of the spouses may have a minor problem with health (a headache) or at work. When the other one asks a question such as "Are you ok?" it is common for another one to answer affirmatively. This is a lie and its benefit for the second spouse is to avoid negative emotions, and for the first spouse is to avoid upsetting a loved one.

Evoking emotions through lies can also be beneficial. This works with people who are unable or refuse to engage in a rational discussion. There are examples when it works on adults, but more commonly such lies are used in dealing with children. A rather common situation is trying to make a child follow a good rule and reinforcing the message with an imaginary but scary outcome in case of disobedience. Examples are "Santa will not bring you a gift", or "I will tell police and they will take you to gaol". This evokes fear and makes the child follow the rule. Such reinforcement is a lie and its benefit for a child is avoiding negative consequences from breaking the rule, and for the parent it is satisfaction from ensuring the child's well-being.

Now, some disclaimers about these examples: I admit that there are similar examples where the outcome is not mutually beneficial, and I admit that, even if beneficial, lie might still not be the best course of action. Notwithstanding, I believe that the described situations are quite common and present plenty of "normal" examples.
Eduk wrote:
Before a certain age children lack experience and reasoning ability to recognise situations where exceptions are applicable, therefore it makes sense to provide them with hard rules which will make their behavior generally safe and applicable by society.
I don't think this is a given. Children rule break all the time in order to make sense of the world. Then they look about to see what the consequences of the rule breaking is. Don't get me wrong I do try to give my child simple rules which he can follow, I just leave the door open slightly (which is something children work out pretty fast anyway).
No disagreement here. Absolute rules for children work only as a starting point. Breaking them consciously or accidentally they test the boundaries of the acceptable. Children gauge the "absoluteness" of a rule (is it not a nice oxymoron? :) ) by the reaction of other people: if a parent (or any other person, for that matter) can't be bothered to tell you off then the rule is not as hard as it was presented.
Eduk
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by Eduk »

Just to confirm that I understood you correctly: you see a contradiction between my view of absolute rules as undesirable and the statement that rules with exceptions have diminished effect, hence introducing such exceptions is also undesirable.
Yes and yes I believe you clarified nicely. I think we are on the same page here.
A rather common category is white lies. One of its purposes is to spare another person's feelings which is beneficial for that person. A common setting for such lies is family life.
It is not a given, to me, that even such apparent white lies are beneficial for all involved. To me this is not simple. For example hurting someone's feelings for the purpose of hurting someone's feelings would be generally a bad thing. But hurting someone's feelings in the short term with the aim for a longer term goal may be unavoidable. So yes generally don't hurt people's feelings but at the same time sometimes it is necessary and deciding when it is necessary is of course the complicated bit. Don't get me wrong this is a complex problem, I am just not convinced of the long term efficacy of white lies.
By the way I'm not saying I don't use white lies, I'm not perfect.
Now, some disclaimers about these examples: I admit that there are similar examples where the outcome is not mutually beneficial, and I admit that, even if beneficial, lie might still not be the best course of action. Notwithstanding, I believe that the described situations are quite common and present plenty of "normal" examples.
I see from your disclaimer that we are thinking along the same lines. I am on the side of distrusting white lies until demonstrated that they are good, rather than the other way round.
I am not disagreeing that lies are common and people believe they are of benefit.

-- Updated November 6th, 2017, 7:31 am to add the following --

Ah I just thought of an example. My mother deals with elderly care. Many of them are suffering from mental degradation such as senility. She often lies to these clients to get them to do whatever it is that they need to do (like eat, wash, clothe themselves etc). This seems like an example of a lie with all round good results.
Of course it relies on one party being mentally unable to process reality correctly. But no human is perfect, we are all insane to degrees, so there is perhaps some room for lies?
Again it starts to get complex. For example you could argue that a biased person is mentally unable to process reality. Then maybe a lie is for the best. But I'm just not convinced of the benefit long term, and I mean really long term (to future generations). Is a Machiavellian approach truly want we 'want'? Plus the Machiavellian person needs to be the person not suffering from the bias and there is no way to insure this.

-- Updated November 6th, 2017, 8:52 am to add the following --

Sorry I keep on adding stuff.
1. A God could lie to a human with benefit all round. Well not necessarily a God, just God like relative to a human.
2. A human can lie to a mentally deficient human with benefit all round.
3. Categorising mental deficiency perfectly is beyond current human understanding except in extreme cases such as senility. Where does addict sit in this spectrum is hard to quantify. But I can imagine lying to a drunk for the benefit of all (perhaps, this is not a given).
4. It might be of benefit for an adult to lie to a child. Given the child's comprehension is, relative to an adult, not sufficient. But for me this gets really hazy, perhaps a lie could be of benefit but perhaps the truth would be of more benefit. Same applies to dealing with the drunk.
5. Some adults could be described as child like, perhaps not in all matter but in some. So there are rational arguments to be made in support of lying in a wide range of examples. Perhaps there are, perhaps there aren't. I can see a lot of complexity which I can't unravel from my position of imperfection.
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SimpleGuy
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by SimpleGuy »

Even animals do lie , this is proven by behavioural sciences for apes like chimpansees and egret monkeys. Officially this must be some kind of evolutionary strategy for animals and humans for survival, but as we know from game theory cooperation pays off as well. So there is a limit for lying and adapting social cooperation as an evolutionary benefit. From the darwinistic standpoint this is it but how about from the metaphysical ways humans have higher orderd social behaviour and with it misdemeanor is regulated for ethical reasons. Not only the question is lying really necessary or should we adopt rules to compensate the minimal ethical standards for living together as thinking and feeling individuals is a by far more important question. Lying itself is already implemented evolutionary from behavioural standards, it's quite improbable to abolish it how far a society should regulate it, is a somkind higher orderd question.
Eduk
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by Eduk »

Even animals do lie
Humans are mammals and share many many traits with other mammals. Animals being able to lie should not be a surprise to anyone.
But just because something has evolved does not automatically mean it is of evolutionary benefit. It could be that our ability to lie goes hand in hand with our ability to imagine and our ability to conceptualise self and our ability to perform a myriad of tasks. For example I can't imagine not being able to lie. So it could be that lying is of net evolutionary cost but what comes with lying is of evolutionary benefit.
By the way I'm not saying lying has no evolutionary benefit. I'm just saying it's not straight forward and obvious and non trivial.
I thought of something else.
6. Lying to someone who believes something false.

You know in many ways I think people think of sanity as being the normal default state and insanity being the unusual and special case. But I think it's the other way around.
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RareVlad
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Re: Lying as a necessity

Post by RareVlad »

Eduk wrote:By the way I'm not saying lying has no evolutionary benefit.
You have touched on a topic that I am quite interested in: evolution and long-term survival of humankind. My current view on lying in this context is that it's not beneficial for the race as a whole. In order to survive we need to cooperate, and lies will become an impediment.
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