In some games like Mafia, uttering falsehoods is a part of the game mechanic. These falsehoods are no more lies than falsehoods uttered by an actor in a performance are lies.
Now consider a variant of poker where a player is permitted to utter falsehoods when and only when they have a Joker in hand. In this case when the player utters a falsehood with Joker in hand, there is no lie. The basic communicative effect of uttering s is equivalent to asserting “s or I have a Joker in hand (or both)”, though there may be additional information conveyed by bodily expression, tone of voice, or context.
If this analysis of poker variant is correct, then the following seems to follow by analogy. Suppose, as many people think, that it is morally permissible to utter falsehoods in “assertoric contexts” to save innocent lives. (An assertoric context is roughly one where the speaker is appropriately taken to be asserting.) Given that we are always playing the “morality game”, by analogy this would mean that in paradigm instances when we utter a declarative sentence s, we are actually communicating something like “s or I am speaking to save innocent lives.” If this is right, then it is impossible to lie to save innocent lives, just as in my poker variant it is impossible to lie when one knows one has the Joker in hand (unless maybe one is really bad at logic).
The above argument supports this premise:
- If it is morally permissible to utter falsehoods in assertoric contexts to save innocent lives, it is not possible to lie to save innocent lives.
But:
- It is possible to lie to save innocent lives.
I conclude:
- It is not morally permissible to utter falsehoods in assertoric contexts to save innocent lives.
In short: lying is wrong, even to save innocent lives.
3 comments:
Do you think using a VPN to access geo-restricted content counts as lying?
No, I think it's not lying. But it might violate a contract one had agreed to with some content provider, or violate the obligation to compensate a creator for their work, or violate some just law (e.g., copyright).
You say in another comment, "According to Jorge Garcia, what makes lying bad one linguistically solicits trust that what one is saying is true, while at the same time betraying that trust." So, would communicating a false proposition with body language lying? It seems like that would also solicit and betray trust at the same time.
How about this: Would programming a robot to give a message you know to be wrong be considered lying? Imagine the person didn't know that you programmed the robot and thinks it was programmed by someone else. So, the person is not putting trust in you, but that other person. However, you are the one that betrayed the trust. Or maybe they're putting their trust in a robot, and a robot can't betray someone because it is not a moral agent.
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