Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Truthtelling

Consider the two simplest views of the central moral rule governing assertion:

  1. You should avoid saying falsehoods.
  2. You should avoid saying something you don't believe.
Here is a consideration in favor of (1) over (2). Let's say I believe p and q, but assign a higher probability to p. Suppose that in some context my communicative purposes can be equally well met by asserting p or by asserting q. (Maybe I am asked to give one simple reason for believing r, and both p and q are equally good reasons.) Then, I have good moral reason to assert p rather than q. Why? Because, as far as I can tell, p is more likely to be true than q. But if (2) is the central moral rule, then it is not clear why I have any reason to prefer asserting p to asserting q. If, on the other hand, it is (1) that is the central moral rule, then by asserting p I lower the chance of going wrong.

My own view is neither (1) nor (2). It is something like this:

  1. You should only assert (or, more generally, endorse) with the intention not to assert (endorse) anything false.
Now if I have an intention not to assert anything false, I will prefer to assert p rather than q—if for no reason at all I choose to assert q rather than p, then that shows that I did not actually intend not to assert anything false. For if I intend something, I act in favor of that. That does not mean I always maximize the chance of that something. But where I have no reason to the contrary, it seems that I do maximize that chance. It would be weird to say: "I think that the number 7 in this lottery is more likely to win; I intend to win and I bet my money on 3." It is, at least, irrational to act this way, and we should avoid irrationality, at least ceteris paribus.

4 comments:

Alexander R Pruss said...

A consideration in favor of (1), and to a lesser degree in favor of (3), is that it makes sense of the intuition that refraining from lying is a way to show one's respect for the value of truth.

Mike Almeida said...

(1) You should avoid saying falsehoods.

(2) You should avoid saying something you don't believe.


You'd expect these to be necessarily true, if true at all. But they're not. Possibly, I don't believe (1). But then by (2), I should avoid saying (1), and by (1), it is not the case that I should avoid saying (1). But those cannot both be true. So (1) and (2) are not consistent. Therefore at least one of them is not necessarily true. Therefore one of them is not true at all.

Alexander R Pruss said...

I didn't mean to say that (1) and (2) are both true. Rather, I meant them to be alternative views of the matter.

David said...

I don't think that (1) and (2) are inconsistent. If (1) is true, then (1) doesn't tell you to avoid saying (1). But this leaves open that something else, e.g., (2), tells you to avoid saying (1).