A Socratic Question

HobbyMan

I'm reading a neat little philosophy book which asks the following question.

Since I can not discuss it with like minded individuals at home I thought that I would post it here to gather some of your opinions.

So....please discuss:

Does being deceitful count as being immoral?

Black Swan

HobbyMan wrote: »

Does being deceitful count as being immoral?

If being deceitful is in the best interests of the person deceived, and helps them through a personal crises to where they can better adjust to life, is that immoral?

Joe1919

I think it goes without saying that we cant be 100% truthful all of the time. We often have to tell trivial 'white lies' as for example, that a person looks well in their new dress/hairstyle; or in my case recently, that my friends tattoo looks well although I strongly disagree and think it looks horrible.(Its too late to tell the truth after the tattoo is done).

Plato wrote about the necessity of the 'noble lie' below, which was used to maintain social harmony.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_lie

I suppose its about 'means' and 'ends'. If the purpose (end) of bending the truth (lie) is noble, then perhaps its OK. However, we must beware of loosing credibility in the long run or falling too much into the 'end justifies the means' way of thinking.

Baked.noodle

Kant believed it was always wrong to lie. Lying uses people as means rather than treating people as ends in themselves. If everybody told the truth the world would be a better place.

What if the end result of the deceit is greater happiness for the person being deceived?

You tell your wife you have to work late a few evenings this week, but you actually intend on taking salsa classes so you can bring her out dancing the following weekend. She loves dancing, so this will be a pleasant surprise for her. Would that be immoral?

Baked.noodle

I would lie occasionally for reasons I would consider mostly positive, but Kant believed if it is ok for one person to lie then it is ok for everybody to lie and this would result in a dysfunctional and immoral society.

Black Swan

"What a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive" (Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, 1808) may at times not be immoral if in the best interests of the party deceived, but if deceiving becomes habit, it may slip across the line into actions immoral?

Baked.noodle

Black Swan wrote: »

"What a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive" (Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, 1808) may at times not be immoral if in the best interests of the party deceived, but if deceiving becomes habit, it may slip across the line into actions immoral?

I would agree if the truth is intentionally premeditatively revealed at some point, as in the salsa classes example above. However, once you lie about something you have no intention of telling the truth about at some point in the future then it does become habit. You will have to stick to your guns on the story or the deception is worthless, even if it means lying to other people to maintain the deception.

This isn't necessarily immoral as, for example, if I was a German in Nazi Germany who gave refuge to a Jewish person in my attic and a Gestapo officer knocked on my door looking for victims, I don't believe I would be immoral in lying to the saps. Kant would disagree with me because he holds the Gestapo officer morally accountable for his own actions, and his evil should not be compounded by my lying immorality.

Black Swan

What all to often happens in politics is when an office holder makes a mistake, and rather than assume immediate responsibility, and suffer the criticisms of opposing parties and the press, attempts to cover up the mistake with a deception. While "to error is human" (Alexander Pope, 1711), the cover-up is a deception, that if discovered later, the immorality of the deception magnifies the error way beyond its original consequences; i.e., a cover-up scandal explodes upon the scene causing more damage than if the office holder took credit for the mistake when it first occurred.

Peregrinus

Well, the classical hypothetical involves an SS officer asking me if I know the whereabouts of the Jews he is hunting for. As it happens, they are hidden in my cellar. I know what will become of them if they fall into his hands. It is immoral of me to deceive the SS officer?

Most of us would unhesitatingly answer "no", which suggests that deceit is not always immoral. But then we come to much knottier questions about what circumstances can justify deceit. Is it enough that my intentions are good? Is it also necessary that the other person's intentions are bad? Or should we be looking at actual outcomes rather than subjective intentions?

Joe1919

Peregrinus wrote: »

..... It is immoral of me to deceive the SS officer?...

I think it would be immoral NOT to deceive the SS officer?

There are always exceptions to moral rules. For example, although in normal circumstances, it is wrong to kill someone else, there are exceptions. e.g. Just war, legal executions, self defence, etc. Sometimes dying people are given extra morphine to ease their suffering but this results in an earlier death. We have the doctrine of double effect that allows for this once the intention is good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_double_effect

Kierkegaard in 'Fear and Trembling' tries to deal with the dilemma of ones belief/faith/conscience versus moral rules/laws by using the example of Abraham (in that he was prepared to break a moral rule by sacrificing his son for his faith).

I think there was always a controversy about how rigidly one sticks to the law/moral precepts and the role of exceptions and circumstances. e.g. St Paul and within Stoicism (e.g Seneca )

Peregrinus

Joe1919 wrote: »

I think it would be immoral NOT to deceive the SS officer?

I think most people would agree!

Joe1919 wrote: »

There are always exceptions to moral rules.

But the exceptions are themselves moral rules, or applications of moral rules, aren’t they? In this instance, on the one had we have a moral imperative to speak the truth. On the other hand, we have a moral imperative to save a life. We have little difficulty concluding that in this instance the second moral imperative prevails. And yet at the same time we can’t say that the moral imperative to save a live will always prevail. You point this out yourself:

Joe1919 wrote: »

For example, although in normal circumstances, it is wrong to kill someone else, there are exceptions. e.g. Just war, legal executions, self defence, etc.

But this also illustrates the weakness of this approach. Some people - pacifists - question whether just war thinking does justify killing, and many people deny the morality of legal executions. All of which points to the fact that we don’t have a clearly-articulated or commonly-held rule about how to reconcile these moral imperatives, when they are in tension with one another.

Joe1919 wrote: »

Kierkegaard in 'Fear and Trembling' tries to deal with the dilemma of ones belief/faith/conscience versus moral rules/laws by using the example of Abraham (in that he was prepared to break a moral rule by sacrificing his son for his faith).

I’m not sure that this is a useful way of looking at the matter. It’s not a question of “tell the truth” being a moral law and “save a life” being a matter of belief/faith/conscience (or the other way around). What we have here is two moral claims - first, that it’s important to speak the truth and, secondly, that it’s important to save a life. And, precisely because they are moral claims, they both engage our belief/faith/conscience. If I denied that there was any moral value at all in telling the truth, then I wouldn’t accept that “tell the truth” was a moral precept.

But we are straying away from the question raised in the OP. The OP asks, basically, is “tell the truth” a moral precept at all? And most of the responses have been saying, well, it’s not an absolute moral precept; there are occasions where it is not immoral to lie, and indeed occasions where it would be immoral not to lie. But that approach assumes that, in general, lying is morally problematic, and that occasions when it isn’t are exceptional. Baked.noodle is the only poster to have confronted the OP’s question; he suggests that lying is generally morally wrong, and offers basically a utilitarian argument in support of that view. (The world would be a happier place if we all told the truth.) And that also suggests a foundation for the exceptions; if telling a lie would make the world a happier place, then tell a lie.

Baked.noodle

The problem with justifying lies is it is a subjective action. The justification for the deceit rests on the intentions of fallible, and sometimes selfish individuals, and such individuals take little responsibility for consequences if they are unfavourable consequences, especially if they were unintended consequences. I think Kant believed the hypothetical consequences we intend are a poor substitute to letting the truth run it's course. If I lied for the well-being of one individual this action could harm another and may not be justifiable after all, at least not objectively. Always telling the truth is somewhat closer to moral objectivity, and gives individuals responsibility for their actions. Just in case I wasn't clear about 'a better world', Kant rejected utilitarianism in search of a moral that encapsulates everybody regardless of duty/happiness/good for the greatest number.

Peregrinus

But, as you point out in post #8, the logic of Kant's position is that I should 'fess up to the SS officer about having the fugitive Jews concealed in my cellar, and the choices the SS officer makes about what to do with the information are his responsibility, not mine. I think we all agree that's not an appealing position.

"Kant rejected utilitarianism in search of a moral that encapsulates everybody regardless of duty/happiness/good for the greatest number." Well, fair enough, for the sake of the argument. But even if we grant the basic soundess of that approach, why does that all-encompassing moral have to "always tell the truth"? Couldn't it just as well be "always save a life"?

Joe1919

I would like to suggest two possible ideas that may help.(rough draft)

The first is to treat ‘truthfulness’ as a virtue, rather than a moral precept. This puts the emphasis on the agent rather than on the action. We are talking about virtue ethics here. The sage or man/woman of virtue/excellence tells the truth. To be truthful is the ideal.

Moreover this gets over the problem of whether truth is a means or an end, because (in most virtue ethics), virtue is always its own end. (Virtue is its own reward.). The man of virtue is virtuous (truthful) for its own sake.
The man of virtue (sage) has other qualities. e.g. He (or she) is just, prudent, moderate, courageous etc. He is also wise, humble and tactful; and although he has his own opinions, he will also be respectful of other opinions and not be dogmatic.

Most of us are not wise or excellent, but we can aspire or try to be.
Sometimes there are moral dilemmas. Plato tried to get over this problem by explaining that man and society were not a unity, there was a tripartite division in mans soul and in society.

Thomas Aquinas sees Truthfulness as a virtue but also as part of the virtue of justice. So truthfulness is a duty we owe to others. But are there exceptions to this duty? For example, if the other person is not rational or is insane or ‘evil’, then there may be a case for the greater justice to temporarily suspend this obligation. (There is an argument in ancient philosophy that we do have a duty to return a borrowed sword, but not if the person is aroused with anger or mad).

The second idea is that we treat ‘white lies’ as a separate issue and as more to do with our use of language. Aristotle, in his ‘Poetics’ argues that poetry may be superior to history because poetry contains universal truth whereas history only contains particular truths. So we have this idea that fictions, such as tragedies and comedies, although not true, do contain ‘truths’ of a universal kind. They can me morally uplifting (and humble us) in showing us how good men can go wrong (tragedy) or the absurdity/vanity of our self important lives.(comedy). We also often use myth, metaphor, personifications, exaggerations (and lies) to add colour and emotion to our language. Language is not always rational. There is ‘how’ we say things as well as ‘what’ we say. This is part of rhetoric. It is useful but perhaps can be dangerous when used to inflame people. (Plato wanted to banish the poets.)

Anyhow, when I told my friend the other day that I loved her tattoo, I agree that I was not been truthful in the particular. But I was been truthful in a more universal sense, in that my saying that I loved her tattoo was signifying that I loved her as a person/friend and I respected her autonomy (in this case) to make her own decision.

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3109.htm

Baked.noodle

I am no expert when it comes to Kant, in fact I often struggle to understand him. I agree Kant deontological ethics are difficult if not impossible to adhere to. I would be much more in favour in consequentialism and virtue ethics. There is little regard for accountability and consequences, and an unhealthy self assurance in the 'right' thing to do, yet I see the appeal in a universal moral standard.