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:This page is about untruth. For other meanings see Lie (disambiguation). A lie is an untruthful statement made to someone else with the intention to deceive. To lie is to say something one believes to be false with the intention that it be taken for the truth by someone else. A lie involves the use of conventional truthbearers, (i.e., statements in words or symbols) and not natural signs. Intentional deceit involving natural signs, such as wearing a wig, shamming a limp, or wearing a fake arm cast, is not usually classed as "lying", but as "deception". A true statement may be a lie. If the person who makes the true statement genuinely believes it to be false, and makes the statement with the intention that his audience believe it to be true, then this is a lie (see Jean-Paul Sartre, Le Mur (1937)). When a person lies he or she necessarily is untruthful, but he or she is not necessarily making an untrue statement. Definitions A lie-to-children is an expression that describes a lie told to make an adult subject, such as sex, acceptable to children. The most common example, though not currently in widespread use, is "The stork brought you." A white lie is a lie which, although a lie, is harmless. A common example of a white lie is, "You look marvelous", at least when the person does intend that the other person actually believe this statement to be true, and the person who makes the statement believes it to be false. Lying by omission means allowing another to believe something that one believes is false, by failing to reveal one's belief, rather than by being untruthful. Hence it is normally classified not as a lie but as an act of deception. Perjury is not the same as lying, since it does not require an intention to deceive, and since it requires that the statement(s) made, under oath, be Bluffing is an act of deception that is not usually seen as immoral because it takes place in the context of a game. For instance, a gambler who deceives other players into thinking he has different cards than he really does, or an athlete who indicates he will move left and then actually dodges right, are not considered to be lying. In these situations, deception is accepted and even expected. Morality of lying The philosophers Saint Augustine, as well as Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant, prohibited all lying. According to all three, there are no circumstances in which one may lie. One must (unfortunately) be murdered, suffer torture, or endure any other hardship, rather than lie, if the Each of these philosophers gave several arguments against lying, all compatible with each other. Among the more important arguments are: (1) Lying is a perversion of the natural faculty of speech, the natural end of which is to communicate the thoughts of the speaker. (2) When one lies, one undermines trust in society. (3) When one lies, one uses the humanity of another person as a mere means to one's end -- one bypasses the person's rationality and in effect makes a decision for the other person, instead of allowing the other person to use her/his own rationality and make her/his own decision. (4) When one lies, one uses humanity in oneself as a mere means to one's ends. Some philosophers have argued that lying is not prohibited in certain circumstances, such as when telling a lie will save an innocent life. They have in mind here such circumstances as lying to Nazis in WWII that there are no Jewish children in one's house. Some philosophers have also argued that paternalistic lying, or lying for the good of those lied to, is justified, even if it violates their autonomy. They have in mind here a case such as that of lying to someone who is terminally ill that he is not terminally ill. Schopenhauer, in On the Basis of Morality, §17, asserted that lying is permissible at times. He cited the case of Jesus Christ supposedly telling a lie in . Lying in the Bible Although the Bible commands, “Do not lie to one another” (Leviticus 19:11; Colossians 3:9), it also contains accounts that appear to condone lying, e.g., While some see these examples as support for the idea that lying can be justifiable as the lesser of two evils (see above section), others (Davids et al 1996) disagree, arguing that the correct Biblical response is to pray that God will provide a way to avoid the greater evil without lying. As indicated in the previous section, Jesus Christ is believed to have lied in , but some Christians say that this is a superficial understanding of thinking Jesus is lying. The Feast Jesus was referring to is the Great Feast with God in Heaven at the end of the Age. Others might point out that v9 shows that he stayed in Galilee for a while, then went up, so he was truthful in saying the he was not yet going up. Etiquette of lying Although lies are normally condemned, it is also normally believed that some lies are worse than other lies. In particular, lies that are believed to be harmless lies are often called "white lies" or "fibs". Augustine divides lies into eight kinds: lies in religious teaching; lies that harm others and help no one; lies that harm others and help someone; lies told for the pleasure of lying; lies told to "please others in smooth discourse"; lies that harm no one and that help someone; lies that harm no one and that save someone's life; and lies that harm no one and that save someone's "purity". Importantly, however, Augustine holds that "jocose lies" are not, in fact, lies. Thomas Aquinas divides lies into three kinds: the useful, the humorous and the malicious. All are sinful according to Aquinas. Humorous and useful lies, however, are venial sins. Malicious lies are mortal sins. Paradox of lying Lying is the subject of many paradoxes, the most famous one being known as the liar paradox, commonly expressed as "This sentence is a lie," or "This sentence is false." The so-called Epimenides paradox — "All Cretans are liars," as stated by Epimenides the Cretan — is a forerunner of this, though its status as a paradox is disputed. A class of related logic puzzles are known as knights and knaves, in which the goal is to determine who of a group of people is lying and who is telling the truth. Psychology of lying The capacity to lie is noted early and nearly universally in human development. Evolutionary psychology is concerned with the theory of mind which people employ to simulate another's reaction to their story and determine if a lie will be believable. The most commonly cited milestone, what is known as Machiavellian intelligence, is at the age of about four and a half years, when children begin to be able to lie convincingly. Before this, they seem simply unable to comprehend that anyone doesn't see the same view of events that they do — and seem to assume that there is only one point of view — their own — that must be integrated into any given story. Young children learn from experience that stating an untruth can avoid punishment for misdeeds, before they develop the theory of mind necessary to understand why it works. In this stage of development, children will sometimes tell fantastic and unbelievable lies, because they lack the conceptual framework to judge whether a statement is believable or even to understand the concept of believability. When children first learn how lying works, they lack the moral understanding to refrain from doing it. It takes years of watching people lie and the results of lies to develop a proper understanding. Propensity to lie varies greatly between children, some doing so habitually and others being habitually honest. Habits in this regard are likely to change into early adulthood. Some view children as on the whole more prone to lie than adults. Others argue that the amount of lying stays the same, but adults lie about different things. Certainly adult lying tends to be more sophisticated. A lot of this judgment depends on whether one counts tactful untruths, social insincerity, political rhetoric, and other standard adult behaviors as lying. See also Lie-to-children. "Lie-to-children" Elementary explanations tend to be simple, concise, or simply "wrong"—but in a way that attempts to make the lesson more understandable. (Sometimes the lesson can be qualified, for example by claiming "this isn't technically true, but it's easier to understand.") In retrospect the first explanation may be easy to understand for its inaccuracies, but it will be replaced with a more sophisticated explanation which is closer to "the truth". This "tender introduction" concept is an important aspect of education. Such statements are not usually intended as deceptions, and may, in fact, be true to a first approximation or within certain contexts. Deception and lies in other species The capacity to lie has also been claimed to be possessed by non-humans in language studies with Great Apes. One famous case was that of Koko the gorilla; confronted by her handlers after a tantrum in which she had torn a steel sink out of its moorings, she signed in American Sign Language, "cat did it," pointing at her tiny kitten. It is unclear if this was a joke or a genuine attempt at blaming her tiny pet. Deception or misleading as to intent is well documented in other social species such as wolves. Lie detection The question of whether lies can reliably be detected through non-verbal means is a subject of particular controversy. Representations of lie Covering up Lies Sir Walter Scott's famous couplet "Oh, what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive!" describes the often difficult procedure of covering up a lie so that it is not detected at some future time. In "Human, All Too Human" philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that those who refrain from lying may do so only because of the difficulty involved in maintaining the lie. This is consistent with his general philosophy that divides or ranks people according to strength and ability. Thus some people tell the truth only out of weakness. Evolution, game theory, and the lie While most human societies have developed moral, ethical or religious codes prohibiting lying it would appear that other animals on this planet engage in lying quite regularly, and that the lie has been the result of and promoted by all the usual evolutionary forces. Specifically, predation often employs lying, as does avoidance of predation. A predator is lying if in the process of acquiring prey it conceals its location, uses camouflage capabilities of its skin and appendages, or dangles an appendage as a bait. A prey is lying if it uses camoflage to conceal itself or make it seem to be larger than it is or seem to be another species that is poisonous or distasteful to the predator (compare viceroy butterfly to monarch butterfly). Such capabilities to lie likely developed very gradually during evolution and likely began as very small changes in the appearance or behavior of some organisms. As the changes brought advantage to the organism it may therefore have increased in number due to that advantage, and due to continued pressure from a predator or scarcity of prey the advantage locked in and became a trait of that creature. This incorporation of the lie into schemes of evolutionary advantage is a concept treated in the study of Game Theory of Evolution. Game Theory of Evolution assumes that creatures are often in resource conflict or in predator/prey realtionships with each other and develop strategies for advantage gain or loss reduction. These strategies may or may not be the result of some reasoning capabilities of the creature. In some cases the environment interacting with the way a creature has evolved so far creates the strategies for the creature without it needing any reasoning faculties. In other cases, there may be a combination of some reasoning and some environmentally formed lying abilities. The crocodile seems to know that if it drifts slowly, like a log, towards a wildebeast drinking at the edge of the river the wildebeast will not be alarmed and run away. The crocodile both resembles a log, having been shaped that way by evolutionary forces, and has some reasoning faculties. Over eons this ability to lie became built into and a natural part of many species. Humans have used the word "cunning" to represent this ability in the non-human animal world, and then when the word "cunning" is applied to a human it is meant to connote sub-human behavior. Sub-human behavior is of course just a value judgement. The case remains that lying is likely a natural, normal behavior for homo sapiens. People lie to attain advantage or to escape loss. This is no different from being a predator or a prey. Films on Lying See also | |||||||
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