From an ethical perspective, there is little difference between L and NTL. If
we define a lie as ‘an attempt to deceive’ (as Michael Vassar puts it), they
are just the same.
In practice though, for people it does seem to make a significant difference;
it seems that many people avoid plain lying, and instead try some NTL or some
related class of non-truth. E.g., not answering ‘No, I did not do that’, but
instead saying ‘Where could I have found the time to do that?’. For some
reason, that’s easier.
But again, from an ethical viewpoint it seems not very useful to make a big
distinction—the nature of language is such that one could express just
about any lie into NTL. Likewise, a sufficiently pedantic listener could
demonstrate that many ‘true’ statements are not technically true.
A lie is a knowing statement of untruth, almost always made in the hope that it will be mistaken for a sincere statement of truth.
Deception is far larger than lies.
As for intent—it’s difficult to show, and depends partly on the qualities of the listener. Especially stupid and small-minded people often accuse others of trying to deceive them when the real problem was that they leapt to an invalid conclusion. My experience is that people without a great deal of self-candor will often accuse others of deception rather than considering the possibility that they themselves were dumb.
I agree with this. NTL is, by definition, not lying. In response to the original post I would ask for clarification on these points:
Is the problem with lying the lie itself?
Should deception be considered wrong?
You can deceive people through silence and you can quickly find theoretical scenarios where non-action becomes clever deception.
The basic objection I have to the original post is that Lying is being compared to Not-Lying when it seems like the intent was to compare Lying to Deception or possibly “other forms of deception”. If the problem with Lying is Deception than the examples at the beginning are misleading. If NTL is bad, it is bad on grounds of deception, not because it looks so much like lying.
To draw a comparison: Lying is to Murder as Deception is to Killing. Finding a scenario for Not-Technically-Murder is certainly possible but if the action should be considered analogous to murder for moral purposes than make it Technically-Murder. If both Murder and Not-Technically-Murder are bad because they are unjustified Killing than the subject has little to do with Murder and everything to do with unjustified Killing.
From an ethical perspective, there is little difference between L and NTL. If we define a lie as ‘an attempt to deceive’ (as Michael Vassar puts it), they are just the same.
In practice though, for people it does seem to make a significant difference; it seems that many people avoid plain lying, and instead try some NTL or some related class of non-truth. E.g., not answering ‘No, I did not do that’, but instead saying ‘Where could I have found the time to do that?’. For some reason, that’s easier.
But again, from an ethical viewpoint it seems not very useful to make a big distinction—the nature of language is such that one could express just about any lie into NTL. Likewise, a sufficiently pedantic listener could demonstrate that many ‘true’ statements are not technically true.
A lie is a knowing statement of untruth, almost always made in the hope that it will be mistaken for a sincere statement of truth.
Deception is far larger than lies.
As for intent—it’s difficult to show, and depends partly on the qualities of the listener. Especially stupid and small-minded people often accuse others of trying to deceive them when the real problem was that they leapt to an invalid conclusion. My experience is that people without a great deal of self-candor will often accuse others of deception rather than considering the possibility that they themselves were dumb.
I agree with this. NTL is, by definition, not lying. In response to the original post I would ask for clarification on these points:
Is the problem with lying the lie itself?
Should deception be considered wrong?
You can deceive people through silence and you can quickly find theoretical scenarios where non-action becomes clever deception.
The basic objection I have to the original post is that Lying is being compared to Not-Lying when it seems like the intent was to compare Lying to Deception or possibly “other forms of deception”. If the problem with Lying is Deception than the examples at the beginning are misleading. If NTL is bad, it is bad on grounds of deception, not because it looks so much like lying.
To draw a comparison: Lying is to Murder as Deception is to Killing. Finding a scenario for Not-Technically-Murder is certainly possible but if the action should be considered analogous to murder for moral purposes than make it Technically-Murder. If both Murder and Not-Technically-Murder are bad because they are unjustified Killing than the subject has little to do with Murder and everything to do with unjustified Killing.