If these systems don’t allow lying in self defense, then they must not allow self defense at all, because lying in self defense is a trivial application of the general right to self defense.
‘Rights’ are most usefully thought of in political contexts; ethically, the question is not so much “Do I have a right to self-defense?” as “Should I defend myself?”.
For Kant (the principal deontologist), lying is inherently self-defeating. The point of lying is to make someone believe what you say; but, if everyone would lie in that circumstance, then no one would believe what you say. And so lying cannot be universalized for any circumstance, and so is disallowed by the criterion of universalizability.
if everyone would lie in that circumstance, then no one would believe what you say.
This is only true if the other party is aware of the circumstance. If they are not—if they are already deceived about the circumstance—then if everyone lied in the circumstance, the other party would still be deceived. Therefore lying is not self-defeating.
I was just pointing out how Kant might justify self-defense but not lying in self-defense, in summary. If you’d like to disagree with Kant, I suggest doing so against more than an off-the-cuff summary.
Though I don’t recommend bothering with it, as his ethics is based on his metaphysics and his metaphysics is false.
‘Rights’ are most usefully thought of in political contexts; ethically, the question is not so much “Do I have a right to self-defense?” as “Should I defend myself?”.
For Kant (the principal deontologist), lying is inherently self-defeating. The point of lying is to make someone believe what you say; but, if everyone would lie in that circumstance, then no one would believe what you say. And so lying cannot be universalized for any circumstance, and so is disallowed by the criterion of universalizability.
This is only true if the other party is aware of the circumstance. If they are not—if they are already deceived about the circumstance—then if everyone lied in the circumstance, the other party would still be deceived. Therefore lying is not self-defeating.
I was just pointing out how Kant might justify self-defense but not lying in self-defense, in summary. If you’d like to disagree with Kant, I suggest doing so against more than an off-the-cuff summary.
Though I don’t recommend bothering with it, as his ethics is based on his metaphysics and his metaphysics is false.
Understood.