So the problem is that the politicians can’t lie well enough??
No, that’s not what he means. Quoting from the post (which I apologize for not linking to before):
Many of the commenters said that my position can’t be right because people will misapply it in dangerous ways. They are right that politicians will misapply it in dangerous ways. In fact, I bet some politicians who wrongfully lie do so because they think that they mistakenly fall under a murderer at the door-type case. But that doesn’t mean that the principle is wrong. It just means that people tend to mess up the application.
So, to recap. Brennan says “lying to voters is the right thing when good results from it”. His critics say, very reasonably, that since politicians and humans in general are biased in their own favor in manifold ways, every politician would surely think that good would result from their lies, so if everyone followed his advice everyone would lie all the time, with disastrous consequences. Brennan replies that this doesn’t mean that “lying is right when good results from it” is false; it just means that due to human fallibilities a better general outcome would be achieved if people didn’t try to do the right thing in this situation but followed the simpler rule of never lying.
My interpretation is that therefore in the post Multiheaded linked to Brennan was not, despite appearances, making a case that actually existing politicians should actually go ahead and lie, but rather making an ivory-tower philosophical point that sometimes them lying would be “the right thing to do” in the abstract sense.
No, that’s not what he means. Quoting from the post (which I apologize for not linking to before):
So, to recap. Brennan says “lying to voters is the right thing when good results from it”. His critics say, very reasonably, that since politicians and humans in general are biased in their own favor in manifold ways, every politician would surely think that good would result from their lies, so if everyone followed his advice everyone would lie all the time, with disastrous consequences. Brennan replies that this doesn’t mean that “lying is right when good results from it” is false; it just means that due to human fallibilities a better general outcome would be achieved if people didn’t try to do the right thing in this situation but followed the simpler rule of never lying.
My interpretation is that therefore in the post Multiheaded linked to Brennan was not, despite appearances, making a case that actually existing politicians should actually go ahead and lie, but rather making an ivory-tower philosophical point that sometimes them lying would be “the right thing to do” in the abstract sense.
So, is there any insight here other than restating the standard consequentialist position that “doing X is right when it leads to good outcomes”?
Especially given how Brennan backpedals into deontological ethics once we start talking about the real world?