Yes, this seems correct. With the added clarification that “respecting [someone] as an epistemic peer” is situational rather than a characteristic of the individual in question. It is not that there are people more epistemically advanced than me which I believe I should only ever tell the full truth to, and then people less epistemically advanced than me that I should lie to with absolute impunity whenever I start feeling like it. It depends on a particularized assessment of the moment at hand.
I would suspect that most regular people who tell white lies (for pro-social reasons, at least in their minds) generally do so in cases where they (mostly implicitly and subconsciously) determine that the other person would not react well to the truth, even if they don’t spell out the question in the terms you chose.
Yes, this seems correct. With the added clarification that “respecting [someone] as an epistemic peer” is situational rather than a characteristic of the individual in question. It is not that there are people more epistemically advanced than me which I believe I should only ever tell the full truth to, and then people less epistemically advanced than me that I should lie to with absolute impunity whenever I start feeling like it. It depends on a particularized assessment of the moment at hand.
I would suspect that most regular people who tell white lies (for pro-social reasons, at least in their minds) generally do so in cases where they (mostly implicitly and subconsciously) determine that the other person would not react well to the truth, even if they don’t spell out the question in the terms you chose.