I’m going to flip the usual jargon on its head and say that I “agree connotatively, but disagree denotatively”.
Meta-honesty—that is, “honesty about honesty”—is, like many meta-concepts, interesting to think about, but I don’t quite understand why it needs to be formulated as some sort of “code”. As you’ve presented it here, this “meta-honesty code” seems largely intractable in normal communication, and comes across as an overly-complicated way of simply refusing to hold up “Do not lie” as a moral absolute.
The primary problem with this whole “code” idea is the prohibition against using meta-honesty to gather object-level information. This is both arbitrary and, I would argue, unnecessary. In the examples you give, the immediate response to someone invoking the “code of meta-honesty” and then asking a question is for the person being questioned to doubt the asker’s motives. At this point, the “code” has already broken down, because in questioning the legitimacy of invoking the code, the legitimacy of invoking the code has been called into question, and by extension, the legitimacy of the code itself.
Furthermore, one of the base assumptions of this “code” is that it is morally permissible to lie under certain circumstances. Given that “meta-lies” are just a specific subset of “lies”, I don’t see how such a moral system could disallow that particular subset of lies and remain internally consistent. Rather than meta-honestly evade questions when you feel you’re interrogated, just meta-lie and be done with it.
Personally, I think it’s okay to define one’s attitude toward honesty as “I don’t personally consider ‘Do not lie’ to be a moral absolute” and leave it at that. If you can at least be honest about what you do and don’t consider to be moral imperatives or absolutes, then you’re already pretty far ahead of most people.
Regarding the absoluteness of rules:
I feel like you’re conflating moral law with societal law, and that you’re equivocating between “absolute moral laws” and “societal laws that can be summarized as absolutes, but have many exceptions”.
“Do not kill” is absolute if and only if “Do not kill” is absolute. It has no exceptions. It is not the same law as “Do not kill, unless you’re a soldier at war”. If we start talking about exceptions to absolute law, we are no longer talking about absolute law. We don’t “perform” that “Do not kill” is absolute (but secretly know that it isn’t), because almost no one thinks that the whole of the law is just that one phrase. Conversely, people like me do perform that “Do not kill” is absolute, because we actually think it’s absolute.
It seems like you’re using a conception of “law” in which any exceptions to a law are separate from that law, which is how you’re arriving at the self-contradictory concept of “exceptions to absolute laws”. If instead you include exceptions as part of a given law (which is completely reasonable and done all the time in real life), we both remove that contradiction and can still refer to laws as being “absolute” in whole.
Furthermore, one of the base assumptions of this “code” is that it is morally permissible to lie under certain circumstances. Given that “meta-lies” are just a specific subset of “lies”, I don’t see how such a moral system could disallow that particular subset of lies and remain internally consistent.
There’s nothing inconsistent about saying that some action class A is a subset of B, that all actions in A are impermissible, and that some actions in B are permissible. So I don’t understand what inconsistency you’re pointing to here. Maybe your point is that “lie” feels like a natural category in a way that “meta-lie” doesn’t, so basing your clear bright moral lines around the latter category feels unduly arbitrary?
Maybe your point is that “lie” feels like a natural category in a way that “meta-lie” doesn’t, so basing your clear bright moral lines around the latter category feels unduly arbitrary?
You’ve actually hit the nail right on the head and put my thoughts into words I couldn’t quite find, thank you.
Any moral code that contains non-absolute rules (in this case, “Don’t lie, except when...”) will of course require some amount of arbitrariness to distinguish it from the infinite range of other possibilities, but given the amount of difficulty the prohibition on “meta-lies” introduces if you decide to also uphold the prohibition on gathering object-level information, it definitely feels excessively arbitrary.
Really, the whole thing would work just fine if we were to pick just one of those restrictions: either don’t gather object-level information (but be free to meta-lie), or don’t meta-lie (but be okay with gathering object-level information). Dealing with both is, as far as I’m concerned, intractable to the point of uselessness.
Regarding meta-honesty:
I’m going to flip the usual jargon on its head and say that I “agree connotatively, but disagree denotatively”.
Meta-honesty—that is, “honesty about honesty”—is, like many meta-concepts, interesting to think about, but I don’t quite understand why it needs to be formulated as some sort of “code”. As you’ve presented it here, this “meta-honesty code” seems largely intractable in normal communication, and comes across as an overly-complicated way of simply refusing to hold up “Do not lie” as a moral absolute.
The primary problem with this whole “code” idea is the prohibition against using meta-honesty to gather object-level information. This is both arbitrary and, I would argue, unnecessary. In the examples you give, the immediate response to someone invoking the “code of meta-honesty” and then asking a question is for the person being questioned to doubt the asker’s motives. At this point, the “code” has already broken down, because in questioning the legitimacy of invoking the code, the legitimacy of invoking the code has been called into question, and by extension, the legitimacy of the code itself.
Furthermore, one of the base assumptions of this “code” is that it is morally permissible to lie under certain circumstances. Given that “meta-lies” are just a specific subset of “lies”, I don’t see how such a moral system could disallow that particular subset of lies and remain internally consistent. Rather than meta-honestly evade questions when you feel you’re interrogated, just meta-lie and be done with it.
Personally, I think it’s okay to define one’s attitude toward honesty as “I don’t personally consider ‘Do not lie’ to be a moral absolute” and leave it at that. If you can at least be honest about what you do and don’t consider to be moral imperatives or absolutes, then you’re already pretty far ahead of most people.
Regarding the absoluteness of rules:
I feel like you’re conflating moral law with societal law, and that you’re equivocating between “absolute moral laws” and “societal laws that can be summarized as absolutes, but have many exceptions”.
“Do not kill” is absolute if and only if “Do not kill” is absolute. It has no exceptions. It is not the same law as “Do not kill, unless you’re a soldier at war”. If we start talking about exceptions to absolute law, we are no longer talking about absolute law. We don’t “perform” that “Do not kill” is absolute (but secretly know that it isn’t), because almost no one thinks that the whole of the law is just that one phrase. Conversely, people like me do perform that “Do not kill” is absolute, because we actually think it’s absolute.
It seems like you’re using a conception of “law” in which any exceptions to a law are separate from that law, which is how you’re arriving at the self-contradictory concept of “exceptions to absolute laws”. If instead you include exceptions as part of a given law (which is completely reasonable and done all the time in real life), we both remove that contradiction and can still refer to laws as being “absolute” in whole.
There’s nothing inconsistent about saying that some action class A is a subset of B, that all actions in A are impermissible, and that some actions in B are permissible. So I don’t understand what inconsistency you’re pointing to here. Maybe your point is that “lie” feels like a natural category in a way that “meta-lie” doesn’t, so basing your clear bright moral lines around the latter category feels unduly arbitrary?
You’ve actually hit the nail right on the head and put my thoughts into words I couldn’t quite find, thank you.
Any moral code that contains non-absolute rules (in this case, “Don’t lie, except when...”) will of course require some amount of arbitrariness to distinguish it from the infinite range of other possibilities, but given the amount of difficulty the prohibition on “meta-lies” introduces if you decide to also uphold the prohibition on gathering object-level information, it definitely feels excessively arbitrary.
Really, the whole thing would work just fine if we were to pick just one of those restrictions: either don’t gather object-level information (but be free to meta-lie), or don’t meta-lie (but be okay with gathering object-level information). Dealing with both is, as far as I’m concerned, intractable to the point of uselessness.