Re: “ritual,” it seems like “social script” might have closer to the right connotations here.
I don’t really know that this makes your comments about it any more reasonable-sounding, but in any case this sub-point seems like a tangent, so we can let it go, if you like.
My main point here is that, if you are trying to build a reputation as being unusually honest, yet you lie because otherwise it would be slightly awkward and some people would talk to you less, then your reputation doesn’t actually count for anything. If someone won’t push against slight awkwardness to tell the truth about something only a little important, why would I expect them to push against a lot of awkwardness to tell the truth about something that is very important?
I just don’t think that this identification of “honesty” with “parsing spoken sentences in the most naively-literal possible way and then responding as if the intended meaning of your interlocutor’s utterance coincided with this literal reading” is very sensible. If someone did this, I wouldn’t think “boy, that guy/gal sure is unusually honest!”. I’d think “there goes a person who has, sadly, acquired a most inaccurate understanding, not to mention a most unproductive view, of social interactions”.
Suppose you are asked a question, where all of the following are true:
Your interlocutor neither expects nor desires for you to take the question literally and answer it truthfully.
You know that you are not expected to, and you have no desire to, take the question literally and answer it truthfully.
Your interlocutor would be harmed by you taking the question literally and answering it truthfully.
You would be harmed by you taking the question literally and answering it truthfully.
Do you maintain that, in such a case, “honesty” nevertheless demands that you do take the question literally and answer it truthfully?
If so, then this “honesty” of yours seems to be a supreme undesirable trait to have, and for one’s friends and acquaintances to have. (I maintain the scare quotes, because I would certainly not assent to any definition of “honesty” which had the aforesaid property—and, importantly, I do not think that “honesty” of this type is more predictive of certain actually desirable and prosocial behaviors, of the type that most people would expect from a person who had the as-generally-understood virtue of honesty.)
I would count saying “fine” when you are not fine to be a form of deception, one which is usually slightly harmful to both participants, but only slightly.
I would be interested to hear why you think this. It seems incorrect to me.
But the situation is very different for someone attempting to be unusually honest as a matter of policy. This type of person is trying to tell the truth almost all the time, even when it is hard and goes against their local incentives. There may be some times when they should lie, but it should have to be a really good reason, not “it would be slightly awkward if I didn’t lie.” If someone is going to lie whenever the cost-benefit analysis looks at least as favorable to lying as it does in the “saying you are fine when you are not fine” case, then they’re going to lie quite a lot about pretty important things, whenever telling the truth about these things would be comparably awkward.
Once again, you are relying on a very unrealistic characterization of what is taking place when one person says “How are you?” and another answers “Fine”. However, we can let that slide for now (in any case, I already addressed it, earlier in this comment), and instead deal with the substantive claim that someone who does not respond to “How are you?” with a report of their actual state, is “going to lie quite a lot about pretty important things …”.
I firmly dispute this claim. And given how strong of a claim it is, I should like to see it justified quite convincingly.
If someone did this, I wouldn’t think “boy, that guy/gal sure is unusually honest!”. I’d think “there goes a person who has, sadly, acquired a most inaccurate understanding, not to mention a most unproductive view, of social interactions”.
These are not necessarily mutually exclusive explanations. Sometimes the point of a social transaction is to maintain some particular social fiction.
I just don’t think that this identification of “honesty” with “parsing spoken sentences in the most naively-literal possible way and then responding as if the intended meaning of your interlocutor’s utterance coincided with this literal reading” is very sensible.
I don’t make this identification, given that I think honesty is compatible with pragmatics and metaphor, both of which are attempts to communicate that go beyond this. I would identify honesty more with “trying to communicate in a way that causes the other person to have accurate beliefs, with a significant preference for saying literally true things by default.”
Do you maintain that, in such a case, “honesty” nevertheless demands that you do take the question literally and answer it truthfully?
Depends on the situation. If it’s actually common knowledge that the things I’m saying are not intended to be true statements (e.g. I’m participating in a skit) then of course not. Otherwise it seems at least a little dishonest. Being dishonest is not always bad, but someone trying to be unusually honest should avoid being dishonest for frivolous reasons. (Obviously, not everyone should try to be unusually honest in all contexts)
If you’re pretty often in situations where lying is advantageous, then maybe lying a lot is the right move. But if you are doing this then it would be meta-dishonest to say that you are trying to be unusually honest.
I would be interested to hear why you think this. It seems incorrect to me.
I think saying false things routinely to some extent trains people to stop telling truth from falsity as a matter of habit. I don’t have a strong case for this but it seems true according to my experience.
the substantive claim that someone who does not respond to “How are you?” with a report of their actual state, is “going to lie quite a lot about pretty important things …”.
This is a pretty severe misquote. Read what I wrote.
Most of your comment seems to indicate that we’ve more or less reached the end of how much we can productively untangle our disagreement (at least, without full-length, top-level posts from one or both of us), but I would like to resolve this bit:
the substantive claim that someone who does not respond to “How are you?” with a report of their actual state, is “going to lie quite a lot about pretty important things …”.
This is a pretty severe misquote. Read what I wrote.
Well, first of all, to the extent that it’s a quote (which only part of it is), it’s not a misquote, per se, because you really did write those words, in that order. I assume what you meant is that it is a misrepresentation/mischaracterization of what you said and meant—which I am entirely willing to accept! (It would simply mean that I misunderstood what you were getting at; that is not hard at all to believe.)
So, could you explain in what way my attempted paraphrase/summary mischaracterized your point? I confess it does not seem to me to be a misrepresentation, except insofar as it brackets assumptions which, to me, seem both (a) flawed and unwarranted, and (b) not critical to the claim, per se (for all that they may be necessary to justify or support the claim).
Agreed that further engagement here on the disagreement is not that productive. Here’s what I said:
If someone is going to lie whenever the cost-benefit analysis looks at least as favorable to lying as it does in the “saying you are fine when you are not fine” case, then they’re going to lie quite a lot about pretty important things, whenever telling the truth about these things would be comparably awkward.
I am not saying that, if someone says they are fine when they are not fine, then necessarily they will lie about important things. They could be making an unprincipled exception. I am instead saying that, if they lied whenever the cost-benefit analysis looks at least as favorable to lying as in the “saying you are fine when you are not fine” case, then they’re likely going to end up lying about some pretty important things that are really awkward to talk about.
Yes, this is correct. The exception is entirely principled (really, I’d say it’s not even an exception, in the sense that the situation is not within the category of those to which the rule applies in the first place).
I see. It seems those assumptions I mentioned are ones which you consider much more important to your point than I consider them to be, which, I suppose, is not terribly surprising. (I do still think they are unwarranted.)
I will have to consider turning what I’ve been trying to say here into a top-level post (which may be no more than a list of links and blurbs; as I said, there has been a good deal of discussion about this stuff already).
I don’t really know that this makes your comments about it any more reasonable-sounding, but in any case this sub-point seems like a tangent, so we can let it go, if you like.
I just don’t think that this identification of “honesty” with “parsing spoken sentences in the most naively-literal possible way and then responding as if the intended meaning of your interlocutor’s utterance coincided with this literal reading” is very sensible. If someone did this, I wouldn’t think “boy, that guy/gal sure is unusually honest!”. I’d think “there goes a person who has, sadly, acquired a most inaccurate understanding, not to mention a most unproductive view, of social interactions”.
Suppose you are asked a question, where all of the following are true:
Your interlocutor neither expects nor desires for you to take the question literally and answer it truthfully.
You know that you are not expected to, and you have no desire to, take the question literally and answer it truthfully.
Your interlocutor would be harmed by you taking the question literally and answering it truthfully.
You would be harmed by you taking the question literally and answering it truthfully.
Do you maintain that, in such a case, “honesty” nevertheless demands that you do take the question literally and answer it truthfully?
If so, then this “honesty” of yours seems to be a supreme undesirable trait to have, and for one’s friends and acquaintances to have. (I maintain the scare quotes, because I would certainly not assent to any definition of “honesty” which had the aforesaid property—and, importantly, I do not think that “honesty” of this type is more predictive of certain actually desirable and prosocial behaviors, of the type that most people would expect from a person who had the as-generally-understood virtue of honesty.)
I would be interested to hear why you think this. It seems incorrect to me.
Once again, you are relying on a very unrealistic characterization of what is taking place when one person says “How are you?” and another answers “Fine”. However, we can let that slide for now (in any case, I already addressed it, earlier in this comment), and instead deal with the substantive claim that someone who does not respond to “How are you?” with a report of their actual state, is “going to lie quite a lot about pretty important things …”.
I firmly dispute this claim. And given how strong of a claim it is, I should like to see it justified quite convincingly.
These are not necessarily mutually exclusive explanations. Sometimes the point of a social transaction is to maintain some particular social fiction.
I don’t make this identification, given that I think honesty is compatible with pragmatics and metaphor, both of which are attempts to communicate that go beyond this. I would identify honesty more with “trying to communicate in a way that causes the other person to have accurate beliefs, with a significant preference for saying literally true things by default.”
Depends on the situation. If it’s actually common knowledge that the things I’m saying are not intended to be true statements (e.g. I’m participating in a skit) then of course not. Otherwise it seems at least a little dishonest. Being dishonest is not always bad, but someone trying to be unusually honest should avoid being dishonest for frivolous reasons. (Obviously, not everyone should try to be unusually honest in all contexts)
If you’re pretty often in situations where lying is advantageous, then maybe lying a lot is the right move. But if you are doing this then it would be meta-dishonest to say that you are trying to be unusually honest.
I think saying false things routinely to some extent trains people to stop telling truth from falsity as a matter of habit. I don’t have a strong case for this but it seems true according to my experience.
This is a pretty severe misquote. Read what I wrote.
Most of your comment seems to indicate that we’ve more or less reached the end of how much we can productively untangle our disagreement (at least, without full-length, top-level posts from one or both of us), but I would like to resolve this bit:
Well, first of all, to the extent that it’s a quote (which only part of it is), it’s not a misquote, per se, because you really did write those words, in that order. I assume what you meant is that it is a misrepresentation/mischaracterization of what you said and meant—which I am entirely willing to accept! (It would simply mean that I misunderstood what you were getting at; that is not hard at all to believe.)
So, could you explain in what way my attempted paraphrase/summary mischaracterized your point? I confess it does not seem to me to be a misrepresentation, except insofar as it brackets assumptions which, to me, seem both (a) flawed and unwarranted, and (b) not critical to the claim, per se (for all that they may be necessary to justify or support the claim).
Agreed that further engagement here on the disagreement is not that productive. Here’s what I said:
I am not saying that, if someone says they are fine when they are not fine, then necessarily they will lie about important things. They could be making an unprincipled exception. I am instead saying that, if they lied whenever the cost-benefit analysis looks at least as favorable to lying as in the “saying you are fine when you are not fine” case, then they’re likely going to end up lying about some pretty important things that are really awkward to talk about.
I think that Said is arguing that they’re making a *principled* exception. Vaniver’s comment makes a decent case for this.
Yes, this is correct. The exception is entirely principled (really, I’d say it’s not even an exception, in the sense that the situation is not within the category of those to which the rule applies in the first place).
I see. It seems those assumptions I mentioned are ones which you consider much more important to your point than I consider them to be, which, I suppose, is not terribly surprising. (I do still think they are unwarranted.)
I will have to consider turning what I’ve been trying to say here into a top-level post (which may be no more than a list of links and blurbs; as I said, there has been a good deal of discussion about this stuff already).