Deception, Characteristics of

What Does Deception Involve?

Nevertheless, there remain a number of questions about what deception involve: (1) What result [Page 247]is necessary for deception? Is a new false belief required, is the maintaining of a false belief sufficient, or may a person be deceived merely by losing a true belief, or even by merely failing to gain a true belief? (2) Must deception be intentional, or may one unintentionally deceive? (3) Must a deceiver commit a certain act, or must a deceiver merely not prevent something from occurring (such as the acquisition of a false belief)? (4) Must the belief-forming agency of the deceived person be involved, or does deception occur simply in virtue of the result obtained? (5) Does deception require that the deceiver possess certain relevant knowledge or true belief, or can a deceiver deceive without possessing any relevant knowledge or true belief? (6) Is the only true deception other-deception, or is self-deception truly a form of deception?

Although many philosophers speak of unintentional and intentional deception, it is more common to use the term mislead to cover all cases of propagating false beliefs, to distinguish between intentional and unintentional misleading, and to restrict the term deceive to the concept of intentional misleading. It would be unorthodox to say that “Jane deceived Susan” during their conversation, when in fact Susan simply misinterpreted what Jane said. It may even be unorthodox to say that Jane misled Susan.

According to R. M. Chisholm and T. D. Feehan, there is both positive and negative deception. Positive deception occurs when one acquires a false belief or continues to maintain a false belief. Negative deception occurs when one loses a true belief (without acquiring a false belief), or fails to acquire a true belief (without acquiring a false belief). Although most are willing to accept that “causing someone to persist in a false belief can constitute deception,” and hence that all positive deception is deception, most people have traditionally not been willing to accept that merely preventing a person from acquiring a true belief constitutes deception. As Chisholm and Feehan note, “… both St. Augustine and St. Thomas … do not call it ‘deception.’”

An act of concealing information or withholding information, which are distinct acts, may only be an act of keeping a person in ignorance of something. This is distinct from deceiving a person: As philosophy professor and author Thomas Carson notes, “We need a term other than ‘deception’ to describe cases of preventing others from learning the truth. The English expression that most closely describes this is ‘keeping someone in the dark.’”

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