Lying

To a very great extent, social relations and institutions presuppose honest communication. However, communication is not always honest: Individuals and groups deliberately misrepresent reality to others, in the service of personal, political, or ideological ends. In short, people lie. Lying is found at all levels of social intercourse, and its study is therefore of relevance to the entire spectrum of the social sciences. This entry summarizes philosophical conceptions of lying.

At the most general level, we can say that lying is communicative behavior that is undertaken for the purpose of misleading others. Most philosophers accept this characterization, or something very near to it, but they disagree on how it should [Page 571]be understood. Generally speaking, there are two camps: (1) fine-grained or “narrow” approaches and (2) more coarse-grained or “broad” approaches. Although highly schematic, and therefore inevitably oversimplified, this taxonomy gives a panoramic view of the relevant conceptual landscape.

The dichotomy between the narrow and broad conceptions turns on a difference of opinion about what sorts of behaviors should count as lying. Narrowly conceived, lies are misleading statements. A person lies if and only if he or she makes an assertion for the purpose of misleading someone by causing them to embrace a false belief. Although this definition covers a great deal of what we ordinarily mean by the word lying, there are some clear counterexamples to it. Consider a boy who cries “Wolf!” with the intention of causing his neighbors to falsely believe that there is a wolf in the vicinity. Even though “Wolf!” is not a statement, we are inclined to think of the boy's behavior as an example of lying. Proponents of the narrow view of lying can respond to this objection by insisting that “Wolf!” is actually a statement in disguise and that in crying “Wolf!” the boy is asserting something like “There is a wolf nearby!” However, there are other cases that are less easily disposed of. Consider groans of pleasure. Groans of pleasure are not statements: They express feelings of pleasure without asserting them. Now, suppose that a person groans to give a false impression of experiencing pleasure. If the misleading groan is a lie, then the narrow view of lying must give way to a broader one.

According to the broad conception, there are many forms of behavior—both verbal and nonverbal—that are properly included under the umbrella of lying. Removing one's wedding ring to give a false impression of one's marital status, presenting a forged passport to an immigration officer, coloring one's hair to conceal telltale signs of age, and remaining silent in order to hide the truth are just a few examples. Advocates of the broad conception deny that there is no essential difference between verbal and nonverbal deception that would justify restricting the term lying to the former.

Proponents of both the narrow and the broad approach typically hold that a communicative act is a lie only if it is motivated by an intention to deceive. Whether or not the act succeeds is immaterial to its status as a lie. On these accounts, then, there is no such thing as an unintentional lie. Suppose that you are driving along an unfamiliar road and stop to ask for directions to the nearest filling station. Your interlocutor tells you where to go, but unbeknownst to him, the filling station was recently torn down. He misled you, but he did not lie to you, because he misled you inadvertently. Now, contrast the foregoing scenario with one in which your interlocutor deliberately gives you what he believes to be erroneous directions with the intention of leading you astray; however, unbeknownst to him, a filling station had recently been built at the precise location to which he directed you. In this case, the man lied to you about the location of the filling station, even though he did not mislead you. These considerations suggest that it is the intentions of the agent, rather than the truth or falsity of his or her assertions, that determine whether or not any given communication is a lie.

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