1. Introduction
In this paper, I argue that extant accounts, both old and new, of the wrongfulness of lying are all inadequate. The common problem with each consists in its unitary structure. Such accounts presuppose that all lies are wrongful in the same way, for the same unifying reason. This assumption, however, does not do justice to the phenomena of lying. This is because lying can be morally objectionable in diverse ways and for diverse reasons. Thus, I argue that we should take a pluralist approach to the wrongfulness of lying; we should not force unity upon the moral structure of lying when there is actually diversity.
What makes lying wrong (when it is wrong)? This is the main question I will be concerned with in what follows. To be clear from the start, I do not assume any form of absolutism about lying. That is, I do not assume that all lies are wrongful, all the time, no matter what. Instead, I wish to leave open the possibility for lies that are not wrong at all (e.g., lying to a murderer who is looking for your friend, Footnote 1 bluffing in a poker match, or negotiating.) Footnote 2 For brevity, I simply refer to each analysis I consider as offering an explanation of the wrongfulness of lying, but I will focus my attention on the wrongfulness of wrongful lies.
In Section 2, I outline and defend two necessary conditions on lying. In Section 3, I defend three desiderata on an analysis of the wrongfulness of lying. In Section 4, I argue that traditional deontological and utilitarian accounts of the wrongfulness of lying are unsatisfactory because they fail to satisfy at least one of these desiderata. Then, in Section 5, I focus on a novel approach defended by Sarah Stroud. Footnote 3 Stroud defends a relational analysis and argues that lying is wrong because it requires objectionable relationships of infidelity. While I do take Stroud’s account to fare better when compared to its more traditional counterparts, I argue that it too does not satisfy one of the desiderata. In particular, Stroud’s account fails to explain why a particular class of non-deceptive—so-called ‘bald-faced’—lies are wrongful. In Section 6, I defend three claims about bald-faced lies: (i) that bald-faced lies are genuine instances of lying, (ii) that they are pertinent to ethical theorizing about the wrongfulness of lying, and (iii) that there are, pace Roy Sorensen, wrongful bald-faced lies. Footnote 4 Lastly, in Section 7, I argue that the discussions in Sections 3-6 reveal that extant analyses of the wrongfulness of lying are severely lacking. This is because, despite their differences, each account assumes that the wrongfulness of lying is morally unified phenomena—that there is one single way in which lying is morally objectionable. In other words, each account offers a morally unified explanation of the wrongfulness of lying when, in reality, the phenomena calls for explanatory diversity. I argue that deceptive and non-deceptive (i.e., bald-faced) lies must give rise to distinct wrongs and that, as a result, a proper analysis of the wrongfulness of lying must have a pluralistic structure. Theorists must embrace a dialectical shift towards pluralism if they are ever to offer a sufficiently robust explanation of what is morally objectionable about lying.
2. What is a Lie?
There is controversy in the literature concerning the exact necessary and sufficient conditions on lying. Footnote 5 The literature reveals, however, at least the semblance of consensus concerning the following two necessary conditions: Footnote 6
A lies to B concerning p only if:
A asserts that p to B and,
A believes that p is false.
The two key words to note here are ‘asserts’ and ‘believes.’ Starting with the first, a speaker does not lie if she only insinuates or falsely implicates that p to her interlocutor. Similarly, a speaker does not lie if she is being sarcastic, ironic, hyperbolic, metaphorical, or humorous when saying that p. For instance, one does not lie when one says: ‘I am so hungry, I could eat a cow’ or ‘I just love waiting in long lines.’ Lying demands a specific sort of speech act that is absent in these ways of speaking. In particular, lying requires full-blown assertion. In order to lie, a speaker must offer a serious assertion such that she purports to ‘go on the record’ with respect to p. Assertion should be understood broadly as encompassing both linguistic (i.e., verbal and written) and non-linguistic (i.e., gestural: pointing, nodding) forms of communication.
The second condition highlights that the truth-value of p is irrelevant to whether someone lies. Instead the speaker’s belief about the truth-value of p is what matters. The speaker must believe that p is false in order to lie. Hence, one can lie by asserting a true proposition just so long as she believes that it is false—as is the case when speakers are incompetent or otherwise misinformed. Some have argued that this requirement is too restrictive because a speaker can lie by asserting something that she believes is neither true nor false. For example, a speaker can lie by asserting a proposition that she withholds judgement about. I am sympathetic to this point, but I do not prefer it for reasons offered by Jennifer Saul. Footnote 7 Saul maintains that in order to lie it is not enough for a speaker to assert what she does not believe is true; more is needed—a speaker must believe that what she is asserting is false. Saul insists that when one asserts something that one believes is neither true nor false (i.e., cases where a speaker suspends judgement about the truth-value of p), such assertions are not lies, but instead instances of what Harry Frankfurt famously calls ‘bullshit.’ Footnote 8 A speaker is bullshitting when she expresses a complete disregard for the truth-value of what she asserts. Nothing in what follows turns on this amendment, so I stick to the above formulation hereafter.
Notice that I have not included the intent to deceive among the necessary conditions above. Intentional deception can be understood roughly as follows:
A intentionally deceives B concerning whether p if:
A intends for B to have a false belief about p and,
A causes B to have a false belief about p.
The ‘intends’ in the first condition rules out cases where someone overhears a false assertion and forms a belief on this basis. If an eavesdropper forms a false belief on the basis of what she overhears, the speaker does not thereby deceive her. This is because the eavesdropper is not the speaker’s addressee. The second condition captures the fact that ‘deception’ is a success term in the sense that A has not, strictly speaking, deceived B, unless A has actually caused B to form a false belief about p.
Traditionally, the wrongfulness of lying has stemmed from the thought that lies intend to deceive. Footnote 9 There is an obvious and intuitive connection between lying and deception, but this is not a necessary connection. I omit intentional deception as a necessary condition because there are lies that neither aim to be nor are deceptive, namely, bald-faced lies. Footnote 10 Bald-faced lies can be characterized as follows:
A tells a bald-faced lie to B, concerning p only if:
A makes an assertion that p to B,
A believes that p is false, and
A and B mutually recognize that p is false.
What makes bald-face lies unique is that they involve meta-knowledge such that the speaker and the hearer mutually recognize that the speaker is lying. Bald-faced lies do not masquerade as truths—to the contrary, they are, ex hypothesi, transparently false. Bald-face liars do not even attempt to be deceptive, but instead blatantly assert what they know their interlocutors do not believe. At this point in the paper, I simply want to flag the existence of non-deceptive lies. They will be discussed at length in Sections 5 and 6. It is also worth pointing out that Stroud, a defender of one of the main accounts I criticize, also acknowledges a separation of deception from lying. She says: “Lying is neither necessary nor sufficient for intentional deception.” Footnote 11
To summarize: in order to lie, A must assert that p to B while also simultaneously believing that p is false. This need not require that A intend to deceive B about the truth of p (though it may).
3. Desiderata
In offering an analysis of the wrongfulness of lying, there are at least three desiderata that must be met. An analysis of the wrongfulness of lying should:
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1. Explain what is distinctively wrong with lying.
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2. Explain why all and only lies are wrongful.
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3. Explain how the liar wrongs the recipient of the lie.
I take each of these desiderata to be uncontroversial demands. I explain each in turn.
The first desideratum is straightforward: an analysis of the wrongfulness of lying should explain lying’s wrongfulness (obviously!). More strictly, a proper analysis should offer an explanation that is pertinent to lying in particular. Stroud defends this desideratum explicitly when she says that: “[i]t does not after all seem as if all wrong acts have the same moral profile—as if all wrong acts are wrong for the exact same reason.” Footnote 12 A way of flouting this desideratum would be to offer an ‘all-purpose’ analysis that purported to explain why a variety of different phenomena are morally objectionable. For example, it is obvious that killing, sexual assault, discrimination, adultery, embezzlement, pedophilia, identity theft, breaking promises, and so on, are all wrong for different reasons. Footnote 13 An analysis of the wrongfulness of each should capture these differences. Thus, a proper analysis of the wrongfulness of lying requires nuance and precision such that it identifies what makes lying per se wrong.
The second desideratum has to do with extensional adequacy. A proper analysis of the wrongfulness of lying should explain why all and only wrongful lies are wrongful. It should cover the phenomena adequately and exactly. Its explanatory power should be both precise enough to satisfy the first desideratum while being inclusive enough to explain why all wrongful lies are wrongful. But, it should not be too inclusive. It should explain the wrongfulness of just those lies that are wrongful, that is, it should not deem as wrongful any lies that are morally permissible or otherwise morally neutral. It is perhaps helpful to think of this as the ‘Goldilocks’ desideratum: it requires that the analysis not be too permissive as to include all lies (i.e., those lies that are not wrongful) and it should not be too narrow by failing to explain some subset of wrongful lies. Instead, it needs to be just right by explaining the wrongfulness of all and only wrongful lies.
The third desideratum requires that the analysis explain why the recipient of the lie is the specific individual who the liar wrongs. Lying is inherently a bipolar act. Lies are always directed towards individuals; one is always lying to someone. Lying involves two distinct and related parties: the liar and the interlocutor to whom the lie is addressed. By telling a lie, the liar wrongs her addressee specifically and negatively alters their relationship. An analysis of the wrongfulness of lying should track this defect in the relationship that arises from the lie; it should account for how the recipient of the lie is the person who is directly victimized by the wrong to which lying gives rise. Footnote 14
To sum up: an analysis of the wrongfulness of lying should explain why lying in particular is wrongful, it should account for why all and only wrongful lies are wrongful, and it should capture the bipolarity or relationality that forms the fundamental structure of lying—that is, it should explain how the liar directly wrongs the person who is lied to.
In the next section, I argue that traditional utilitarian and deontological accounts of the wrongfulness of lying are unsatisfactory. Both traditions fail to meet at least one of the above desiderata.
4. Traditional Analyses
Utilitarian approaches to the wrongfulness of lying focus on the negative consequences that result from forming false beliefs. The utilitarian claim is that lying generally achieves deception. Deception (i.e., the formation of false beliefs) tends to decrease net happiness. Thus, lying is wrong, according to the utilitarian, because it has a tendency to decrease net happiness. Footnote 15
While the utilitarian analysis may have some initial appeal, it does not stand up to closer scrutiny. It fails all three desiderata. The reason that lying is wrong (i.e., because it tends to decrease net happiness) is too generic and does not capture what is distinctively wrong with lying. On this point, Stroud says: “On the utilitarian view, what is wrong with lying is just that it reduces total human happiness—exactly the same thing that is wrong with every other wrong act.” Footnote 16 This account fails the first desideratum due to a lack of precision.
The utilitarian analysis also fails the second desideratum because it lacks extensional adequacy. It does not classify certain wrongful lies as wrongful. First, this account takes for granted that all lies are intentionally deceptive—that all liars hope for their interlocutors to believe what they assert. This assumption is misguided. Given their non-deceptive nature, bald-faced lies are never concealed or disguised as truths. As such, recipients of these lies are never fooled by them. Hence, bald-faced lies never result in the formation of false beliefs and are left unexplained on the utilitarian analysis. Second, among the class of intentionally deceptive lies, there remains a subset of lies that are also unexplained on this view. Lies that are unsuccessfully deceptive remain unaccounted for because they do not result in the formation of false beliefs. When a liar is misinformed or confused about the truth of what she asserts, she may end up asserting a true proposition. In such a scenario, if her interlocutor forms a belief on the basis of the lie, she will end up believing a true proposition. Footnote 17 Third, unbeknownst to the liar, her interlocutor may antecedently know that what she is asserting is false. This may owe to previous experience or evidence that the recipient of the lie possess that indicates that the assertion is false. In this case, she will not be taken in by the lie and, hence, will not form a false belief on its basis. The utilitarian analysis, thus, cannot explain the wrongfulness of lies that do not result in the formation of false beliefs.
What’s more, as Stroud points out, some lies that are successfully deceptive (i.e., that result in the formation of false beliefs) may end up increasing net happiness. Footnote 18 This is a controversial point, but I believe it is plausible. Imagine a spouse asserting: ‘I was working late’ in order to conceal an affair. The spouse anticipates that this lie will prevent a great deal of unhappiness: hurt feelings, anger, depression, resentment, separation from one’s children, the loss of one’s home, financial losses from a probable divorce, and so on. In some instances, lies are told in order to block a greater anticipated harm from manifesting. In such cases, the liar hopes to substitute a minor wrong for a much greater harm that would result from telling the truth. The utilitarian analysis appears to grant the telling of these lies just so long as the resulting false belief mitigates an overall decrease in net happiness and facilitates an increase of net happiness. Thus, the utilitarian analysis fails the second desideratum because too many lies fall outside of its scope and are left unexplained. In particular, the utilitarian analysis fails to explain the wrongfulness of non-deceptive bald-faced lies, lies that result in the formation of true beliefs, and lies that may actually end up increasing net happiness.
A different utilitarian interpretation explains the wrongfulness of lying as stemming from the negative impact lying has on the institution of honest communication more generally. Footnote 19 This interpretation centres upon the long-term consequences of telling lies. Accordingly, lying is wrong because it harms the social practice of truth telling, which in turn decreases net happiness. This alternative interpretation is also unsatisfactory. While it does mention the institution of honest communication, it insufficiently hones in on the act of lying specifically and so fails the first desideratum. What’s more, it is unclear how one measly lie can be efficacious enough to harm the entire institution of honest communication. Undermining confidence in the whole institution would require a considerable amount of lying. A couple of drops of cyanide in the Pacific Ocean will not suffice to ruin the waters. As Stroud claims, “It would rarely seem true that my lie will literally affect the future employment of trustworthy communication. I just don’t have that kind of power!” Footnote 20 Moreover, Thomas Carson notes: “Only those lies that are discovered by others can make people less trusting of others.” Footnote 21 Thus, this interpretation fails in its scope. Specifically, this account does not discern as wrongful lies that have yet to be unearthed and exposed as lies, and lies that do not undermine the social practice of sincere communication. Thus, this alternative utilitarian interpretation does not satisfy the second desideratum.
Furthermore, these two utilitarian interpretations fail the third desideratum. Both claim that lying is wrong because it decreases net happiness. The first claims that this decrease is due to lying’s tendency to produce false beliefs, and the second claims that it is due lying’s erosion of the institution of honest communication. Notice how neither account says anything at all about how the liar wrongs the recipient of the lie. Footnote 22 This has absolutely no bearing on the wrongfulness of lying. This distorts the phenomena of lying by obscuring its relational or bipolar structure.
What about deontology? Deontological analyses of the wrongfulness of lying can take two forms: one according to Kant’s Formula of Universal Law and the other according to his Formula of Humanity. Kant presents both of these maxims as applying categorically, without exception. Kant is famously, and perhaps infamously, interpreted as endorsing an absolute prohibition against lying: lying is always morally impermissible, full stop, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Footnote 23 This proposal strikes many as being too strict. The most notable counterexample to this proposal is the murderer at the door. Imagine that a known murderer knocks on your door asking for the whereabouts of your friend (whom you coincidently know the murderer is trying to kill). According to Kant’s absolutism, it is morally impermissible to lie to the murderer. To further draw out this point with what is possibly a more realistic example, rewind the clock to WWII c. 1940. You are harbouring four young Jewish orphans under the floorboards of your home. A Nazi soldier knocks on your door and asks if you are hiding Jews. Do you tell him where they are? Kant’s absolutism dictates that you should, for it is always morally impermissible to lie. Christine Korsgaard notes:
One of the great difficulties with Kant’s moral philosophy is that it seems to imply that our moral obligations leave us powerless in the face of evil. Kant’s theory sets a high ideal of conduct and tells us to live up to that ideal regardless of what other persons are doing. Footnote 24
Thus, given Kant’s commitment to absolutism, there are compelling reasons right out of the gate to oppose deontological analyses. A further examination of the Formula of Universal Law and the Formula of Humanity, respectively, in light of our desiderata will yield even further reason to reject deontological approaches to the wrongfulness of lying.
Kant formulates the Formula of Universal Law as follows:
Act only according to the maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become universal law. Footnote 25
Accordingly, lying is wrong because it cannot be willed as a universal maxim without contradiction. The general idea is that if everyone were to lie, lies would be ineffective as a means to deceive others. Deception would be so rife that the presumption that others were telling the truth would be absent in common discourse. We tend to believe others, so the story goes, because there is a default presumption of veracity. The liar abuses the institution of honest communication by making herself an exception and free riding off of the social practice of truth telling.
The deontological analysis, according to the Formula of Universal Law, fails all three desiderata. It fails the first because the explanation for why lying is wrong—that is, because lying cannot be willed as a universal maxim—is too general. While this analysis does focus on the institution of honest communication in particular, and so does begin to nudge closer to the phenomena of lying, its focus is remains considerably watered down.
This account also fails the second desideratum because its scope is both too broad and too narrow. Given Kant’s absolutism, every act of lying is deemed morally impermissible, but this, as was previously noted, is overkill. This account does not capture only wrongful lies, but instead all lies, such as those told to murderers in order to prevent the death of one’s friend, and those told to Nazi’s looking for hidden Jews. This casts the net far too wide. As was the case for the utilitarian analysis, the Formula of Universal Law is too narrow because it assumes that all lies are deceptive and that all liars aim to deceive their interlocutors. Non-deceptive bald-faced lies do not free ride off of assumptions of veracity because, given that they are transparently false—i.e., the recipient of the lie knows that the assertion is false—they are never assumed to be true. This account does not properly address non-deceptive lies, which do not free ride off assumptions of veracity.
Furthermore, this account makes no mention of either the liar or the recipient of the lie. As such, it clearly fails the third desideratum. What makes lying wrong is simply that it cannot be willed as a universal maxim. The negative impact that the lie has on the relationship between the liar and the recipient of the lie is completely left out of the picture. The Formula of Universal Law fails to capture the directness of lying, how the liar wrongs the one lied to in particular.
The Formula of Humanity does a better job than the Formula of Universal Law, but it too has its shortcomings. Kant formulates the Formula of Humanity as follows:
Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only. Footnote 26
For Kant, treating humanity as an end amounts to showing respect for others by allowing them to determine their own ends though rational deliberation. Footnote 27 Lying is wrong on this account because the liar treats her interlocutor as a mere means and undermines her capacity for rational decision making.
This account satisfies the third desideratum, but fails the first and second. Starting with the first desideratum, the reason that lying is wrong—namely, because it involves treating others as mere means and undermines their rationality—is also the explanation given for a variety of different wrongful acts. There are plenty of ways in which one can treat another as a mere means (e.g., robbing them, making them slaves, sexually assaulting them, coercively harvesting their organs, and so on). As such, this account lacks the specificity needed to satisfy the first desideratum.
This account fails the second desideratum because, in sync with the previous accounts, it presupposes that all lies either aim to deceive or are successfully deceptive. Presumably one’s capacity for rational deliberation and decision making can only be tampered with if one actually is deceived. Only then will one have false beliefs that impede rational deliberation. Some lies, however, do not aim at deception whatsoever and do not result in the formation of false beliefs, as was previously noted. Moreover, among the lies that are aimed at deception, there are some that are unsuccessfully deceptive in the sense that they do not result in the formation of false beliefs. Recall that lying only requires that the speaker believe that what she is asserting is false. Hence, a speaker can lie by asserting a true proposition. In such a case, if the recipient of the lie forms a true belief on the basis of this assertion, she is actually offered reliable epistemic goods that do not obstruct but instead aid in rational decision making. Thus, the deontological account according to the Formula of Humanity fails to satisfy the second desideratum because it does not explain why non-deceptive and unsuccessfully deceptive lies (i.e., lies that do not result in the formation of false beliefs) are wrong.
This account does best when it comes to the third desideratum, but even here it falls short. Unlike the previous accounts, the Formula of Humanity begins to capture the relational structure of lying. It purports to explain the wrongfulness of lying by explaining how the liar wrongs her interlocutor by undermining her rationality. Hence, we can grant, perhaps generously, that this account meets the third desideratum. Footnote 28 It is a further question, however, whether this is really a plausible description of what is going on when someone tells a lie. It is unclear whether there is an obstruction of one’s rational faculties in the case of non-deceptive and unsuccessfully deceptive lies because, as was noted, they do not result in false beliefs. Furthermore, even in the case of successfully deceptive lies, one may question whether one’s rationality is really hindered by forming false beliefs. Stroud expresses this concern with the Formula of Humanity:
I expressly leave my interlocutor’s capacities for rational deliberation intact, precisely so that he will use them to draw whatever inferences serve my purposes. I place a false input into his deliberative system, but leave the machinery itself in perfect working order. Footnote 29
Stroud emphasizes that deceptive lies do not undermine the rational faculties of their recipients. The functionality of one’s capacity for rational deliberation is not impacted, she claims, simply by receiving a “false input” (i.e., false belief). Stroud’s suggestion is that false content does not undermine one’s ability to exercise rational decision making and, hence, the Formula of Humanity fails to accurately target what is morally objectionable about lying.
Thus, it is unclear whether the morally objectionable features of lying—that is, the features wherein the wrongfulness of lying consists—have anything to do with undermining one’s capacity for rational deliberation. While this analysis does better than its previous competitors because it starts to track the bipolar structure of lying, its overall plausibility remains questionable. Footnote 30
I hope to at least have sparked some worries with traditional utilitarian and deontological analyses and to have motivated the need to look elsewhere for a satisfactory account of the wrongfulness of lying. In the next section, I discuss a novel analysis defended by Stroud.
5. The Relational Analysis
Stroud defends a relational analysis of the wrongfulness of lying. On this account, lying is wrong because it requires an objectionable relationship of infidelity. Stroud’s relational account largely rests upon, and is motivated by, her understanding of testimonial uptake and exchange. She endorses an assurance view of testimony. Footnote 31 I first explain this view of testimonial exchange, and then explain its role in Stroud’s analysis of the wrongfulness of lying.
According to the assurance view, by asserting that p a speaker offers her assurance that p is true to her interlocutor. The assurance offered by testimony provides the hearer with a reason to believe p, and thereby furnishes her with a justification for so believing. Here is Angus Ross, an early proponent of this view:
The hearer possesses a justification for believing what is said which stems directly from the speaker’s responsibility for its truth. Footnote 32
Also, Richard Moran:
[T]he hearer can assume that the belief in question has survived the speaker’s reflection on it and is being presented to him with the speaker’s epistemic backing and answerability for its justification […]. For the invitation to trust that it [testimony] presents to the audience is predicated on the speaker presenting himself as assuming responsibility for his speech being a reason to believe something […]. Footnote 33
By asserting p, the speaker’s extends invitations of trust and reliance, and takes on liability for p’s truth. The speaker shoulders responsibility and can be rightfully criticized should it be discovered by her interlocutor that p is false. The speaker’s assertion also serves to signal to her interlocutor that she need not investigate the truth of p any further, that the testimony is a sufficient reason to believe p. Stroud claims that the speaker invites the hearer to take “his word for it that p rather than to seek evidence bearing on the question of whether p on her own.” Footnote 34
Defenders of the assurance view also emphasize that the speaker offers up her testimony autonomously. This feature of assertion, they claim, contributes to the hearer’s justification for believing p. Here is Ross on this point:
If a speaker’s words are evidence of anything, they have that status only because he has chosen to use them. Speaking is not like allowing someone to see you are blushing […]. Footnote 35
Similarly, Moran says:
[I]t is essential to the distinctive reason for belief that I get from assertion that it proceeds from something freely undertaken by the other person. Only as a free declaration does it have that value for me […] nothing can count as someone’s assurance that was not freely presented as such, just as talking in one’s sleep cannot count as making an assertion or a promise. Footnote 36
Additionally, Stroud claims that the speaker’s presentation of herself as a creditable, trustworthy, and sincere source of knowledge serves to place “moral pressure” on the hearer to believe what the speaker asserts. Footnote 37 To refuse to believe the proffered testimony, she claims, would be tantamount to disvaluing and discrediting the speaker as a sincere and authoritative source of knowledge. On this point, Ross says:
To utter ‘P’ is not only to entitle one’s hearer to assume that P; it is, other things being equal, to place them under a certain obligation to make that assumption. It is to make it ‘difficult’ for them to dissent, even inwardly, for to do so will be to challenge one’s authority as a judge of the matter in question. To be told something is, other things being equal, to be placed under certain constraints as to what one should believe. Footnote 38
This idea is also present in Miranda Fricker’s pioneering work on epistemic injustice. Footnote 39 The speaker wants to be taken seriously as confirming p’s truth. Not believing p would, in Fricker’s words, constitute a “creditability deficit” and the informant would, as a result, suffer a “testimonial injustice.” Footnote 40
Thus, according to the assurance view of testimony defended by Stroud, a whole lot happens when someone testifies something to someone else. There are a host of invitations and offers made by the speaker. The speaker offers sufficient justificatory reasons to believe p, as well as accepts or assumes accountability, reliability, and liability for p’s truth. The speech act of assertion radically changes the moral character of the relationship between speaker and hearer. As Stroud rather grandly says, the “normative universe” is changed as a result. Footnote 41
Now we are well positioned to understand Stroud’s relational account—specifically, what it meant by her claim that the wrongfulness of lying consists in an objectionable relationship of infidelity. According to the assurance view, when a speaker lies, she invites her interlocutor to trust the untrustworthy, and rely upon the unreliable. The liar presents herself as a serious authority on the truth of p and, in so doing, assumes responsibility for p’s truth—but the speaker never anticipates fulfilling this responsibility. The liar licenses her interlocutor to trust and depend upon her as a creditable source of knowledge concerning p while being fully aware that she is not trustworthy, dependable, or creditable. It is obvious, Stroud argues, that there is something morally objectionable about doing this to another person.
Stroud understands lies as requiring objectionable relationships of infidelity. She classifies lying as belonging to the broader category of faithless pledging. She claims that faithless promises are also instances of faithless pledging, and draws a structural parallel between telling a lie and making a false promise. In both promising and testifying, one gives one’s word and, correspondingly, when one lies and when one makes a false promise, Stroud argues, one breaks one’s word. Given this similarity, she considers both acts to be species of faithless pledges that are subsumed “under the general rubric of infidelity.” Footnote 42 Stroud describes lying and false promises as follows:
In those cases [of lying] you assure your interlocutor that something is the case rather than that you will do something. In both cases, however, you offer a guarantee that you know is fraudulent: a guarantee that, as we say, is not worth the paper it’s printed on—there is nothing behind it. In both cases, you simultaneously pledge your troth and betray your pledge. Footnote 43
To summarize: Stroud’s relational analysis locates the wrongfulness of lying in an objectionable relationship of infidelity. The liar offers her word that p while simultaneously breaking it.
The relational analysis passes the first and third desiderata but fails the second. Stroud precisely hones in on the phenomena of lying and the relational structure of lying is salient. Stroud’s analysis fails, however, when it comes to the second desideratum. Because her account hinges on the assurance view of testimony, it takes for granted that all lies invite relationships of trust and reliance, that all liars aim to be believed, and that all assertions offer assurance. These assumptions are misguided and, as I will argue, are only true of a subset of wrongful lies, in particular, deceptive lies.
Consider the following:
Caught Cheating
Professor Brandt catches Thomas cheating on his exam. There is overwhelming evidence including Thomas’ cheat notes (visibly written across his arms), impeccable video footage, and Professor Brandt’s firsthand observations. The Dean of the school, fearing lawsuits, has a strict policy that she will only punish students who confess to cheating. Thomas is aware of this. The Dean and Thomas review all the evidence and it is blatantly obvious to both of them that he cheated. The Dean looks Thomas square in the eyes and asks: ‘Did you cheat on the exam?’ With a serious tone, Thomas meets her gaze and says: ‘I did not cheat.’ Footnote 44
Caught Cheating is a textbook case of non-deceptive bald-faced lying. Notice that Thomas plainly asserts what he believes to be false without even trying to deceive the Dean about the assertion’s falsity. He does not conceal or disguise the falsity of his assertion whatsoever. To further press this feature of bald-faced lying, imagine that you are the Dean and Thomas’ arms are parading in front of you, clearly covered in handwritten cheat notes. The Dean (easily!) recognizes that there is meta-knowledge such that Thomas knows that she knows he cheated (mutatis mutandis, from Thomas’ perspective)—this is more than apparent, given the tremendous amount of evidence.
What does Stroud’s analysis prescribe when it comes to bald-faced lying? Notice that Thomas does not offer any form of assurance that what he says is true, nor does he invite the Dean to trust or rely upon his word. He also does not place any moral pressure on the Dean to believe him. Put otherwise, the Dean’s not believing him would not constitute a testimonial injustice. In fact, in some cases, the bald-faced liar may actively hope that her interlocutor does not believe what she asserts. Footnote 45 Testimonial injustice is not apt in cases of bald-faced lying because any creditability deficits are deserved and do not owe to any form of prejudice. Assessments of creditability in such cases are grounded in decisive counterevidence that clearly indicates that the speaker is not to be trusted. In fact, the speaker herself realizes this. The bald-faced liar is in no way purporting to be an epistemic authority on the matter to begin with. Footnote 46
Furthermore, the structural parallel that Stroud defends between lying and false promising is severed in cases of bald-faced lying. This is because the bald-faced liar does not aim to give her word; she is not vouching for the truth of p, nor is she promising that p is true in any implicit or explicit way at all. All of this is plain because it is common knowledge among all parties involved that p is unquestionably false.
It is important to note that bald-faced liars still intend to ‘go on the record’ with respect to what they assert. Thomas wants to be taken as offering a serious assertion, but this is not equivalent to giving one’s word that p in the morally loaded sense required by Stroud’s analysis. Stroud’s relational view claims that the wrongfulness of lying consists in an objectionable relationship of infidelity—the liar acts without fidelity by lying and, in so doing, betrays her interlocutor by breaking her word. However, one’s word cannot be broken if it is not first given. In bald-faced lies, the liar never does offer her word. Such cases demonstrate how offering assurance, or giving one’s word, can come apart from ‘going on the record’ with respect to p or asserting that p.
To summarize: given that there are lies that do not invite objectionable relationships of infidelity, Stroud’s relational analysis is ultimately inadequate. Her account is restricted in its explanatory depth because it cannot sufficiently account for the wrongfulness of non-deceptive bald-faced lies. To be clear, I believe that Stroud’s relational account offers a compelling explanation for why deceptive lies are wrong and, as such, marks a significant move forward in the dialectic. I do, however, believe that this progress is limited in its explanatory reach. Her view does not cover the moral phenomena of wrongful lying in its entirety.
In the next section, I discuss bald-faced lies in more detail and explain their relevance to moral theorizing. I offer a defence of the following three claims: (i) that bald-faced lies are in fact lies, (ii) that ethical theorists should care about them, and (iii) that, pace Sorensen, there are wrongful bald-faced lies. Footnote 47
6. Bald-Faced Lies
(i) Are Bald-Faced Lies even Lies?
Some may question whether bald-faced are even assertions and, hence, whether they are, strictly speaking, lies. Footnote 48 To deny that bald-faced lies are genuine lies has, I think, deeply unintuitive implications. (I am not alone in thinking this.) Footnote 49 It is entirely felicitous for the Dean in Caught Cheating to reply to Thomas with ‘Don’t lie to me!’ Recall that Thomas does not intend for his testimony to be sarcastic, ironic, humorous, hyperbolic, or metaphorical—nor does the audience understand his speech in any of these ways. To the contrary, Thomas presents his testimony in a serious and official manner. He intends to ‘go on the record’ with respect to not having cheated, because this is required in order to evade punishment. Sorensen notes that bald-faced lies are commonly told with a “straight face and sober tone” and, if provoked, a bald-faced liar may say things like: “I am not kidding.” Footnote 50 Additionally, there is empirical data indicating that bald-faced lies are taken to be lies by native English speakers. Footnote 51 This suggests that bald-faced lies are in fact assertoric speech acts and, hence, lies.
(ii) Why Care?
One might think that because bald-faced lies are so quirky and unusual they must be marginal or one-off cases of lying. Why should moral theorists care about them? Why can’t theorists simply ignore bald-faced lies given that they are so atypical? Why not employ a strategy similar to one used by some epistemologists to justify ignoring rather than answering brain in a vat or evil demon scenarios? They are irrelevant in normal circumstances.
Such strategies should be rejected; theorists should not treat bald-faced lying as marginal to the phenomena of lying more broadly. They should, instead, recognize that any adequate theory should be able to explain why they are instances of wrongful lies. Theorists must address bald-faced lies because they are not rare or anomalous cases; to the contrary, bald-faced lying is ubiquitous in modern societies. They are on the covers of tabloid magazines, in advertising, in social media, and they show up profusely on the Internet. The more one is sensitive to the phenomena of bald-faced lying, the more one will realize just how ubiquitous they are. While much more ink has been spilled in the literature on deceptive lies, this does not mean that they are the only lies worth caring about when it comes to moral theorizing.
To demonstrate the importance of the phenomena of bald-faced lying to the domain of moral inquiry, one needs only to look at recent political discourse in the United States. Various members of President Donald Trump’s administration, including Trump himself, have been accused of bald-faced lying by the mainstream media. Footnote 52 For example, recall Trump’s claim that he had the biggest Electoral College victory since Ronald Regan Footnote 53 or the White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s claim that Trump’s inauguration had the largest audience turn out in inauguration history. Footnote 54 Furthermore, the emergence of so-called ‘alternative-facts,’ ‘fake news,’ and ‘post-truth’ culture are, at least in part, negative downstream consequences of bald-faced lying.
I hope that this example is enough to convince even the most resistant reader that bald-faced lies are not merely marginal or one-off occurrences. Bald-faced lies are acts that demand consideration in the literature; they are at least as important as (and arguably more important than) deceptive lies. Even if there are on average fewer bald-faced lies told in every day discourse, I argue in the next section that there are compelling reasons to think that bald-faced lies are, other things being equal, more morally objectionable than deceptive lies. That is, even if bald-faced lies are not as prevalent as deceptive lies, they remain a pressing and serious moral concern because they are likely to do more moral damage to their recipients.
(iii) Are Bald-Faced Lies even Wrong?
Not so fast: why assume that bald-faced lies are even wrong in the first place, after all, nobody is being deceived? Sorensen argues that bald-faced lies are morally neutral annoyances akin to: “snoring, late buses, ugly décor, stinky garbage, and monotonous spam.” Footnote 55 Bald-faced lies, for him, are like having to wear that hideous sweatshirt your grandmother got you for Christmas, or that time you stubbed your toe: they are not a fun time, but there is nothing morally objectionable about them as such. I think many will have an opposite reaction to the Caught Cheating case and not think of the Dean as being merely irritated. Additionally, I think a quick reflection upon the recent lies told by members of the Trump administration will yield a similar negative reaction. It is also worth noting that various commentators in this literature hold that at least some bald-faced lies are wrong and many simply assume this without argument. Footnote 56
Consider another example: imagine Shelby is a key witness in a murder trial. The jury is presented with a wide array of evidence (e.g., DNA evidence, testimony from others, noted gang affiliations, a motive to kill, no alibi, and so on), all of which points directly to Jones being the one who killed Smith. The cherry on top of the Crown’s case is an irrefutable piece of video footage collected from a store surveillance camera. The footage crisply depicts Shelby witnessing Jones kill Smith. The jury knows that Shelby knows that Jones did it and Shelby knows that the jury knows she knows. Meta-knowledge is complete—it is no secret that Shelby saw the whole thing go down. Shelby is on the stand, under oath, however, because she has a strong allegiance to Jones, her former gang leader, she denies everything. With a stone cold stare towards the jury she says: ‘I have no idea who killed Smith.’ Footnote 57 I think few would doubt that Shelby did something wrong; she should have told jury members the truth regardless of whether they already knew it. It is fitting for the jury to resent Shelby for not truthfully testifying, just as it is fitting for the Dean to resent Thomas for not coming clean about cheating on the exam.
More abstractly, there is something deeply disrespectful and unapologetically shameless about the act of bald-faced lying. Bald-faced liars are typically so devoted to achieving some unwarranted end (e.g., evading punishment, covering up for one’s gang leader, and so on) that they deny their interlocutor the decency of admitting to something that is blatantly true. In the context of bald-faced lying, when it is common knowledge that what the speaker asserts is false, the speaker’s lie is a clear indication that she does not care at all about telling the truth—so much so that she is unconcerned about being found out. The liar knows full well that her interlocutor can recognize that what she says is false, but the liar still tells the lie. Worse, these lies reveal to their recipients the extent to which the liar cares more about keeping up a façade that has already been exposed, than she cares about being honest with them. Footnote 58 It is this feature of bald-faced lies, I believe, that makes them arguably worse than deceptive lies. Such liars do not even attempt to conceal that what they are saying is false: instead, falsity is worn proudly on their sleeves for all to see. Compare two potential ways a teenager could sneak into her parents’ house after curfew. She could tippy-toe silently to her room after making sure that the front door is closed as quietly as possible, or she could storm into the house and slam the door behind her. In the former case, the teenager tries to conceal that she broke curfew and is trying her hardest to prevent her parents from finding out—this is a sign that the teenager (at least minimally) cares about her parents’ reaction to her lateness. In the second case, the teenager couldn’t care less about her parents finding out that she broke curfew.
The lack of remorse that bald-faced liars tend to exhibit also highlights why these lies are more likely to erode trust at a faster rate when compared to deceptive lies. This thought is captured in a recent news article from The Atlantic:
If the president and his aides will tell easily disproven falsehoods about crowd sizes and speeches, what else will they be willing to dissemble about? Footnote 59
If bald-faced liars are unwilling to admit the truth in transparent contexts where everyone knows their assertions are false, then it will be increasingly difficult to trust them in more opaque contexts where deception is a feasible option. The trustworthiness of bald-faced liars is more likely to, other things being equal, deteriorate at a faster rate because of this.
To summarize: bald-faced lies are assertoric speech acts about which ethical theorists should be concerned—especially if they are in the business offering a robust analysis of the wrongfulness of lying. In fact, they may be even more pressing than deceptive lies.
7. The Need for Pluralism
There is an overwhelming propensity in the literature to assume that the wrongfulness of lying is morally unified. For instance, Jennifer Lackey has dubbed the separation of deception from lying as an “unhappy divorce” because it blocks an obvious and intuitive explanation for why lying is wrong. Footnote 60 This insistence of Lackey’s, however, presupposes that an account of the wrongfulness of lying must be unified. I hope to have challenged this assumption of unity by demonstrating that the wrongfulness of deceptive and non-deceptive lies must be distinct. The major problem with each analysis outlined above consists in its restrictive unitary structure. By contending that there is one single unified explanation for why all—both deceptive and non-deceptive—lies are wrongful, it is taken for granted that all lies are morally objectionable in the same way, and for the same unifying reason. This assumption distorts the phenomena of lying as we know it.
Unitary accounts fail because they impose unity where there is diversity. They attempt to provide a one-size-fits-all analysis when, in reality, the phenomena of lying demands a more tailored fit. It requires there to be varying explanations because not all lies are wrong in the same way. Lies come in two distinct kinds: deceptive and non-deceptive. These distinct types of lies give rise to different kinds of relationships with unique normative features. I believe Stroud offers a persuasive argument for the claim that a breach of fidelity is at the heart of why deceptive lies are wrong. Such lies invite trust and reliance and, so, invite objectionable relationships of infidelity. However, when lies do not have this aim, there is no such invitation—the relationship arising from non-deceptive lies must be different. Infidelity is no longer a feasible explanation for how the liar wrongs her interlocutor. The wrong that arises in bald-faced lying does not consist in a violation of fidelity, but something else. Theorists must look elsewhere when determining what makes non-deceptive lying wrongful. The problem with unitary analyses, however, is that the theorists are not free to look elsewhere and instead are obligated to helplessly search for unifying explanations that hold across all cases. This lumping together of both deceptive and non-deceptive lies prevents theorists from uncovering unique and important features of what is morally objectionable about deceptive and non-deceptive lies, respectively.
I believe that the only way out of this theoretical predicament consists in a dialectical shift towards pluralism. A pluralist analysis of the wrongfulness of lying allows that there are distinct explanations for why lying is wrong depending on whether the lie is deceptive or non-deceptive. The pluralist is in a better theoretical position when it comes to capturing the diverse ways in which lying is wrongful because she is not forced to explain the wrongfulness of both deceptive and non-deceptive lies uniformly. The structure of the pluralist analysis allows for these explanations to come apart. While unitary accounts are simpler, they fail to have the explanatory reach that pluralism possesses. What pluralism lacks in parsimony, it makes up for in explanatory power. When compared to its unitary counterparts, pluralism is the only analysis that is structurally fit to accommodate the diverse ways in which lying is morally objectionable.
Acknowledgements:
Research for this paper was conducted at Simon Fraser University. Versions of this paper were presented at conferences at the University of Western Michigan, Pittsburgh-Carnegie Mellon University, University of Texas at Austin, and the Canadian Philosophical Association’s 61st Annual Congress at Ryerson University. I am grateful to my audiences on all of these occasions for valuable feedback. Many thanks to Jason D’Cruz, Alexander Grossman, Kari Hanson-Park, and Ariel Zylberman for helpful questions, comments, and discussions. A special thank you to Thomas Brandt for countless invaluable conversations that have helped to significantly improve this paper.
