I was raised in a Catholic family and went to Catholic schools and was taught by nuns that lying was a sin. To me and my fellow Catholic kids lying was the most serious sin we could imagine. We were taught that we had to “examine our conscience” before confession and to tell the priest of our sins in the confessional.
How does a kid tell the difference between a “white lie” and a “sin lie” or any of the other forms of “lies” that we saw adults indulge in? Surly Mom and Dad did not lie! It was all a great puzzlement!
The nuns taught us all about moral concepts; of course, they did not use such big words. I have later learned that the nuns taught us in accordance with a classical, also called objectivist, theory of categorical structure.
“According to the classical or objectivist theory of categorical structure, there must be a set of necessary and sufficient conditions the possession of which alone makes a speech act a lie…As a Moral Law theorist and an absolutist, Alan Donagan defines the essential features of a lie as “any free linguistic utterance expressing something contrary to the speaker’s mind”.”
Linda Coleman and Paul Kay have discovered facts that indicate that “the category of lie exhibits prototype effects; that is, there are certain central instances of speech acts that speakers easily and noncontroversial recognize as lies.”
What are these prototype effects that Coleman and Kay speak of?
Lie is a concept that displays a core structure surrounded by a “fuzzy” penumbra (fringe) of less clear-cut cases about which the speaker may be justifiably unsure as to their moral objectionability: such a penumbra might contain such things as mistakes, jokes, exaggerations, white lies, social lies, and over simplifications.
Coleman and Kay found that these core cases that everyone could easily agree upon as being lies, i.e. those prototypical cases of clear-cut lies, fulfilled all three of the following conditions: 1) the speaker is confident that the statement is erroneous, 2) the speaker is intent upon deceiving the listener, and 3) the statement is in fact erroneous.
The less prototypical instances of lying fulfilled one or two conditions but not all three. Furthermore, tests were run and it was discovered that subjects typically rated the conditions in order of “importance”: 1) being most important and 3) being the least important. Subjects seemed to agree on the relative weights given to the individual elements.
We see here that lie does not follow the classical objectivist strict categorization. A fixed set of essential conditions do not exist and there is considerable internal structure to the concept that are of a great deal of importance in determining whether a statement qualifies as a lie or not.
Gender: Male Location: Southern Oregon,
Looking at you.
What if your lie saves people's lives. For example: the lie that the allies told to trick the Germans into believing that the invasion of Normandy in WWII would happen further north.
The purpose of this OP was to compare the nature of categorization in traditional objectivist thinking and the thinking that is recognized by new cognitive science theories.
Traditional objectivist, one might call it positivist, thinking considers that the world is made up of things that fit neatly and completely within containers and that these categories express that which is necessary and sufficient for any object that fits into that category.
SGCS (Second Generation Cognitive Science) has developed revolutionary new theories about the functioning of the mind. SGCS informs us that in many cases categories do not fit neatly into containers. Lying is one such category fits sloppily within containers. There exists fuzzy overlap and difficult things that must be considered.
All this is to say that if SGCS is correct then we are all very far off base when we think of categories as always fitting neatly within containers.
One has to read the OP and think about it a bit in order to get the idea. The idea is very important. Reading is fundamental.
Gender: Male Location: Southern Oregon,
Looking at you.
No, they actively lied. They took a dead bum off the streets of London, made up an identity, and dumped him off a sub with papers that lied. They then sent a women to lie about being the mans lover, and she morned at the grave. They then set up a fake army and put Patton in charge of it. Then the president of the US got on the radio and lied to the people of the US giving indications that an invasion was being planed for the north of Europe.
We can comprehend only what we are prepared to comprehend.
New social theories move very slowly into the culture because they are seldom taught in our schools and colleges unless they help us get a good job.
The only way that people can prepare them self to comprehend the world and the self is to learn whatever new theories might be available. All this requires curiosity, concentration, and caring.
I try to introduce new ideas in the hope that the reader will be influenced sufficiently to go to the books and learn what is necessary to become sufficiently sophisticated intellectually so as to comprehend our ever changing world.
Indeed, a lie is a sinful no matter what...however it is sometimes the lesser of two evils.
Why? Because being a Buddhist allows you to change your moral understanding of everything based on the drop of a hat, thus you have no real moral credibility...
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Feb 28th, 2009 11:10 AM
