Lying

This is a short essay on why we should not lie. At first, this appears redundant, like beating a dead horse. We all know that lying is wrong. So why write an essay telling us what we already know and agree on. Maybe because we all lie every day? Why do we lie if we know it is wrong? What do we gain from this? Do we benefit more from lying than from telling the truth? The author starts by defining what he means by lying. Most people would define lying as telling something that is not true. However, by this definition, an actor playing a character on stage is lying because he is telling us that he is someone else, and he is pretending to feel emotions and think things he is not really feeling and thinking. If I say something that is false but I don’t know that it is false, am I lying? What if I am saying things that are technically speaking true, but that will create a false impression in the other person’s mind? What if someone asks me a question and I give an evasive answer? Is changing the subject lying? The author defines lying in the broader senses as engaging in willful deceit. For him lying is any situation when through my words and actions I am deliberately trying to create an impression in the other person’s mind that is different from what I myself understand to be the truth. Also, the other person must at the same time expect me to be honest. The author does talk about deceit in exceptional situations, such as spies operating undercover or lying to protect a life. He has mixed feelings about it. He says that there are better solutions (although he does not say what these solutions are), but he acknowledges that sometimes deceit is the best option. I myself believe that protecting human life trumps honesty. If I can protect a life by being honest, by all means I will do it. But if there is no other option, I will lie through my teeth to protect another. Still, these are exceptional situations. I have never been in one and I hope that neither will you. But this book is not about such situations, but about everyday deceit in which almost all of us engage daily. People deceive for three main reasons. They are afraid that the truth will affect them negatively, they hope that they will gain something by creating a false impression, and they are deceiving for the benefit of another. I will start with the last argument, that deceit is done in the best interest of another person. Quite often this is simply not true. Quite often we tell ourselves that we are deceiving someone for their own good in order to justify our actions. (I will get to self-deceit later.) But even if we really do it for their benefit, do we really have the right to make this kind of decision for them? What gives us the right to deny them the truth? Do we really think that they are too stupid and/or weak to handle the truth? And even if they are, how are they supposed to grow stronger and smarter if we cocoon them with lies? Imagine that someone is deceiving you for your own good. Maybe you don’t have to imagine because it did happen to you. It did happen to me once or twice. Would you not feel insulted that those other people thought that you can’t handle the truth? I was. But deceiving for the benefit of another is not as frequent as deceiving for our own benefit. We deceive to gain advantage and to hide our failures and wrongdoings. The author argues that (and I agree) deceit creates more problems than it solves. Once exposed, deceit makes people angry. Not only are they angry for the initial offense, but the deceit we have used subsequently to hide the offense makes things even worse. Even if we are never caught, we live in fear of being exposed. The protect the initial lie from being revealed, quite often we must create even more deceit. Soon we are creating a complicated web of lies. Some people are compulsive liars or psychopaths and they have no problem doing that. They even enjoy it. But most people are not like that. I myself have to admit that occasionally I have engaged in deceitful behavior. A couple of times I got caught and my lies have only made things worse. But even on the occasions when I got away with it and there was next to no chance of my lies being exposed, I still felt sullied. But whenever I chose to tell the truth, no matter the consequences, I felt relief. A commitment to always telling the truth is of tangible benefit. Not only we don’t get into trouble by lying, but we can no longer deceive ourselves. We humans have an amazing capacity to engage in self-deceit. We keep telling ourselves lies until we eventually come to believe in them. By being honest with others, we are forced to be honest with ourselves. This all sounds nice and fine in theory, but in practice we are often afraid to tell the truth because we are scared of the repercussions. There are situations when telling the truth can end badly for us. What should we do? Obviously, there are situations when telling the truth might result in some terrible tragedy. The author is ambiguous about such situations and so am I. But I am talking about everyday situations. To this I say that for one, a commitment to honesty will make us a better moral person and will decrease the probability that we will do something shameful. Since we know that we won’t have the option to lie about it, we are going to be more likely to do the right thing in the first place. As for the people to whom we tell the truth, they might resent us for the initial wrong that we did, but they will appreciate our honesty and even come to respect us. But what if they don’t? Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone is entitled to recognize his wrongdoings, come forward and seek atonement. As long as the confession is sincere and the sinner’s efforts to atone and improve are genuine, then they deserve forgiveness. If someone is unwilling to forgive no matter what, then maybe this is not a person that we would like to have in our life. But what if the truth results in a broken relationship, loss of job or even going to jail? This is of course a difficult situation and each one has to make his own choices. I will only advise that if we are involved in a situation (a relationship, employment, etc.) that is founded on deceit and the truth would destroy it, then maybe it would be better to end this situation one way or another. The author talks about some other things such as the fact that honest people attract and keep more friends whereas dishonest people turn them away. Even if our deceit is never exposed, lying builds barriers between people that eventually drive them away. There is also talk about the long history of deceit by governments and other institutions. There is this joke. “How can you tell a politician is lying? His lips are moving.” An exaggeration, but not by much. Whenever I learn that the government has been lying about something, I get angry, but I do not get surprised anymore. Years of hearing lies from our so called leaders have made me completely cynical. It is really amazing how much argument the author crams into such a short essay. But make no mistake, it is very thought provoking. And although I was overall committed to telling the truth before, reading this book only strengthened my resolve. The only problem I have with this book is that at times the author sounds too absolutist to me. He does not recognize that telling the truth is sometimes very hard. He says that we should tell the truth at all times and that is it. Or at least that is the impression that I got few times when reading. But it is a minor peeve. The book is a must-read and although it will not turn you into a saint, it will (it is my hope, at least) set you on the path of honesty. Believe me when I say this, being deceitful is indeed a viable solution to your problems, but in the long run it will almost always make things worse. Telling the truth, no matter how bad in the short run, is almost always a better long-term solution to our problems. I am speaking from (hard earned and painful) experience. I give this book five stars.

"Honesty is the best policy" an old saying goes, and many, if not most people would say that they make it the model of their own personal ethic, at least to an extent. But, many people feel that so called "white lies", lies that they think cause no harm or whose truth content would make no difference, are somewhat permissible and even necessary at times. But what if these moments of opportunity are the difference between a great world and a semi-decent world? In short, is it always wrong to lie? Philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris' long-form essay Lying approaches this question and answers with a resounding "yes". In fact, Harris' whole thesis could be summed up on pg. 24 of his book: "Do not lie." Harris at the beginning of the book states that he started thinking about lying seriously when he took a class at Stanford University called "The Ethical Analyst", and the entire course revolved around whether or not one should lie. The book is divided into three sections, one in which Harris makes arguments about why telling the truth in all situations is best, the second section is a dialogue between Harris and his professor who taught "The Ethical Analyst", Ronald A. Howard, and the final part is Harris answering questions from readers who read the e-book version of Lying, which was released prior to the hardback version being released. As mentioned previously, Harris book focuses on white lies, and on situations where honesty gives the person the information they need in order to live the best life possible. Perhaps one of his best examples is a situation we have all encountered or at least heard about before, namely whether someone looks fat or not in a certain outfit. Harris writes: "Most people think that the correct answer to this question is always "No"....But this is an edge case for a reason:It crystallizes what is tempting about white lies. Why not simply reassure someone with a tiny lie and send her out into the world more confident? Unless one commits to telling the truth in situations like this, however, one feels that edges creep inward, and exceptions to the principle of honesty begin to multiply. Very soon, you may find yourself behaving as most people do quite effortlessly:shading the truth, or even lying outright, without thinking about it. The price is too high." (Lying pg. 15-16) In short, Harris is saying that when we commit to be honest in every situation, we will be better people and less stressed with how much we have to remember, because we will have nothing to hide. Harris does also comment that tact plays a role in this, one can be truthful without being rude. I admit that I at times struggle with this, but it can be done. Harris also talks about "Faint Praise", which is giving someone a compliment when one has not been earned. For instance, Harris mentions a friend who is a successful writer, but once gave Harris a text that he thought was terrible. Rather than avoid the question, Harris told his friend that the piece was not his best work. The reaction was that Harris' friend trusted him more, and now knows if Harris praises his work, he is being sincere. Since relationships are built upon trust, it follows that we must be honest in order to have rewarding, fulfilling relationships. If there is one failing in Harris' book, it a failure that is common to his other writings, which is not taking the arguments of his opponents seriously. On pages 28-29 of his book, Harris mentions that philosopher Immanuel Kant thought that under no circumstance could lying be justified, and then dismisses him by saying that he has no reason to take Kant seriously. Here is where Harris shows that he is a scientist first and a moral philosopher second. Kant is one of the greatest philosophers in moral theory, one can hardly find a volume dealing with moral philosophy that does not mention Kant extensively. Furthermore, Kant justified his claim in his various Critiques, but Harris fails to mention this at all, he just dismisses Kant and moves on. This is a characteristic that Harris shows in his other work, such as in The Moral Landscape, when he dismisses David Hume's Is-Ought distinction (which fellow utilitarian Peter Singer calls him out on in a recent podcast), or in The End Of Faith, when he dismisses Noam Chomsky's arguments about how interventionism by the United States in the Middle East helped to bring out the September 11 attacks. It is not enough to simply dismiss a reputable philosopher with whom one disagrees; one must show charity to their argument by presenting it at its best and showing why your position is better than theirs. Harris has not yet learned this lesson. Overall, Lying is a book that I recommend to both the general reader and philosopher alike. It is interesting, short, and a joy to read overall. It can even be said that if we take Harris' arguments seriously, we can be better people, have better relationships, and ultimately a better planet.

By the time Sam Harris released his book "Lying" in HB format last week, it was clear that New Atheism's once-chesty agenda has slowed like a trilobite out of water. The aggressive scheme of becoming the next widespread intellectual movement has become distressingly frail. Did you see it? Where once there had been packed lecture halls filled with eager atheistic catechumens, today only sparse crowds and canceled events. Remember the unveiling of the Four Horsemen's prediction that there would be a hurried abandonment of religion, yet we see massive growth of religion in formerly irreligious regions. Where once--just before the 20th century--there had been almost no Christians in China, S. Korea, and great swaths of Africa, now these countries are teeming with hundreds of millions of Christians. Perhaps it may be time to place all neo-atheistic grandiosity on hold. Yes, there was a lack of philosophical acumen. Indeed, there was a question of how deep the pop-atheists understood the theology they condemned. Besides, today there are just three of the horsemen still in the saddle. Not much galloping going on since two of the riders are visibly aged and ready to go. However, one young rider with the ears to hold a twenty-gallon hat ruthlessly marches on. Anti-theist Sam Harris. He and his fervent admirers appear to be willing to do whatever it takes to expunge religion from the globe--by any means necessary. Sam Harris has a bit of youth, numerous best-sellers, and a sheath laden with the sword of atheistic pugnacity. Previously, he made a noble attempt at contending for godless moral values in "The Moral Landscape." By any means necessary. And now Harris delivers a new volume "Lying." A book that provides interesting arguments concerning the need for honesty. By any means necessary. Herein the youngest of the new atheist bishops reveals that lying is a bad practice and all people should strive to be more authentic and truthful. By any means necessary. Harris' thesis: Lying is wrong and it leads to "chaos" (p. 1). Agreed! Harris asserts, with a consequentialist[1] twang, that lying in all situations, except a few in the midst of war, is immoral.[2] Since Harris acknowledges the strong influence of Ron A. Howard, he rigidly holds to the notion that lying is foul; it's always wrong since it leads to bad consequences. He presses this to the point of arguing for ingenious truth-telling in place of protective lying when an enemy is seeking to kill a specific person. Under interrogation, the one hiding the innocent person should develop honest answers while still protecting the innocent person in hiding. But where does clever deception detach from lying? I have not read an adequate answer from Harris or Howard. With the penalty of death and torture hanging like Damocles' sword over a person, with intense grilling by savage men with weapons, a trembling person should have a creative script to deploy that will protect everyone. I don't buy it. Underneath the weight of pressure, guns, death threats, and vigorous questioning, it would seem to be much safer to lie and protect everyone. Nonetheless, I do commend the author for striving to uphold honesty--his tenacity to maintain morality is laudable. Harris offers consequentialist[3] justifications for honesty: * "One of the greatest problems for the liar is that he must keep track of his lies"(388). [if one doesn't refrain from lying one has the difficult consequence of having to try to keep track of the lies] * "Suspicion often grows on both sides of a lie"(404). [if one doesn't discontinue lying one has to face the unpleasant consequence of suspicion] * "Lying is the royal road to chaos" (p 1). [if one doesn't abstain from lying one has to deal with the disconcerting consequence of chaos] Harris' "Lying" is challenging and intentionally didactic. Unless one is a wild-eyed spiritualist or a consistent non-theist, both theist and atheist will find strong agreement with the author's teleologically centered proscriptions. This small book may not be an adequate resource to sustain objective moral values[4], but it is potent in its pointing toward a fissure in the structure of modern ethical practice. Harris' practical work on honesty in general, as well as his contention for the immorality of lying, has not misfired. "Lying" is a wonderful effort in demonstrating the reason why lying is a "moral defect" and how it leads to "chaos." This is a volume that will transform the way you think about honesty and lying. This little volume will convince you that lying is immoral in most situations because it leads to bad consequences. Nonetheless, all people have lied in the past and the author offers no means to remove a person's guilt and shame; one must turn to Christ to receive forgiveness and pardon for all one's immoral lying. Additionally, God is the essential foundation for objective moral values and His law is a necessary condition for both ethics and meaning in life. This is the case, yet for a non-theistic book on ethics with a philosophical bent, "Lying" is a real marvel of a book, an uncommon pleasure. Herein the most boyish of the neo-atheist prelates has winsomely shown that lying is immoral and everyone should endeavor to be more trustworthy and honest. By any means necessary. review by Mike Robinson author of numerous apologetics books. ----------------------------------------------------- 1. Harris wrote, "People lie so that others will form beliefs that are not true. The more consequential the beliefs--that is, the more a person's well-being depends upon a correct understanding of the world--the more consequential the lie"(Kindle loc. 42). 2. Immanuel Kant believed that lying was always immoral--lying was wrong even if a lie would stop a murder or other high crime. Contra Kant, Harris rightly observes: There are "those circumstances where we deem it obviously necessary to lie, we have generally determined that the person to be deceived is both dangerous and unreachable by any recourse to the truth"(loc. 337). 3. The consequences of a deed do not make it good or bad; moral or immoral. One needs a loftier standard to discern what a good outcome is and what is not. Consequences are important features apropos discerning right from wrong, but they, ontologically, cannot be the standard that one employs to judge the rightness of the result and aftermath. 4. Harris assumes the existence of objective moral values without offering a comprehensive argument for such. He does this all the while presupposing a theistic ontology that underwrites them. Harris, the combative naturalist intuitively or perhaps tacitly borrows objective moral values from a theistic worldview.

Jim Newman's Review "Lying" was helpful in exposing the false utility and convenience of lying by emphasizing the near ubiquitous ability to respond honestly in situations that seem to require lying. It emphasizes the excessive cost in trust, autonomy, and relation. It is a quick moral eulogy of honesty, trust, and integrity, discussing lies and the many situations in which we lie and why we shouldn't and don't need to desire to. It made me more confident to seek truth. It challenged me to go back and reread Kant, Spinoza, Augustine, Mill, Russell, Wittgenstein and introduced me to Sissela Bok. Should we never ever lie or is it just another language game we need to learn better? We hedge truth in situations of war, spying, personal harm, and other agreed upon languages games. Notably magic shows and poker playing. This last area gets gray quickly. When do both parties get that it is a language game and how does that game get perceived outside the circle? They did leave me hanging on unjust laws and whether it is OK to lie to save yourself from exposure when disobeying laws one strongly considers unjust. Whether this means exposure in drugs, abortions, market regulations, state-based prayer, being nude in public, having sex with animals, or euthanasia? The social shock of the misbehavior and the personal risk involved vary tremendously. A nod to Thoreau, Ed Abbey, Wendell Berry, ML King or Malcolm X would be nice as civil disobedience is a common and difficult moral dilemma. We see this slanderous boundary of truth and civil disobedience stretched thin right now. Tea Party types think bringing assault weapons to Town Hall meetings and then Washington is cool but camping out on wall street and protesting financial mismanagement treasonous and violent. Hank Williams Jr can say Obama is Hitler,and should not play golf with a republican (no fraternizing with the enemy) but the Dixie Chicks can't diss the Iraq war while in another country. Integrity or hypocrisy? Lying or sincerity? Deception or exposure? Perceived unfairness may also be a cheap excuse. I'll lie on taxes because they are unfair or shouldn't exist. No one cares if I illegally park here. They wouldn't hear me anyway. Sam and Ananka make room for self deception but plea for some sort of introspective self correction. Miss Manners and nearly all but the duty-based ethicists (Kant, Spinoza) forgive any manner of so called white lies; social harm, private space, safety and security, relation preservation, and omissions. Omissions. It just doesn't get more tricky. While discussed as permissible they still seem prohibited. It is a huge category of lying. Where on the scale are you? The didacticism of spill your guts with constant opinions or don't say nothing even as the train is rolling down the track towards your friend, foe, or unknown stranger from another land? Gotta admit the whole thing sounded like a Catholic or Jewish set of admonitions with a lot of exceptions and forgivance of transgression. Makes me consider the metaethics of transgressions and taboos as allowed exceptions to either extreme. Sam always has a gentle way of asking us to consider something when he really means do it! Even their practical admonition that it takes too much thinking and memory to maintain the false story over time. My mothers favorite "it takes too much work to lie." I found their position an interesting nexus of collusion of disparate rules where the harshness of duty meets utilitarianism or a guideline, with soft interpretations, to avoid lying with room for individual variance and situational exceptions. But always in the background that plea to not lie. In discussing biases many people seem to be lying when they are deathly sincere but delusional or they base their opinion on an original deceit now forgotten or integrated as a truth. How do we assess the intent here? The simultaneous rational awareness and continuance of lying is less cognitive if experienced as ideology that may have its source in a known lie but the lie is a long ago buried in unpolled memory. In other words the original issue might be one doesn't want to regulate the market but the lie is there isn't global warming. The original deceit is the Bible is the truth but the lie is evolution is impossible on a species level. Do you think the Heartland, Cato, Enterprise, and Discovery institutes think they are lying or believe in different premises, sometimes deeply buried, that generate the lies automatically which they then can follow sincerely? This plea to consider biases and accommodations seems suited to the secular and theological moderates that live their dishonest lives with sincerity. This book follows well "Letter to a Christian Nation." Their plea attacks most big lies such as vaccination, climate, and drugs. A great example of the plea for honest introspection was an article, "Rabbit Hole Economics, in NYT by Paul Krugman "The Great Recession should have been a huge wake-up call. Nothing like this was supposed to be possible in the modern world. Everyone, and I mean everyone, should be engaged in serious soul-searching, asking how much of what he or she thought was true actually isn't." A final note. Nietzsche's notion that love occurs beyond good and evil still rings true. Love is a-moral. it is the most dangerous emotion and its value lies in the suspension of rational and even emotive force. A blind extension of trust and loyalty. It is an overwhelming synthesis of nearly all deep thoughts induced by intimacy and dramatic inclusion. I am still not sure how to digest this dangerous dilemma in the specific. I will be as honest as possible. In the end it comes down to humaneness and integrity. Rather than do not lie, it is avoid lying. You can often be honest when you think you can't. Sissela Bok's book "Lying, Moral Choice in Public and Private Life" is a great place to go after here.

It's hard to judge the length of a kindle book, but this one is short enough to be considered a good chapter. It's Sam Harris, so it's well put, succinct, and a pleasure to ponder. He makes some excellent points about the effects, costs, and alternatives to lying - even small lies - and I believe I may become an even more honest person because of it. Lying, he says, is "almost by definition a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. ... To lie is to recoil from relationship." This is a brilliant observation, and it's almost seems like common sense. Harris goes on to make a case for vigilant truth-telling, quite well. It is a strong argument, but it's not airtight. State secrets present an exception, he points out; espionage sometimes requires a complex set of lies. But spies, Harris says, operate under the ethics of war and therefore the "ethics of emergency," and are therefore not only exempt from the golden rule of truth-telling, they are irrelevant exceptions. "We can draw no more daily instruction from the lives of spies than we can from the adventures of astronauts in space. Just as most of us need not worry about our bone density in the absence of gravity, we need not consider whether our every utterance could compromise national security." This begs a question. Without a limiting definition of "emergency," emergency ethics *are certainly relevant to daily life. There is a spectrum of emergencies. I've had emergencies. If on one end lying is ok, the other end not -- doesn't that suggest a spectrum of wrongness to lying, as well? As I read through it, interesting questions arose for me which unfortunately were not addressed. If lying is, as Harris explains, closely related to selective omission and calculated deception, how would this bear on the ethics of attorneys, of politicians, or to anyone engaged in debate? Can't truth emerge from biased perpsectives bearing down on each other from various angles? Harris, an expert in debate, would be the one to comment. In field of deception, especially if the audience is half-attentive (this may include politics, and advertising), does it become more acceptable to be deceiptful in return? To counter deception with deception? He addresses this to some extent, but not to my satisfaction. What of implicators -- those crafty, slippery statements which mean two things, each of which can be denied. They can be false and true at the same time. Wrong? Half-wrong? What about lying in nature? Camoflage or mimicry, for instance, is a lie. But is this not useful to survival? Survival itself, of course, has already answered this question. Now that doesn't make lying the best strategy for success and it certainly doesn't make it right. Harris points out the long-term costs and short-term risks of lying quite well. But one must admit -- there's something pretty appealing about camoflage. And how about self-deception, lying to one's self. We're fabulously equipped to do this; it may well explain a good part of how we function.. It's a major theme in evolutonary psychology, but doesn't seem to be addressed. Finally, many of Harris' arguments against lying rely on the difficulty of maintaining a lie and the potential cost of being found out. What then of a lie that has no chance of being detected and has no maintenance needs -- not so bad? If someone lies in an anonymous chat room, for example. I'm sure he would say it was wrong, but why? To conclude, his argument for the personal policy of "never lie" is short, sweet, and thought provoking. And it is Good. But it didn't have his typical depth, and wasn't quite convincing.

Now I wonder if people are lying to me about everything. I love how the author delves into why people lie and what they lie about. It provided great conversation at my book club meeting.

Mr. Harris has a unique talent in constructing arguments, and his previous works have brought much insight on major ethical dilemmas ("The Moral Landscape", "The End of Faith"). He often posts miniature essays on his blog, which make for great morning reading material. This "E-book" is really more like his blog essays, albeit slightly longer (took me about 30 minutes to read, with some distractions). Overall, the things I liked and disliked about "Lying" were related directly to the fact that it was an essay. It is short, easily read in a single sitting, and to-the-point. Mr. Harris does not embark upon lengthy examples to illustrate his points or analyses of extreme cases. This pamphlet is condensed and direct, and in some ways it leaves much to be desired. This could have easily been a 100-page coffee-table book (and in my opinion, should have been). That being said, I found this essay enjoyable for its length and price. For the cost of two sodas or a few hours of metered parking you can read a concise piece on why lying is, in our average life experience, ethically unsupported. If anything, perhaps these two dollars will go towards funding another publication from Mr. Harris. Overall: -Very short, read in a single sitting -Interesting topic and good delivery -Really could have been longer but...it's only $2!

I'm one of those people who believed that white lies were generally at least acceptable and frequently better than the truth. This book has shown me that even the whitest of lies made for even the best of reasons is almost always wrong and counter productive. I am going to try and live the rest of my life without lying again. Sam, thanks for all the amazing insights. Ron

The book enlightened me about an ethical principle that I imeadiately adopted as mine: to never tell a lie, enven “white” lies.

Even if we all agree that lying is bad, this book helps us lay a very foundation upon which only truth can remain. Harris presents convincing arguments and opinions that allow us to think twice before engaging in “innocent white lies”. Highly recommended, plus you can finish it in one sitting.

T rès interessante etude sur le sujet de mensonges mais j'aurais préferé un peut plus en profondeur avec plus d'exemplaires.

Pathetic… maybe if I was teenager it would make me think for a day or two.First book on Amazon which reviews didn’t match the real quality of the book content. Well actually it isn’t a book…..kind of an essay

I came across Sam Harris a year or so ago with The End Of Faith being my (fantastic) introduction. He's a very clever, well written guy. With TEOF he was preaching to the converted with me but his arguments were sophisticated beyond any modest writing abilities that I might have. I then started to follow his blog which in turn led me to Lying. It was the first ebook that I've bought, so that was quite exciting by itself. It's short enough to be read in one sitting but that doesn't mean it's skimpy. It's profound, though-provoking, fresh and at times very funny ("As it happens, I had"). It made me question many events in my life and to look to the future with renewed optimism. That can't be bad for £[]!