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A lie is a mismatch between what I believe and what I say. It has nothing to do with objective truth. We sometimes talk about lying versus telling the truth, b

by simonh 6y ago

A lie is a mismatch between what I believe and what I say. It has nothing to do with objective truth. We sometimes talk about lying versus telling the truth, but this is a shorthand. What we mean by telling the truth is saying what we believe to be true. No reasonable person would say that someone is lying if they say what they believe to be true, but it turns out they are mistaken.

13415 6y ago
Not really, if you think about it, lying is knowingly saying what you believe to be false and what you say is also false. If what you say is accidentally true, then you tried to lie but failed. If you misdirect someone by saying the truth - e.g. because you know the person would assume the opposite of what you say or because you omit a presupposed fact such as that the gas station someone asked for is not closed -, then that's better regarded as deceiving. At least that's the theory of a dear colleague of mine who published that in various prestigious philosophy journals. I think he got it right. What I disagree with him about is the presumption that there is a "right" theory of lying. In the end, you can define it in different ways, but I do think his definition is a very good one.
- wildermuthn 6y ago
  I love this. But this is also why I think using "false-confidence" as a metric avoids all these questions by being unambiguous about what is being measured.
- simonh 6y ago
  That’s not right at all. Lies are false statements about your own knowledge. Even if the fact your lying about happens to be true, you are still lying about your knowledge of it. It’s important to distinguish between the act of lying, the intended result of the lie and the relationship to the true facts. Those are all independent things. You can’t “fail to lie”, though you can fail to deceive with your lie. Suppose my daughter is accused of stealing the sweets. I might lie by saying I saw her in the garden at the time they were taken. Even if she was actually in the garden then, and didn’t take the sweets, I’m still lying about my knowledge of these things because I didn’t see her in the garden. Even if I lie about remembering something, such as that I saw her in the garden (maybe it was a long time ago), and it turns out I did see her in the garden I’m still lying because I didn’t recall the memory when I said I did. >“If what you say is accidentally true, then you tried to lie but failed.” No, because you still misrepresented your own knowledge. You did not deceive someone with your lie and maybe led them to the truth, but it was still a lie.
  - 13415 6y ago
    I was presenting Andreas Stokke's theory, insofar as I remember it from personal conversation. He is a professor at Uppsala University now and started out his approach with a publication in the Journal of Philosophy. I used to defend your view in private conversations (thanks to a misconception by Augustinus) but have been successfully converted by him and many others. However, you seem to be awfully certain of your position and present it with apodeictic certainty. If you're really interested in the topic, I recommend Meibauer (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Lying as a reading. You'll see that your view is far less accepted than you think it is, but feel free to correct that by publishing papers about it. I've never followed up on it, but as always in philosophy the controversy never ends. As I've said, I disagree with Andreas a bit about the nature of such theories. In my view, they are in the end arbitrary, based on conflicting "intuitions." Still, I think that upon sincere reflection everybody should be able to convince him-/herself that his definition is better than yours.
    - simonh 6y ago
      Interesting rabbit hole. I don't think that's quite Stokke's theory, in particular he doesn't seem to think that the fact you are lying about must be true. That's the falsity condition, which doesn't come from Stokke although some others argue for it. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lying-definition/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lying-definition/ In fact the first parts of both definitions proposed by Stokke are just more formal versions of the definition I gave. "You lie if and only if you say that p, you believe that p is false..." It's a false statement about your own knowledge. That's essential. As Stokke says “you lie when you assert something you believe to be false”. The greater rigor lies in violation of the violation of conversational norms and the purpose of the communication, which certainly seems correct to me. So while my definition and explanation were not complete, they seem to be consistent with Stokke. The addition of the falsity condition seems to be contested. An attempted lie which is actually (unintentionally) relating the truth is apparently called a palter. I don't find that convincing, it's still a false statement about your knowledge so would meet Stokke's criteria at least as given in the article I found. I'd say it's a class of lie. Maybe he changed his mind later.
wildermuthn 6y ago
Actually, this happens all the time. Especially in business and relationships. Most of the time we don't know what is objectively true. When there is a disagreement about what is objectively true, we often accuse or judge one another as being liars. What you are saying makes rational sense, but in practice human beings get mixed up about objective vs. subjective truth-telling. Using the term "false-confidence" cuts through the gordian knot by decoupling objective truth from subjective truth. It also recognizes that deception is not a boolean measurement (a lie vs. a truth), but is rather a percentage (somewhat of a lie, somewhat of a truth).
- simonh 6y ago
  I don't think calling it something else is going to remove people's personal stake in the behaviour. When I said reasonable person, I meant an objective observer. People with ulterior motives and something to gain will tend to prevaricate if it's in their interests to do so whatever terminology we use.
  - wildermuthn 6y ago
    Naming is both hard and important. Reading over the comments in this thread, one of the most up-voted of them reads, "Luckily, there is this one reliable method for detecting a lie, checking whether what the suspect says is true." I'm writing from the perspective of "how would one build an accurate lie-detector?" And my point is that you shouldn't. You should build something that measures false-confidence. It is infinitely harder to create a lie-detector than it is to create a false-confidence assessor because people always mix up subjective vs. objective truth. It is kind of like the late 90's difference between a "Web Portal" (yahoo) and a "Search Engine" (google). Ostensibly, they were aiming at the same thing: getting us to the content we were looking for. But the difference in name led to a difference in implementation and product. The analogy is even more striking because Yahoo's categorization of links made a stronger implicit claim to being the kind of content you wanted than Google's ranked list of results.
bootlooped 6y ago
Obama once said something like "if you like your health care plan, you can keep your plan". That did not turn out to be true. People said he lied. Was he lying? Did it matter whether he believed it at the time or not? Or maybe lying or not lying is the wrong lens to view that through, it seems to me to be more like a broken promise, since the person stating that had a high degree of control over the outcome.

by simonh 6y ago

13415 6y ago

Not really, if you think about it, lying is knowingly saying what you believe to be false and what you say is also false. If what you say is accidentally true, then you tried to lie but failed. If you misdirect someone by saying the truth - e.g. because you know the person would assume the opposite of what you say or because you omit a presupposed fact such as that the gas station someone asked for is not closed -, then that's better regarded as deceiving. At least that's the theory of a dear colleague of mine who published that in various prestigious philosophy journals. I think he got it right. What I disagree with him about is the presumption that there is a "right" theory of lying. In the end, you can define it in different ways, but I do think his definition is a very good one.

wildermuthn 6y ago
I love this. But this is also why I think using "false-confidence" as a metric avoids all these questions by being unambiguous about what is being measured.
simonh 6y ago
That’s not right at all. Lies are false statements about your own knowledge. Even if the fact your lying about happens to be true, you are still lying about your knowledge of it. It’s important to distinguish between the act of lying, the intended result of the lie and the relationship to the true facts. Those are all independent things. You can’t “fail to lie”, though you can fail to deceive with your lie. Suppose my daughter is accused of stealing the sweets. I might lie by saying I saw her in the garden at the time they were taken. Even if she was actually in the garden then, and didn’t take the sweets, I’m still lying about my knowledge of these things because I didn’t see her in the garden. Even if I lie about remembering something, such as that I saw her in the garden (maybe it was a long time ago), and it turns out I did see her in the garden I’m still lying because I didn’t recall the memory when I said I did. >“If what you say is accidentally true, then you tried to lie but failed.” No, because you still misrepresented your own knowledge. You did not deceive someone with your lie and maybe led them to the truth, but it was still a lie.
- 13415 6y ago
  I was presenting Andreas Stokke's theory, insofar as I remember it from personal conversation. He is a professor at Uppsala University now and started out his approach with a publication in the Journal of Philosophy. I used to defend your view in private conversations (thanks to a misconception by Augustinus) but have been successfully converted by him and many others. However, you seem to be awfully certain of your position and present it with apodeictic certainty. If you're really interested in the topic, I recommend Meibauer (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Lying as a reading. You'll see that your view is far less accepted than you think it is, but feel free to correct that by publishing papers about it. I've never followed up on it, but as always in philosophy the controversy never ends. As I've said, I disagree with Andreas a bit about the nature of such theories. In my view, they are in the end arbitrary, based on conflicting "intuitions." Still, I think that upon sincere reflection everybody should be able to convince him-/herself that his definition is better than yours.
  - simonh 6y ago
    Interesting rabbit hole. I don't think that's quite Stokke's theory, in particular he doesn't seem to think that the fact you are lying about must be true. That's the falsity condition, which doesn't come from Stokke although some others argue for it. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lying-definition/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lying-definition/ In fact the first parts of both definitions proposed by Stokke are just more formal versions of the definition I gave. "You lie if and only if you say that p, you believe that p is false..." It's a false statement about your own knowledge. That's essential. As Stokke says “you lie when you assert something you believe to be false”. The greater rigor lies in violation of the violation of conversational norms and the purpose of the communication, which certainly seems correct to me. So while my definition and explanation were not complete, they seem to be consistent with Stokke. The addition of the falsity condition seems to be contested. An attempted lie which is actually (unintentionally) relating the truth is apparently called a palter. I don't find that convincing, it's still a false statement about your knowledge so would meet Stokke's criteria at least as given in the article I found. I'd say it's a class of lie. Maybe he changed his mind later.

wildermuthn 6y ago

Actually, this happens all the time. Especially in business and relationships. Most of the time we don't know what is objectively true. When there is a disagreement about what is objectively true, we often accuse or judge one another as being liars. What you are saying makes rational sense, but in practice human beings get mixed up about objective vs. subjective truth-telling. Using the term "false-confidence" cuts through the gordian knot by decoupling objective truth from subjective truth. It also recognizes that deception is not a boolean measurement (a lie vs. a truth), but is rather a percentage (somewhat of a lie, somewhat of a truth).

simonh 6y ago
I don't think calling it something else is going to remove people's personal stake in the behaviour. When I said reasonable person, I meant an objective observer. People with ulterior motives and something to gain will tend to prevaricate if it's in their interests to do so whatever terminology we use.
- wildermuthn 6y ago
  Naming is both hard and important. Reading over the comments in this thread, one of the most up-voted of them reads, "Luckily, there is this one reliable method for detecting a lie, checking whether what the suspect says is true." I'm writing from the perspective of "how would one build an accurate lie-detector?" And my point is that you shouldn't. You should build something that measures false-confidence. It is infinitely harder to create a lie-detector than it is to create a false-confidence assessor because people always mix up subjective vs. objective truth. It is kind of like the late 90's difference between a "Web Portal" (yahoo) and a "Search Engine" (google). Ostensibly, they were aiming at the same thing: getting us to the content we were looking for. But the difference in name led to a difference in implementation and product. The analogy is even more striking because Yahoo's categorization of links made a stronger implicit claim to being the kind of content you wanted than Google's ranked list of results.

bootlooped 6y ago

Obama once said something like "if you like your health care plan, you can keep your plan". That did not turn out to be true. People said he lied. Was he lying? Did it matter whether he believed it at the time or not? Or maybe lying or not lying is the wrong lens to view that through, it seems to me to be more like a broken promise, since the person stating that had a high degree of control over the outcome.