Is it acceptable to lie to not hurt someone's feelings?

[Live forever or die trying]

The general debate I'd like to start is: When would objectivists be justified to lie? However, this would be potentially too broad.

One class of "OK to lie" scenarios would be those in which the objectivist is confronted with force. For example, someone points a gun at my head and tells me: "Renounce your objectivist opinions, or I shoot you". I would lie in that situation.

Another class, of less justified situations, would involve avoiding hurting someone's feelings. To make the debate even more precise, consider this scenario:

A very old mother has a son far away from home. The son talks to his mother once a month. As the mother's demise approaches, she tells her son that she wishes he finds a suitable girl to marry before her passing away, and that would make her happy and she could die in peace. However, the objectivist son doesn't find a suitable mate (a common situation, rather . A few days after their last call, the son receives a call from a friend at her mother's bed, announcing that she is about to die, doctors are certain there is no chance for recovery, and she only has a few moments of lucidity left. She wishes to speak to the son, and asks him:

Have you found a good girl to marry, my son?

The son hasn't. What is he to do? Tell the truth, or lie and help his mother pass away happier?

Edited May 7, 2008 by Live forever or die trying

[Chops]

I am nearly incapable of lying, and even feel guilty misrepresenting reality in the name of a "white lie". I would simply say "I'm looking, I just haven't found the right girl yet, but eventually, I will"

[DavidV]

I would answer this question with two more:

Does living a lie become more acceptable as one gets arbitrarily closer to death? Why would you want to live a delusion at any point in your life?

Any happiness you impart to someone close to death will be brief. Your memory of that person's life on the other hand will last the rest of your life. Why would you want to end your memory of someone you care about with a lie?

[Kori]

The scenario I always here of is this: Your grandma is on her death bed. She has a golden retriever that she loves dearly, and she asks you, "When I die, promise me you will take care of my dog." You know you can't or don't want to take care of the dog. Do you say 'yes' so she'll rest easy?

These scenarios are all just nonsense to me, really. The first one up there, especially. What fuckin' decade do we live in, really? No reasonable person would ask their son or daughter to marry solely because they, the parent, wanted them to. On the other hand, I have met someone who wants their kid to have children before they die (the dad, that is). Gosh.

So anywho, if I were in the grandma situation, I would say yes because I love dogs and have no problem with that. However, if for some reason hell froze over and I didn't want the dog, I would say that I would take care of the dog to make my grandma rest easy. If I were thinking about my grandma's life, I'd feel okay with myself that she was put at ease during her last minutes, hours, days, whatever. I wouldn't focus on that "ZOMG, I lied to her!"

I'm not sure what the hell I'd do in the situation at the start of this thread. I don't think I'd lie to comfort the dying parent though, because I think what they asked of me was ridiculous (and I'd try to make them realize that).

Edited May 7, 2008 by Kori

[Maximus]

I'll pose a more common scenario. You are married, your wife asks: Do these jeans make me look fat?

If you know what's good for you, you'd damn well better answer, "no honey, you look good," even if her butt is as wide as a barn!

[EC]

I'll pose a more common scenario. You are married, your wife asks: Do these jeans make me look fat?

If you know what's good for you, you'd damn well better answer, "no honey, you look good," even if her butt is as wide as a barn!

If your wife is someone who is going to over-react to you being truthful to her, maybe you didn't do the best job in choosing a wife?

[KendallJ]

If you know what's good for you, you'd damn well better answer, "no honey, you look good," even if her butt is as wide as a barn!

Just a couple of points:

a. Most people who find themselves wanting to lie are doing themselves a disservice by not challenging themselves on how to break the truth objectively to someone. That is, I find much "white lying" to be a form of evasion on the lyers part as much as the lyee's part. Most things can be said in an appropriate way as to tell the truth and not destroy someone's (a fairly rational someone) self-esteem.

b. in the case of a partially rational person who actually wants to be lied to (I put it this way because I think this is the form of the basic issue), one must ask oneself what satisfying that need accomplishes. That is, what does helping someone else evade the truth accomplish. I think it is possible that there might be senarios with short term consequences where perpetuating that need is ok. However, these are much fewer than most would imagine and I'm even hard pressed to think of a senario right now.

In the long term however, the policy should always be one of truth. That is for such people you:

a. help them see the form of their evasion.

b. help them to truly want only the truth

c. OR eventually avoid those who refuse and continue to wish to want to be lied to.

I used to have a very simple mechanism to teach this to my (now ex) step-son. He used to come to me to ask permission for things and in the case I denied him, he'd throw a fit. After a while when he came to ask, I'd preface my answer by asking him if he was ready for any possible answer and if knew the answer could be no (regardless of what my actual answer was). If you can't handle one of the answers. Don't ask the question. It got him to think about what he was really asking for and what his expectations were.

Telling your wife she looks good simply to patronize her will backfire over time. Because she will start to realize that you are patronizing her, and in fact that will spill over into the actual compliments you give her as a form of mistrust.

[DavidV]

I'll pose a more common scenario. You are married, your wife asks: Do these jeans make me look fat?

I've always been honest (but diplomatic) with my girlfriend. As a consequence, I find her style continually more attractive. How many men spend their lives with women who's fashion taste they can't stand because they are afraid to be honest?

[EC]

Just a couple of points:

a. Most people who find themselves wanting to lie are doing themselves a disservice by not challenging themselves on how to break the truth objectively to someone. That is, I find much "white lying" to be a form of evasion on the lyers part as much as the lyee's part. Most things can be said in an appropriate way as to tell the truth and not destroy someone's (a fairly rational someone) self-esteem.

b. in the case of a partially rational person who actually wants to be lied to (I put it this way because I think this is the form of the basic issue), one must ask oneself what satisfying that need accomplishes. That is, what does helping someone else evade the truth accomplish. I think it is possible that there might be senarios with short term consequences where perpetuating that need is ok. However, these are much fewer than most would imagine and I'm even hard pressed to think of a senario right now.

In the long term however, the policy should always be one of truth. That is for such people you:

a. help them see the form of their evasion.

b. help them to truly want only the truth

c. OR eventually avoid those who refuse and continue to wish to want to be lied to.

I used to have a very simple mechanism to teach this to my (now ex) step-son. He used to come to me to ask permission for things and in the case I denied him, he'd throw a fit. After a while when he came to ask, I'd preface my answer by asking him if he was ready for any possible answer and if knew the answer could be no (regardless of what my actual answer was). If you can't handle one of the answers. Don't ask the question. It got him to think about what he was really asking for and what his expectations were.

Telling your wife she looks good simply to patronize her will backfire over time. Because she will start to realize that you are patronizing her, and in fact that will spill over into the actual compliments you give her as a form of mistrust.

Uh, what he said...lol

[JMeganSnow]

I think it is possible that there might be senarios with short term consequences where perpetuating that need is ok. However, these are much fewer than most would imagine and I'm even hard pressed to think of a senario right now.

I'd go so far as to say that there are no such scenarios. Why? Because pursuing this angle violates not only the principle of honesty, but the principle of integrity as well. You cannot properly evaluate each situation on a case-by-case basis. That defeats the purpose principles are meant to serve in the first place! It is harder to be honest in little things than in big ones, but the fact of this difficulty simply makes it even more important to do so.

I don't see why "having your mind at ease" when you die is supposed to be such a huge benefit anyway. In a few minutes they'll be dead and their mind will very *definitely* be "at ease" either way . . . in fact, it will have ceased to exist altogether! Lying to someone who is dying just means that you're lying to yourself, which no thinking person should tolerate.

[Qwertz]

If Dying Mother so dearly wants to control Son from beyond the grave she would have been well advised to consult a competent estate attorney before her death, so as to provide a decent testamentary incentive for Son to comply with Dying Mother's wishes. Perhaps in the form of a trust. Any disappointment on Dying Mother's part in her own failure to deal with Son rationally when she had the chance is her own problem, not Son's.

(Sorry that has nothing to do with lying, but the lying issue has been fairly well covered.)

~Q

[Live forever or die trying]

How about this as an overarching question:

Do we exist to serve principles, or do principles exist to serve us?

Nobody challenged the opinion in my initial post, that, were a gun been pointed to my head, I should lie about renouncing my objectivism in order to survive. Now, if the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest, why wouldn't the son lie?

We have two alternatives when the (not very rational, but beloved) Mom asks: "Son, will you promise to take care of Spot after I die?"

1. Objectivist Son: I'd love to Mom, but I hate dogs.

[Mom curls up in pain and dies]

2. Objectivist Son: Sure Mom, don't you worry about that.

[Mom lives some more happy minutes and dies peacefully]

[son sends dog to the shelter]

The son knows the exact purpose of the lie, and its outcome (some minutes of happiness for Mom). Son has no reason to live for even one minute with the guilt of lying to a person he loved, on their deathbed, who much likely wasn't in her right mind in those final moments anyway. The cost of those minutes of terminal happiness is a lie. Does this lie compromise the value of honesty and integrity? Values are values "to whom, and for what". Here, if the son lies, he chose his happiness (seeing mom pass away in peace) vs. the torment of seeing her agonize to death (note: there should be no torment arising from the "guilt" of lying, as explained in the beginning of the paragraph).

This is my thinking on the situation, but I'm looking for arguments on why exactly the son should tell the truth in this scenario.

Edited May 7, 2008 by Live forever or die trying

[KendallJ]

We have two alternatives when the (not very rational, but beloved) Mom asks: "Son, will you promise to take care of Spot after I die?"

So the fundamental question for you before anyone even attempts to answer this is what is it about this hypothetical that is relevant to life? What does it show? How is it real? It strikes me as arbitrarily thrown together. Why is this senario a particularly good one to test the ethical standard?

[agrippa1]

So the fundamental question for you before anyone even attempts to answer this is what is it about this hypothetical that is relevant to life? What does it show? How is it real? It strikes me as arbitrarily thrown together. Why is this senario a particularly good one to test the ethical standard?

It's not, precisely because it illustrates a pattern of dishonesty between the mother and son. Obviously words mean more than actions to this woman, otherwise she would have made arrangements for her beloved dog, or at least asked her son before she was at grave's edge. What she is really asking is "will you continue to evade reality with me in my final hours on Earth so I don't have to face the lie my life has been and feel bad about it?"

On the other hand, it's not clear from the context exactly what she means by "take care of."

[Live forever or die trying]

So the fundamental question for you before anyone even attempts to answer this is what is it about this hypothetical that is relevant to life? What does it show? How is it real? It strikes me as arbitrarily thrown together. Why is this senario a particularly good one to test the ethical standard?

We don't live in a rational world. This scenario is very real and also likely, in my particular situation: I may receive the "Have you found a suitable girl yet" question from my grandmother, quite soon. I don't admire my grandmother for her rationality, but for her love in taking care of me as a child. Assuming I haven't found said girl, should I lie or not?

[gears/motion]

I'll pose a more common scenario. You are married, your wife asks: Do these jeans make me look fat?

If you know what's good for you, you'd damn well better answer, "no honey, you look good," even if her butt is as wide as a barn!

I'd be more inclined to say "Yeah, but that's the way I like it! Uh-ah uh-ah!"

Then it gets to the stage where she stops asking because she knows what you'll say.

With the mother on the death bed case, I'd probably go we the "No but I am looking" line.

But what if you were gay and had yet to bring this up with her? Personally if I was gay I would have brought it up before she got to this state.

My great grandmother lived to 99 and in the last 4 years her mind deteriorated to the point were she couldn't really comprehend anything, it was rather sad. In this scenario the family lied in order to keep in the best mental state possible.

[DavidOdden]

The basic principle is that you gain value from another person by honest trade. Obviously if someone is threatening your life, they are not attempting to gain value for them by trade so we needn't consider the case of force any further. So otherwise, the question is, when should you obtain a value for yourself, from another person, by fraud? Especially, is it ever right to defraud a person for their own good, such as to protect them from their unreasonable behavior? Usually people understand clearly that this would be bad, indeed felonious, if the value in question were monetary. The murkiness seems to primarily arise with spiritual values -- the good opinions of others. These others are typically psychotic female relatives on their deathbed.

The question that I have is, how did you (or one) let things get so screwed up for decades in the first place? It seems to me that the psychotic dying woman should already know the answer, that you should have been upfront about your hatred of the dog in the first place. If you have a decent relationship with your dying mother, you ought to be able to say "No, mom, you know I hate that dog, and I'm gonna give it away", and if you are so morally unprincipled that you can't actually talk to your own mother honestly, then you ought to actually take care of the dog as your penance. It would be a substantial gain in spiritual value for you, to be honest and gain whatever emotional relief you get from giving your mother a nice send-off, while also learning that actions have consequences (a lesson that slipped by earlier parts of your life).

In other words, I am really skeptical that any person is so psychotic that you telling them the truth would kill them. I don't think the truth is actually a harmful as many people make it out to be.

[RationalBiker]

We don't live in a rational world.

That's really no excuse not to be rational ourselves.

Assuming I haven't found said girl, should I lie or not?

Tell her the truth. If you love her, honor her with honesty.

[KendallJ]

I'd go so far as to say that there are no such scenarios.

I could agree with this. I just hadn't had time to evaluate some specifics.

We don't live in a rational world. This scenario is very real and also likely, in my particular situation: I may receive the "Have you found a suitable girl yet" question from my grandmother, quite soon. I don't admire my grandmother for her rationality, but for her love in taking care of me as a child. Assuming I haven't found said girl, should I lie or not?

Well, here we have the issue. The senario you give here is not the senario you posed. AND the senario you posed as a hypothetical not only is a rare one, but specifically destroys some of the context that makes the evaluation relevant. In the the name of supposedly coming up with a tough example, you come up with one that is worthless.

The senario above is quite common and quite easy. Your grandmother didn't ask for your action, she asked for data. duh. The answer is yes or no, and as a fact it hurts no one.

[EC]

We don't live in a rational world. This scenario is very real and also likely, in my particular situation: I may receive the "Have you found a suitable girl yet" question from my grandmother, quite soon. I don't admire my grandmother for her rationality, but for her love in taking care of me as a child. Assuming I haven't found said girl, should I lie or not?

What do you gain by lying? More importantly, what do you lose by lying? Is the loss worth more than the gain? If so then you just sacrificed your own values for the sake of your grandmother. Is this a rational course of action for you regardless of Grandma's deathbed "feelings"?

[Live forever or die trying]

Any happiness you impart to someone close to death will be brief. Your memory of that person's life on the other hand will last the rest of your life. Why would you want to end your memory of someone you care about with a lie?

Why would you want to end your memory of someone you care about with their tearful face contorted in a painful grimace? Remember, this is not a rational person, and truth can hurt her to any degree.

b. in the case of a partially rational person who actually wants to be lied to (I put it this way because I think this is the form of the basic issue), one must ask oneself what satisfying that need accomplishes. That is, what does helping someone else evade the truth accomplish. I think it is possible that there might be senarios with short term consequences where perpetuating that need is ok.

In the long term however, the policy should always be one of truth.

In this particular scenario, there are no long-term consequences for the mother, because she dies. The only long-term consequence would be for the son, who might feel guilty for saying something he knows as untrue, to help her die happy. But would that guilt be justified?

I don't see why "having your mind at ease" when you die is supposed to be such a huge benefit anyway. In a few minutes they'll be dead and their mind will very *definitely* be "at ease" either way . . . in fact, it will have ceased to exist altogether!

Agreed, dying happy is a small, short-term benefit, compared with dying upset.

Lying to someone who is dying just means that you're lying to yourself, which no thinking person should tolerate.

Doesn't lying to someone who puts a gun to your head mean that you're lying to yourself?

If you have a decent relationship with your dying mother, you ought to be able to say "No, mom, you know I hate that dog, and I'm gonna give it away", and if you are so morally unprincipled that you can't actually talk to your own mother honestly, then you ought to actually take care of the dog as your penance. It would be a substantial gain in spiritual value for you, to be honest and gain whatever emotional relief you get from giving your mother a nice send-off, while also learning that actions have consequences (a lesson that slipped by earlier parts of your life).

In the dog case, this is a good argument: the son should say he'll take care of the dog, and do so. In the "get married" case, the son can say he found someone to marry (when he hasn't), and... ?

Tell her the truth. If you love her, honor her with honesty.

She doesn't want honesty at that point. I doubt she'd feel honored. What she wants is reassurance and comfort. Has anyone here been near the bed of someone terminally ill in their last moments?

Well, here we have the issue. The senario you give here is not the senario you posed. AND the senario you posed as a hypothetical not only is a rare one, but specifically destroys some of the context that makes the evaluation relevant. In the the name of supposedly coming up with a tough example, you come up with one that is worthless.

A better example would be welcome. The general question is "Aside from being confronted with force, when would it be justifiable to lie?".

The senario above is quite common and quite easy. Your grandmother didn't ask for your action, she asked for data. duh. The answer is yes or no, and as a fact it hurts no one.

What do you gain by lying? More importantly, what do you lose by lying? Is the loss worth more than the gain? If so then you just sacrificed your own values for the sake of your grandmother.

Gain: emotional relief from watching Mother pass away peacefully

Lose: integrity? Really? Does this mean that the son is going to lie in any other situation because this exceptional situation has set a precedent? No. Does he need to live the rest of his life traumatized by this white lie? No.

Is this a rational course of action for you regardless of Grandma's deathbed "feelings"?

The "regardless" part here invalidates the question. If she had no feelings, duh, the son would tell the truth. Nothing worth talking about.

Another perspective:

Can this kind of emotional blackmail from Mother be equated with a form of using force? If yes, then the son would be justified in retaliating with the same kind and amount of (emotional) force, such as lying.

[JMeganSnow]

Gain: emotional relief from watching Mother pass away peacefully

Lose: integrity? Really? Does this mean that the son is going to lie in any other situation because this exceptional situation has set a precedent? No. Does he need to live the rest of his life traumatized by this white lie? No.

Integrity is an all or nothing deal. Either your integrity is unbreached, or it isn't. The fact that he may never choose to lie again has no bearing on this: he did not act with integrity towards his mother. If he values his integrity, as any rational person WILL, then he is going to suffer a loss of self-esteem caused by betraying his values. It doesn't matter whether he*needs* it or not, it is simply the end result of his actions.

Can this kind of emotional blackmail from Mother be equated with a form of using force? If yes, then the son would be justified in retaliating with the same kind and amount of (emotional) force, such as lying.

No. There is no such thing as "emotional" force. There is only physical force.

[KendallJ]

A better example would be welcome. The general question is "Aside from being confronted with force, when would it be justifiable to lie?".

I answered that question already.

[fletch]

I don't see why "having your mind at ease" when you die is supposed to be such a huge benefit anyway.

Maybe because we are talking about a persons mother. I actually faced the "Will you take care of my dog" scenario but not with my mom, but with my grandmother. When she went into the hospital for what would be her final time, she had but one thought weighing on her mind: Who would take care of her dog. None of us had either the desire or the ability to take care of the dog after her death, so what did we do? We lied. Of course. The truth was, that the dog was put down shortly after my grandma entered the hospital. Had she been told this fact, she would have spent her final hours in tears and would have rightly viewed each of us as contemptable monsters. Not only that, the person who broke the news to her would still be nursing their wounds, and grandma died 20 years ago.

Honesty and integrity are values, but not the highest values. I would gladly toss either one over the side if it meant giving my mom even a moment of peace, especially if that moment were to be her last. I owe her a debt I can never repay. And it is a debt she has never called due. If there is a decision between her mental well being in the final hours of life and my own view of integrity, then to hell with integrity. I see no virtue in patting myself on the back for my integrity knowing that it came at such a cost. Nothing could be more immoral than that.

[JMeganSnow]

So if your mother asked you to murder, rape, and torture, you'd do that? If not, then all this talk about a "debt you can never repay" is just empty emotionalism. What respect and love does it show to act like your mother is an infant who can't handle the truth?