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Lying to save your life?

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cliveandrews

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The job of morality is to help us stay out of situations like that, not to tell us what to do when our poor choices land us in them.

Asking this question is like asking a mechanical engineer to invent a device that would prevent a poorly maintained plane from ever crashing. Even if it was possible to make such a device, what's the use? It's not like an airline that doesn't even maintain its planes is going to bother installing such a device on them.

Similarly, if someone never bothered to take necessary precautions to avoid landing in a situation like you're describing (precautions like saving money for a rainy day, buying insurance, etc.), which are all the moral thing to do, what possible use would it be trying to tell him how to be moral now? You really think he's gonna start thinking in abstract principles when he's desperate, if he had no use for them while he was living comfortably?

The answer is no. Such a person will have no use for Ethics. He will just lie, no matter what Ethics has to say, because that's the most expedient, pragmatic (meaning least abstract) choice available to him.

Edited by Nicky
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The job of morality is to help us stay out of situations like that, not to tell us what to do when our poor choices land us in them.

There are always plenty of omens along the way to let people know what direction they are going. It matters little what anyone does between the time they have already stepped off the edge and the time they hit the ground. Moral law is exactly like gravity. It holds people safely on the surface of the earth, while drawing those who step off a cliff to their destruction.

Anyone can easily prove this empirical fact for themselves by their own direct personal experience. Simply do something which you know is morally wrong and take note of the consequences your action sets into motion.

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Suppose that one was in a situation where his survival depended on obtaining a value that he could only obtain by lying.

Maybe you could give us an example? I’m trying to formulate one along the lines of an organ transplant, but I don’t know enough about that process. I know sometimes people are denied, or are put at the back of the line for one reason or another.

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Suppose that one was in a situation where his survival depended on obtaining a value that he could only obtain by lying. I'm not talking about lying to avoid the initiation of physical force against oneself, but specifically to obtain a value from someone else who might not give it to you otherwise.

If lyinhg for some reason is the only way for you to live through a situation, then do it. I can only imagine this would be the case if you were living in a community that would ostracize you if some fact about you was discovered, and that the ostracizations would cause your death. So if you are a homosexual in a 16th cenutry New England community, sure.

However, this is only the case because the consequences for not liying are worse than the consequences for lying. There are still consequences, and it will be a burden on the person who has to do it . .

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Suppose that one was in a situation where his survival depended on obtaining a value that he could only obtain by lying. I'm not talking about lying to avoid the initiation of physical force against oneself, but specifically to obtain a value from someone else who might not give it to you otherwise.

If the purpose is self defense and their is no other more virtuous way to defend one's self, then lie like a rug.

ruveyn1

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Go ahead, but be prepared to accept the consequences. If the lie will save your life, then losing your job, losing your marriage or going to jail is not too high a price to pay. I take you to be talking about a case, for example, where you lie to an innocent third party in order to get money for a medicine you need to stay alive.

(You might make a case that Rand did this when she told the US consulate in Riga that she had a fiancé in the USSR and planned to return. I doubt this though; the US had initiated the use of force by instituting immigration restrictions, so she was acting purely in self-defense and under duress.)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Suppose that one was in a situation where his survival depended on obtaining a value that he could only obtain by lying. I'm not talking about lying to avoid the initiation of physical force against oneself, but specifically to obtain a value from someone else who might not give it to you otherwise.

Your question as presented, survival dependent on dishonesty where no threat of force is involved, describes the actions of a criminal. Without a more specific example to evaluate, I can only offer that lying is generally done as a shortcut to obtain what one either doesn't deserve or isn't willing to make an honest effort to obtain. In any case, once the lie has been exposed the liar is removed even further from whatever future values they seek to obtain by trading with honest folk.

"This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!" ~ Polonius

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Your question as presented, survival dependent on dishonesty where no threat of force is involved, describes the actions of a criminal. Without a more specific example to evaluate, I can only offer that lying is generally done as a shortcut to obtain what one either doesn't deserve or isn't willing to make an honest effort to obtain.

That's right, the question is ambiguously presented, but let's take it as I think it's intended.

If lying is faking reality, dying is taking reality ...away - permanently - at least for you.

Nothing to decide.

Edited by whYNOT
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(You might make a case that Rand did this when she told the US consulate in Riga that she had a fiancé in the USSR and planned to return. I doubt this though; the US had initiated the use of force by instituting immigration restrictions, so she was acting purely in self-defense and under duress.)

A government has both the power and the right to regulate who may enter the country.

You do it when you lock your door upon leaving your house.

ruveyn1

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That's right, the question is poorly presented, but let's take it as I think it's intended.

If lying is faking reality, dying is taking reality ...away - permanently - at least for you.

Nothing to decide.

I think the question was presented as something other than a lifeboat situation (perhaps the OP will clarify this), so the intention would be to determine if integrity has any bearing on survival in day to day situations. I believe that it does, to the degree that a lack of integrity generates negative consequences greater than whatever immediate value one gains by illegitimate means. Believing otherwise seems to me to validate faking reality in order to preserve ones life.

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A government has both the power and the right to regulate who may enter the country.

You do it when you lock your door upon leaving your house.

ruveyn1

Only if you think that the government or the people of a nation have a collective right to the entire country and all property within it. The government's only proper role is to respond to initiation of force. It doesn't have the right to, for example. block a company from hiring and bringing over Chinese engineers because the majority of people feel that they shouldn't be allowed. That would be a violation of the rights of the immigrants and the company. It would be the exact opposite of locking the door of my house. It is my and no one else's right to control what happens with it and who is allowed in. Blocking immigration of innocent people establishes the exact opposite principle in that it means that people don't own their own property or have a right to control it; the collective nation has a right to decide who is allowed upon it and you can't do anything without the consent of the true owners, represented by the government.
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Only if you think that the government or the people of a nation have a collective right to the entire country and all property within it.

The taxpayers collectively are the owners of the country. They, through their representatives, regulate what comes across our borders. A nation with unregulated undefended borders will not last very long as a nation.

ruveyn1

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  • 4 weeks later...

Ok let me explain why I asked this question. I lied to an employer about my age before he hired me. I told him that I am four years younger than I really am and that I recently finished college in order to conceal the length of time that I had been unemployed. I did this out of desperation when I was very much near the end of my rope (and about to put one around my neck). How immoral am I, and what should I do now? Do I have to tell him?

Edited by cliveandrews
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Ok let me explain why I asked this question. I lied to an employer about my age before he hired me. I told him that I am four years younger than I really am and that I recently finished college in order to conceal the length of time that I had been unemployed. I did this out of desperation when I was very much near the end of my rope (and about to put one around my neck). How immoral am I, and what should I do now? Do I have to tell him?

You could proactively tell him after you've proven yourself to be a productive employee. Then it wouldn't matter. But you had better tell him before he finds out.

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Only if you think that the government or the people of a nation have a collective right to the entire country and all property within it. The government's only proper role is to respond to initiation of force. It doesn't have the right to, for example. block a company from hiring and bringing over Chinese engineers because the majority of people feel that they shouldn't be allowed. That would be a violation of the rights of the immigrants and the company. It would be the exact opposite of locking the door of my house. It is my and no one else's right to control what happens with it and who is allowed in. Blocking immigration of innocent people establishes the exact opposite principle in that it means that people don't own their own property or have a right to control it; the collective nation has a right to decide who is allowed upon it and you can't do anything without the consent of the true owners, represented by the government.

It is the government's proper function to guard the borders to prevent criminal or military attack.

 

Since the government is THE agent which can wield force legally,  the government has the job of border defense and military action.

 

ruveyn1

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It is the government's proper function to guard the borders to prevent criminal or military attack.

 

Since the government is THE agent which can wield force legally,  the government has the job of border defense and military action.

 

ruveyn1

 

This is all true.  However, this does not give carte blache for the government to keep out anyone that it wants to, simply because voters like it.  A proper border policy would screen for criminals and enemy combatants, and keep those people out.  Keeping out anyone else, on economic grounds for example, is an abuse of government power, and is just as illegitimate as any other time the government reaches beyond its fundamental purpose of protecting our rights.

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