Honesty: Question on lying to "snoopers"

[Marc K.]

What then of the virtue of honesty?

How are his comments in this podcast consistent with the Peikoff lecture mentioned above, in which Rand shows even the simplest white lie to be irrational? How is lying ever not "raising your victims to a position higher than reality" as Rand would put it?

Miss Rand called the virtue "honesty" so as to distinguish it from "truthfulness". "'Honesty' is the refusal to fake reality, i.e., to pretend that facts are other than they are." -- from OPAR pg. 267. If you are rationally protecting a value, the situation may call for you to lie. If a child molester is asking where you and you daughter live it would be appropriate to lie, i.e., don't pretend that the child molester is a good person.

If your privacy is a value to you and someone is trying to invade your privacy then you may act accordingly. If you are private about your sexual preference and someone is asking you if you are gay you may lie and say no since saying "no comment" can be interpreted as "affirmative".

By the same token cheating on a test is intended to secure a value which you have not earned. You are attempting to fake the reality of the situation. You didn't study and you don't know the material and yet you are pretending that you do.

[DavidOdden]

How is lying ever not "raising your victims to a position higher than reality" as Rand would put it?

I would put the so-called "victim" in 3rd place in my concerns over telling the truth, because morality is not about other people, it is about yourself. Various kinds of fraud, either legally-actionable or lying to a spouse so that you can continue an affair do harm other people (probably or definitely), but unquestionably you are making yourself the main victim by lying so that you can avoid facing reality. The scenario where lying is supposed to be good, with the harpy dying mother who wants you to announce your faith in Jebus so that she can die happy, ignores the profound evasion that you had to be engaging in to be in this situation in the first place.

When you lie, you ought to ask yourself the question "what value am I gaining by this? Is that value mine by right?"

[Space Patroller]

I would put the so-called "victim" in 3rd place in my concerns over telling the truth, because morality is not about other people, it is about yourself. Various kinds of fraud, either legally-actionable or lying to a spouse so that you can continue an affair do harm other people (probably or definitely), but unquestionably you are making yourself the main victim by lying so that you can avoid facing reality. The scenario where lying is supposed to be good, with the harpy dying mother who wants you to announce your faith in Jebus so that she can die happy, ignores the profound evasion that you had to be engaging in to be in this situation in the first place.

When you lie, you ought to ask yourself the question "what value am I gaining by this? Is that value mine by right?"

BEM FEIT!

Not only that but values are hierarchical, meaning that you may need to forego one value to acquire another. This can vary with situation. If I am starving, a T-bone steak is of more value than $500.00 at that time. Attaining any value "by right", by which I mean in accordance with the laws of the universe and their consequences for Man is itself a value beyond the specific value attained and a major one at that since it not only deals with specific values but with human-ness as a value.

"To write down, to talk down, to think down: Nothing can be left of a person thereafter. And nothing ever is" (Gee, who wrote that?)

In some ways I regard dishonesty as bad as murder since it is an attack against the uniquely human means of knowldege which is the defining element of being Man (volitional rational consciouness)