I have a reason for asking this that will be revealed more in my next article which I will be writing in a couple of days. What do you think constitutes a lie and are there degrees as to how wrong it is? Most people think a lie is something told that is knowingly false, but can it also include other things? Are you lying when you omit the truth? Are you lying when you hide the truth from people? Are there other forms of lying?
Does anyone know anything about pathological liers? What causes it? Can they ever change? I am talking about someone that lies about everything, little things and big things.
I would really appreciate anyones thoughts one this subject. Thanks.
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Comments: 177
Should you tell Joe that his wife's last words were "I never loved him", knowing it will hurt him the rest of his life? No. So when he asks you, did she have any last words? you say no, and yes, it's a lie, but it's a lie for a good reason. It's a lie I could live with.
But damn, that's an ugly dress.
Henry thought to himself, I'm going to get lucky.
Classic example of SELF-DECEPTION, a lie by any definition
It's not good to lie about who you are, or what you do. A person can always tell who the true person is inside.
Omission is NOT a lie, that's why in the cases of the law an attorney is assigned to people so they do not say things that would tend to incriminate them, they have the right to be understood, including the circumstances.
5th Amendment.
That is why, you have the right to remain silent, OMMISSION, is certainly not necessarily a lie.
As for pathological liars, I've known a few in my life. They can't tell the truth unless they think they are lying. It's difficult to deal with them.
My brother was a pathological. From what I remember - as the big sister - it started way back in kindergarten. Unfortunately, my mother never doubted him, so he kept it up. And he lied about everything - even the unimportant things - until the day he died last year.
I believe there are times when 'little' lies are ok. To spare someone's feelings or to keep ourselves from getting into big time trouble but honesty will always be the best policy.
Good article.
I believe this is what is going on with the case of the missing girl down in Florida.
At least I feel it's been implied that the mother of this child is attempting to keep her daughter safe from harm and, that's the reason the child hasn't been brought out of hiding.
What really riles me about the coverage of this tragic event is how celebrity Nancy Grace has attacked the mother incessantly.
Missing Caylee: Donald Schweitzer on CNN's Nancy Grace
Grandparents Say Caylee Is Alive
Anthony's Attorney Says People Don't Have Facts
Let's start with the basics: Is it ever right to lie? Common sense surely says "Yes, sometimes." But legions of philosophers and other moralists have answered "No," and then tried to make sense of this indefensible position. Insisting that lying is always wrong-as Tomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kat did, for example-appeals to our desire for absolutes. But then, of course, what about the example from freshman philosophy: The Nazis come to your door asking if your are hiding a Jewish family. Your are. Should you say "No"? Or, on a mundane level, your spouse olover walks in with an utterly silly new hairdo and asks, "Do you like it?" Does morality dictate that you ruin the evening? Or can you, in both cases finesse the answer, not lying but not telling the truth, either, perhaps by avoiding an answer to the question?
If a person would lie about one thing, does it follow that he or she would lie about another? That depends. The demand for honesty is contextual. It depends on what the truth concerns. The Bible tells us not to bear false witness against our neighbor. Perjury, we can agree, is wrong: The consequences can be awful. In a trial, a jury's assumption that a person who lies about one thing will lie about another is perfectly justified.
Nietzsche once asked, "Why must we have truth at any cost, anyway?" It was an odd question, coming from the philosopher who prided himself, above all, on his brutal honesty, and it is an obscene question, in any case, for a profession that sees itself as seeking solely the truth. Even philosophers who challenge the very idea of truth-not just Nietzsche and the Buddhist Nagarajuna, but also Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty-are unforgiving when it comes to deception, misrepresentation, and "creative misreadings," at least of their own work. Philosophers in general insist on the truth even if they do not believe in "the Truth." They despise deception and ridicule self-deception.
The Australian philosopher Tony Coady probably speaks for most philosophers when he writes, "Dishonesty has always been perceived in our culture, and in all cultures but the most bizarre, as a central human vice." But, he adds, "we should note that this perception is consistent with a certain hesitancy about what constitutes a lie and with the more than sneaking suspicion that there might be a number of contexts in which lying is actually justified." Plato defended "the noble lie," and the English ethicist Henry Sidgwick suggested that a "high-minded lie" in the direction of humility might do us all a great deal of good.
Not all untruths are malicious. Telling the truth can complicate or destroy social relationships. It can undermine precious collective myths. Honesty can be cruel. Sometimes, deception is not a vice but a social virtue, and systematic deception is an essential part of the order of the (social) world. In many countries-Japan and Western Samoa, for example-social harmony is valued far more than truthfulness as such. To tell another person what he or she wants to hear, rather than what one might actually feel or believe, is not only permitted but expected.
Could we not begin to see our own enlightened emphasis on "seeking the truth at all costs" (as Ernst Jones wrote admiringly of Sigmund Freud) as one more ethnocentric peculiarity, another curious product of our strong sense of individualism, and a dangerously unsociable conception?
Behind the blanket prohibition on lying, we can discern the outlines of a familiar but glorious philosophical metaphor: The truth is bright, simple, the Holy Grail of Rationality, while dishonesty is dark and devious, the path to irrationality and confusion. But philosophy, one begins to suspect, has overrated those metaphors of clarity and transparency. The obvious truth is that our simplest social relationships could not exist without the opaque medium of the lie. The best answer to the question "What are you thinking?" is often "oh, nothing." Perhaps deception, not truth, is the cement of civilization- a cement that does not so much hold us together as safely searate us and our thoughts. Some things are better left in the dark.
In contrast to Kant, for whom the rule against lying was a moral law, a "categorical imperative" never to be overridden, utilitarian philosophers insist that lying is wrong only because a lie does, in fact, cause more harm than good. There is no absolute prohibition here, rather perhaps a "rule of thumb," and there may well be many cases, such as the "white lies" described above, in which lying causes no harm and may even be commendable. The problem, as Nietzsche so wisely complains (in characteristic opposition to Kant) is "not that you lied to me, but that I no longer believe you." It is not the breach of the principle against lying that is so troublesome, nor is it the consequences of the lie or the character of the liar: It is that lying compromises and corrupts our relationships.
In other words, the wrongness of lying does not have to do primarily with breaches of principle or miscalculations of harm and good, even if these weigh heavily in particular cases-in a court of law or a Congressional hearing, for example. Lying is wrong because it constitutes a breach of trust, which is not a principle but a very particular and personal relationship between people. And in sexual relations, while personal trust is of the utmost importance, it has nothing to do with, and no necessary correlation with, public trust.
What is wrong with lying, in other words, is not exactly what philosophers have often supposed. Lying undermines relationships by undermining trust. But trust may just as often be supported by mutual myths, by religious faith, by a clear understanding of what is private and personal and what is "the public's right to know." Trust is usually violated by lies, but trust can be more deeply damaged by a violation of personal boundaries, which in turn may invite lies and deception to protect what has been violated.
What further complicates questions about lying and deception is the familiar phenomenon of self-deception. It is always easiest to believe your own lie, to become so submerged in its network of details and implications that the continuation of the lie-as Aristotle argues-becomes second nature.
Discussions of lying too often focus on the straight-forwardly cynical, self-interested lie and ignore the more common species of lying that includes self-deception as well. But transparency to ourselves can be just as intolerable as transparency to others, and for just the same reason. The recognition of one's own thoughts can be devastating to one's self-image and sense of well-being. And so we disguise, hide, distract ourselves from those facets of the self that are less than flattering. As Nietzsche puts it, "'I have done that," says my memory. 'I cannot have done that,' says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually, memory yields."
I think pathological liars can't help themselves. My ex used to lie over EVERYTHING... even down to what he ate for lunch. I would constantly confront him about his lying. He would then blame it on me. He said he would lie to protect my feelings. I told him it was a double whammy. I would be upset that he lied to me and then at what he ever he lied about. I told him over and over that the truth never hurts as much as being lied to. He couldn't/wouldn't stop. It's one of the main reason he is now an ex! I think lying is bad all around. Of course, I don't want to hurt people's feelings either. It's a tough call sometimes. But, generally, I think people prefer to hear the truth.
Sorry your brother passed away. Do you have any idea how the lying started and what was behind it?
Something different.
Because I try to avoid it, (will get you in trouble every time,) I haven't thought much about it.
I dated someone that was as close to a pathological liar as I have ever seen. For some darn reason, it took me forever to realize that. DOH!
I would like to say that they can change, but I have no idea. He didn't see a problem and it sort of reminds me of Alcoholics Anonymous, they have to admit that they have a problem. He wouldn't, so I left.
things? Are you lying when you omit the truth? Are you lying when you hide the truth from people? Are there other forms of lying?"
boy howdy yes...
Last year someone made a number of mistakes... made commitments offhand and reneged on every one, one after the other.. left with a thrown gauntlet... "I don't want a relationship with ANYONE"
And of course VISIBLY (since she was and is a Gather.com memeber), started up withing a WEEK with someone 'acceptable' (and not burdened with a sadness of nursing a dying parent...).
I sensed all this and TRIED to MODERATE the effects by simply talking to her... got lied to EVERYTIME.. now theses (at that point) wew NOT screaming arguments.. they were mid-day calls, and not ALL placed by me..
the party line prevailed "I have male friends too you know!"
they got married last week, after living together for almost a year, lyiing till she had hoim dead in her sights and THEN BRAGGING about it, while I was eating Prozac caring for Mom.
Lies, different forms???
yeah right you betcha.
sorry for the typing, cut my finger last night.
Lloyd
“Does this dress make me look fat?” I’m not answering that.
Conversely, making a true statement which obfuscates the truth is a lie.
Recent joke on a web comic, asking a blind guy if they had “seen” someone recently: He had just been talking to the person but technically since he’s blind he never “saw” her. So in this case a true statement is in fact a lie. This is the nastiest type of lie.
Lying to "protect" someones feelings can be damaging
(say by not telling someone that the dress or suit they are wearing is truthfully hideous, you could be hurting them in a business matter, etc...).
Lies can be of differing degrees and consequences.
It can be from an answer - no those jeans don't make you look fat
But even though it is wrong, it is something everyone does at sometime or another unless your name is Jesus Christ.
As for a pathological liar - I don't know the clinical definition, but I have known some who I would swear are. The kind of person who will go spread a lie, for the purpose of hurting another person. And they do it so often that it is seems to get to a point they honestly believe they are telling the truth and doing what is best.
A lie is an untruth told to someone who deserves to be told the truth and has a right to the truth. There are cases when the one questioning has no right to the truth, so if the one answering says what is less that all things that are known, it is still not lying.
Take the Bible case of Abraham and Sarah, and Isaac and Rebecca. Abraham and Isaac both told rulers that their wives were their sisters so they wouldn't be killed. In both cases, it was later discovered by the ruler that they had been 'lied' to, but Abraham and Isaac had not sinned before God because it wasn't any of the ruler's right to know the relationship.
If one has a right to know, say a wife of her husband, or the IRS from a taxpayer, or a boss from an employee (as to why they are late, if they are using company property for personal use, etc.), a patient from the doctor, or similar relationships, and the one replying hides some information, then it is a lie.
Little children make up stories and then believe them, but this is not lying because the child doesn't know the difference. But if someone who knows what they are saying is wrong, or they hide information or seek to change things in order to benefit themselves, they are lying. If one repeats a rumor that is just a rumor, something that is untrue, they are lying because they have failed to confirm the accuracy before passing the information on to another.
Going back to the Bible for an example: when the disciples were selling property to help others, there was a couple that sold their property, which was their right to do. But when asked if they had given all of the money received to Peter, they said 'yes,' they had given all of it. As a matter of fact, they had only given part of it, which was their right to do. After all, they were not under obligation to give any of the money. But they SAID they gave it all in order to make themselves look good in front of the people. They lied about it. So they were struck dead.
The first lie was told by the devil. Lies are very bad whatever the form.
But as stated, if the one asking does not have the right to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, and we don't tell them everything, leave out something, or change the facts, we are not lying. That's why it was okay for the people in Germany to hide the Jews and others Hitler wanted to kill. Hitler didn't have the right to know because he was going to kill innocent people.
If my boss calls on the phone to see why I'm not at work and I tell my child to tell them I'm sick and I really just wanted to stay home to watch the superbowl, then I am lying and causing my child to lie. But if I am not home and a stranger calls or comes to the door and my child says I'm unable to come to the door, (or phone) but to tell the stranger they should call back later, my child is not lying. It is not the stranger's right to know that I am not home.
If I am filling out paperwork to get government benefits and I believe what I am saying is true to the best of my knowledge, and I misstate something, I am not lying because I am trying to give them all of the information.
I think I hae covered all of your questions.
By the way, I am well acquainted with a pathological liar. They are just about impossible to live with because they can't be trusted. Some people with personality disorders can be assisted to stop lying, but from what I have studied about psychology, the pathologcal liar will never stop.
I don't know much about pathological lying except that I had a friend that I discovered was one once. It was very hurtful experience, I am not sure if this person knew they had this condition or not .
here's a different take on lying, from my own experience:
I was raised fundamentalist baptist. Also, my parents seemed to equate making mistakes with being bad, at least that's how I perceived it.
When I graduated high school and no longer lived with my authority figures, I found myself lying to my friends. This upset me, so I went to a psychologist to figure it all out. Hypothesis: I was so used to having to pretend I was different, somebody else really, that when I no longer had to pretend to be who I was not, I no longer had to play a role... Well, I didn't know how to live that way, and it was coming out in my lying to my friends. Cure: When I started to lie, just stop and say, "that's not true, I don't even know why I said that." So it took me twice of doing this and it didn't happen again.
Sometimes people lie because they equate being wrong with being bad and they cannot admit they are wrong cuz they don't want to be bad.
Pathological liars are another breed altogether, but it is called "pathological" for a reason. This is an abnormality, and perhaps a disease. Tough to live with, but if you can just separate the person from their lies... IF they are nice and pleasant enough and you choose to just be with them and just know you can never believe anything they say. Most of the time, however, I've found these folks vexing to my spirit so I just stay away.
Thanks for posing this question. I am so grateful to the others who commented. Fascinating stuff. Looking forward to your article.
PLEASE keep us posted.
If you are dealing with a pathological liar, on your own, you stand little (if any) chance of modifying the behavior.
Whatever you do, do not assume any responsibility for the liar. Period.
There are simply times that make the truth unpaltable or dangerous.
Here is a paradox. My statement. "Everything I tell is a lie." Now, does that make it the truth?
To me a lie is very simple... if it's an untruth of any type it's a lie.
I do think that lying by omission is also a lie and can be one
of the most damaging type of lie.