White Lies Black Lies

1. White LiesBlack Lies — Diana Mertz Hsieh — Thursday, July 4, 2002 —13th Annual Summer Seminarof The Objectivist Center— http://www.dianahsieh.com diana@dianahsieh.com

2. Traditional Honesty • Traditional honesty is the virtue of always telling the truth (as believed) to others • Form: Absolutist, acontextual rule • Content: Telling truth to others • Justification: Altruism, collectivism

3. Traditional Form • Traditional honesty is the virtue of always telling the truth (as believed) to others • The virtue is of the form of an absolutist, acontextual rule • The growing problem: • Aiding evildoers • Acceptable to lie to protect others • Expanding notions of protecting others

4. Traditional Content • Traditional honesty is the virtue of always telling the truth (as believed) to others • The content of the virtue focuses on telling the truth (as believed) to others • Three problems: • Mere technical truth is permitted • Honesty with oneself ignored • Silence is overlooked as a moral option

5. Traditional Justification • Traditional honesty is the virtue of always telling the truth (as believed) to others • Virtue presumed or justified with altruistic-collectivistic arguments • The justification: • Honesty is necessary for trust in relationships • Those relationships are necessary to society

6. Traditional Honesty Recap • Traditional honesty is the virtue of always telling the truth (as believed) to others • Form: Absolutist, acontextual rule • Content: Telling truth to others • Justification: Altruism, collectivism • Recommended reading: Sissela Bok’s Lying andDavid Nyberg’s The Varnished Truth

7. Honesty in Objectivism • Honesty is the virtue of refusing to fake the facts of reality • Form: Contextually absolute principle • Content: Refusing to fake reality • Justification: Egoistic knowledge and trade • Recommended Reading: Tara Smith’s Viable Values

8. Dishonesty with Ourselves • Two basic forms of dishonesty with ourselves • Evasion: Refusing to think about what you know or suspect to be true • Self-Deception: Persuading yourself of what you know or suspect to be false • Self-deception requires evasion

9. Dishonesty with Others • Two forms of dishonesty with others • Lies of omission: Misleading by avoiding what you know or suspect to be true • Lies of commission: Misleading by asserting what you know or suspect to be false • Lies of commission require lies of omission

10. Forms of Dishonesty • To be dishonest is to fake the facts of reality • Two axes of faking reality: • To whom? • By what method?

11. Why Be Honest? • Establishing honesty as a virtue involves two distinct questions: • Why should we be honest with ourselves? To gain the value of knowledge • Why should we be honest with others? To gain the values of profitable trade

12. Honesty with Ourselves • Why should we be honest with ourselves? • Maintaining and promoting life and happiness requires that we conform ourselves to the facts • Knowledge of the facts requires honesty with ourselves • Dishonesty does not change the facts, just unable to deal with them rationally

13. Honesty with Others • Why should we be honest with other people? • Are there rational values that can only be generally gained through honesty with others? • Are there rational values that will likely be lost through dishonesty with others? • Yes! All the material and spiritual values that can be gained through trade with others

14. The Arguments • Why should we be honest with other people? • The values of honesty • Profitable trading relationships with others • Cultivated habits of honesty • The disvalues of dishonesty • Slippery slope of lies • Distraction from important matters • Self-deception and evasion

15. Major Value: Trade • Profitable trading relationships with others require the trust and reputation that comes only with honesty • Trust in present relationships • Reputation within the broader community • The role of discovery of dishonesty

16. The Relevant Truth • The traditional choice between the whole truth, mere technical truth, and lies is a false alternative • Trade requires the contextually-relevant truth • If wish to have a particular sort of relationship with a person, then we ought to be sharing certain types of information at certain times in certain ways

17. Determining Relevant Truth • Primary considerations of relevance: • Intimacy of the relationship • Privacy of the information • Usefulness of the information • Secondary considerations of relevance: • Necessary background information • Information sought • Finding the right time • Benign expectations of dishonesty

18. Honesty and Force • Must we be honest with someone initiating force? No. • The easy question: Must we be dishonest with someone initiating force? No. • The hard question: When should we be honest and when should we be dishonest with someone initiating force?

19. Honesty and Irrationality • We generally do not need to preserve the trust of irrational people • But we do not wish to muddle the issues for others and thereby damage our reputation within the larger community • Dishonesty to irrational people can undermine the habits of honesty

20. The Habits of Honesty • Consistent honesty helps cultivate the habits of honesty necessary for resolving apparent conflicts between honesty and other values • The necessity of forethought in creating habits • Recommended Reading: Judith Martin’s The Right Thing to Say (Miss Manners)

21. Honesty and Benevolence • Honesty does not require us to be mean and nasty to other people! • Mean truths are often irrelevant truths • But we ought not appease the irrationality or promote the self-deception of others

22. Honesty and Privacy • Honesty does not require us to violate our own privacy! • We can always refuse to answer intrusive questions (directly or indirectly) • We can cultivate a habitual zone of privacy • Privacy versus concealing immorality

23. Honesty with Others • The benefits of honesty with others: • Profitable trade with others • Cultivated habits of honesty • The risks of dishonesty with others: • Slippery slope of lies • Distraction from important matters • Self-deception and evasion

24. Cost: Slippery Slope • Every lie risks the necessity of more lies in order to maintain the original lie, where each new lie increases the risk of exposure • Success in deceiving others often creates the slippery slope • We cannot know in advance which lies will create slippery slopes

25. Cost: Distraction • Constructing and maintaining lies requires time and effort that could be better spent on more productive and pleasurable pursuits • It is difficult to create and maintain an alternate reality • We have better things to do!

26. Cost: Dishonesty with Self • Dishonesty with others may promote dishonesty with oneself through guilt and cognitive trailblazing • Guilt over a misdeed or a lie to others • Biased viewpoint to others supports own bias • Acceptance of lie by others as evidence

27. Honesty with Others • The benefits of honesty with others: • Profitable trade with others • Cultivated habits of honesty • The risks of dishonesty with others: • Slippery slope of lies • Distraction from important matters • Self-deception and evasion

28. Values of Honesty • Values gained by honesty with oneself: knowledge of reality • Values gained by honesty with others: the values of profitable trade

29. The Honesty Challenge • For those of you inclined to tell little white lies or even big black lies…Try being fully and completely and relevantly honest with others for one month