Plato, or so it is claimed, advanced the idea of the noble lie: an untruth knowingly propagated for the good of society. In Plato’s Republic the noble lie was a myth presented as the parable of the metals and was intended to help maintain the ideal social order of that state. Given Plato’s opposition to the sophists and his praise of virtue, the noble lie can be jarring to some readers of his work. Detractors of philosophy will, naturally enough, regard most philosophers as engaged in less-than-noble lies. But, of course, philosophy is supposed to be a search for wisdom and this presumably includes a devotion to the truth. Politicians, who are supposed to be far more pragmatic than philosophers, would seem more inclined to embrace the noble lie. Or the ignoble lie. This does raise the enduring question of whether it is morally acceptable for leaders to lie for what they think is the good of society.
The easy and obvious way to argue this issue is to approach it on utilitarian grounds. On this moral view, if telling a lie would create more good than harm for those who matter morally, then lying would be morally correct. If the lie would create more harm than good, it would be wrong. There is, as always, an important distinction between what those lying think will result and the actual outcome—as such, there is also a distinction between the ethics of intention and the ethics of the actual consequences. History shows that good intentions do not always lead to good consequences.
There are also moral views, such as the rule-based deontological ethics put forth by Immanuel Kant. For Kant, morality is not a matter of consequences but a matter of following the rules. As Kant saw it, his categorical imperative entailed that lying was always wrong—so Kant and his fellows would be opposed to such a lie.
There is also the notion that truth and falsity do not matter. While some might think that this notion is something that emerged on the public stage in 2016, it has a much older pedigree. The sophists of ancient Greece embraced this view and contended that what mattered was success. Jumping ahead centuries, the idea was also advanced during the administration of Woodrow Wilson. When Wilson led the United States into World War I, he insisted that “the spirit of ruthless brutality…enter into the very fibre of national life.” As part of this approach, he created the Committee on Public Information. He was apparently inspired by an advisor who wrote that “Truth and falsehood are arbitrary terms….The force of an idea lies in its inspirational value. It matters very little if it is true or false.”
On the one hand, this approach to the truth can be regarded as hard-headed pragmatism of the sort often praised by practical folks: what matters is the effectiveness of an idea in achieving the desired goal. To use a contemporary illustration, the successful “First Social Media War” waged by the Russians against the United States in 2016 illustrated that false claims served far better than true claims in achieving their goals. Trump and his people also effectively employed this approach, even minting the term “alternative facts.” This approach can be morally justified by using a utilitarian argument of the sort presented above, with an explicit rejection of any preference for truth. It can also be justified on the grounds of ethical egoism—the moral theory that what maximizes value for the individual in question is good. For example, from Trump’s perspective what best serves his interest is what is good.
On the other hand, while lies can yield short term good or advance someone’s private advantage, they seem to prove damaging over the longer term and broader scale. Take, as an illustration, the consequences of the decisions to lie about the flu pandemic of 1918. Public officials elected to tell the public that the flu was not serious and elected to protect the lie by not taking sensible medical approaches to the flu. For example, deciding to not cancel the Liberty Loan parade helped contribute to the epidemic in Philadelphia. The easy and obvious reason that such lies tend to have bad results is that operating in a way that does not match reality tends to lead to bad decision making and this tends to lead to negative consequences.
A good contemporary example of this is the matter of climate change. While most experts believe that climate change is occurring and has been influenced by human action, there are still political figures who deny this. While it is possible that the political figures are operating in sincere ignorance rather that lying, this is a case in which it is all but certain that one side is lying. If the climate change deniers are lying, they are acting like the lying officials did in 1918 and will be complicit in worldwide suffering and countless deaths. If the climate change believers are lying, the consequences will be far less bad—more regulations, deployment of more green energy technology, and perhaps some negative impact on economic growth. Being rational, I side with the majority of qualified experts—I am confident that the climate scientists are not lying. However, I am open to compelling arguments and evidence from climate experts who deny climate change.
Have you ever read “Propaganda” by Jacques Ellul? He explains how when governments have agendas they wish to put forward, but know they will be resisted by most people, they create a manufactured crisis and present this to the populace as an urgent priority, then present their agenda as the solution to this manufactured crisis.
I guess the first thing I would question here is the word “lie”. You allude to the nuance when you suggest that those who “deny climate change” might be “operating in sincere ignorance”. You are making a number of brazen and somewhat insulting presumptions here. Perhaps they are “operating in sincere belief”. After all, there is no proof that their belief is not based on any false information or sinister misleading information. Your only options seem to be “lie” or “ignorance”.
The interesting context for this argument comes from your previous post on “Dungeons and Dragons” .
“Old stories tell of the wizard Kelsun, better known as Kelsun the Mad Prophet, who was driven mad by visions of a world-shaking disaster.”>/i>
When I read that, my first thought as about Al Gore. Rather than being driven mad, however (although some might disagree), I would argue that he turned these visions, along with his understanding of the power of the media, the power of social media, and the effect of panic among the great unwashed, into a nice hefty cash cow for himself.
“He created strange dungeons (tax incentives, government backed EPA penalties, social media witch hunts) filled with exotic traps and monsters to guard these items. As most dungeon creators do, he left cryptic and even bizarre clues regarding the locations of his caches. (The elite, like himself, can benefit handsomely if they find the key to correct positioning).”
But that’s just fantasy.
The second thing I’d question would be your use of Climate Change as a good contemporary example. By now, this example is so politically and emotionally charged that most people have lost any sense of rational thought about it. Maybe a better (and more contemporary) example might be the Tax Reform Act that Trump just signed.
So who’s lying here? Anyone? At the heart of it, we have a fundamental philosophical debate – one side believes that by offering substantial cuts to businesses, the “rising tide will lift all boats” and everyone will benefit. The other side believes that the cuts don’t benefit the middle class as much as it ought, and that this is just a ruse to offer benefits to the rich and powerful. What is very, very, disturbing to me is that the naysayers, the opposition, is publicly and transparently ignoring cold, hard facts in order to try to convince the public of their position. They are quick to point out how damaging the elimination of SALT (State and Local Tax) deductions will be to people living in high tax states like New York, New Jersey, and California – but (purposely?) fail to mention the caps on these taxes, which completely exempt the middle class – whom they claim to support.
By the time an individual or family has reached the cap on SALT, it is very, very difficult to describe them as “poor” or “middle class”. The cap on mortgage interest deduction lies at $750,000 on new mortgages – I know that I, myself, am losing sleep over the devastating loss imposed on the poor and middle class in my city based on their inability to deduct this interest, which I am sure they regard as a basic right.
Yet people like Nancy Pelosi and others, on camera, looking down and to the left, are decrying this tax reform law because of these gaps that will hurt the poor and middle class, while ignoring the recent spate of lavish, end-of-year bonuses on the part of big businesses for the benefit of their rank-and-file employees.
To be fair, the biggest argument against the Tax Reform Law revolves around the long-term impact of the law, and the temporary nature of the personal cuts – but again, this is based entirely on conjecture and the idea of “if nothing changes …” which is a virtual impossibility. The fact is that the Republicans wanted to make both the corporate AND the individual tax cuts permanent, but based on the effect the permanence might have on long-term budget projections, they had to allow for the ten-year change. Much can happen in ten years – so are the Republicans “lying” about their belief that these cuts will be extended, or are the Democrats “lying” that they believe that no change will actually take place and it will turn out bad for the poor/middle class?
One cannot lie about a belief in a prediction, whether it is about Climate Change or Tax Reform. Both are empirical, both will experience a heavy impact from the “law of unintended result”.
Past observations are a little dicier. One can produce a very convincing graph about a long-term trend in Climate Change, for example, but not consider that by extending or shortening the timeframe of the graph, the results would be significantly different. Are these observational differences “lies”? Has there been some consensus in the scientific community that unequivocally states that the accurate timeframe is “X”; with any example otherwise is untrue, unscientific, biased, or dishonest? To be fair, proponents of the current tax reform law are quick to point out the ten-year economic boom in the 1960’s, after the posthumous Kennedy tax cuts – but detractors are equally quick to point out subtle and not-so-subtle contextual differences between then and now.
I would conclude that pointed, purposeful misrepresentation, obfuscation, or omission of incontrovertible factual data can be called a “lie”, but the short-term, mid-term, or long-term projected interpretation of those facts cannot. When it is discovered that NOAA scientists altered data to fit with current political trends, that is a lie.
https://science.house.gov/news/press-releases/former-noaa-scientist-confirms-colleagues-manipulated-climate-records
but as any logician knows, this proves nothing.
“Ten doctors who claim to have examined me, confirm that I am a male”
“Three of those doctors have been found to have never examined me, and lied on the form”
“Therefore, I am not a male”
But when a scientist states that, regardless of the lies, the general prediction remains true, this cannot be (on the face of it, anyway) regarded as a lie.
Of course, you could also argue that,
“There is no question that I am a male at this time”
“Sex Change operations are becoming more popular these days, so your maleness cannot be deemed permanent”
“Therefore, it is unlikely that you will be a male in 10 years”.
So while it is obvious to some of us that Pelosi, Schumer, and others are lying through their teeth about the facts of the tax cuts, there is no way that any of us can predict the long term benefits or harm of the new law, and therefore, none of us can be accused of lying about it.
I certainly like the idea of Al Gore as a mad wizard profiting from his prophecies. I like it so much, I’m going to write an adventure with that theme-a prophet who makes prophecies to fill their coffers with gold. The trick will be making this meaningfully different from the usual corrupt clergy tale.
Not so tricky … just take the plots from “The Congressional Record” and change the names around.
Not so tricky … just read “Steal This Plot” by William and June Noble; then read “The Congressional Record” and apply the principles of the first to the details of the second. Change a few names around, add a few “spicers” and you’ve got a novel.
I have a couple additional points to make on this issue, which are probably more directly related to the philosophical question at hand, i.e.,
“the enduring question of whether it is morally acceptable for leaders to lie for what they think is the good of society.”
The larger, more Machiavellian question, is “what is ‘to the good of society’?”. Unfortunately, there are too many politicians and others who see things as black & white, and would define “benefit” to society by whether or not they themselves are in power. Or, to a more cynical end, they don’t care about societal good at all, only that they remain in power. (One of the reasons I left my early foray into sales was that my manager used to tell me, “Sell to need. Your need.”)
This has led to the situation we are in today – that Democrats will freely and openly lie or at least misconstrue, misinterpret, or misrepresent anything and everything about the Republicans in the hope of stripping them of their power and regaining it for themselves. Republicans are of course no better, and engage in the same behavior.
Somewhere in there, though, it would stand to reason that at least some of the lies are believed by their perpetrators to be for the good of society. We really don’t know, for example, what the nuclear capabilities or intents of North Korea might be, but I think we can reasonably assume that we don’t know nearly as much as the State Department or the Senate Arms committee. Perhaps we are in much greater peril than we have been led to believe. Would the secrecy about this be considered a “lie of omission”? Even outside of what might be in the interest of “national security”, the decision of whether to outright lie, downplay, or simply omit details might just be following a “greater good” guideline – that the panic and violence that might ensue from full disclosure would be far more harmful than the warm blanket of peaceful ignorance under which we now live.
Another example might be regarding the different kinds of violence we experience in this country, and the ways in which they are reported. The Fort Hood shootings of 2009 provides a nice illustration of this point. Nadal Hasan, a US Army officer, shot and killed 13 people. It was later revealed that Hasan had had extended direct contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, who had previously been determined to be a national security threat by the US Justice Department. Those close to Hasan had been aware of, and had reported, Hasan’s increasing radicalization and unusual behavior. Yet, this killing spree was described by our government and the media as an act of “Workplace Violence”, and attributed more to the availability of firearms than to the increasing threat of terrorism in our country. So why the apparent blatant lie(s) and coverups?
Subsequently, in 2011, families of the victims filed suit against the US Government to have these killings re-classified as an act of terrorism, which would have enabled them to receive military benefits. The Pentagon refused, arguing that “The Uniform Code of Military Justice does not have a punitive article for “terrorism.””
I suspect that we will never know the real truth behind Hasan’ motivations (although he did cry out “Allahu Akbar” before he opened fire), or the reasons behind the reportage and/or official response. Here are a few possibilities:
“There really is no way of prosecuting Hasan within the current military system, and this case follows a loophole in the law in order to obtain a suitable conviction”
In this case, “everyone knows” the truth (wink, wink), but if we want to put the guy away, we have to do it this way. This happens in courts of law all the time – where a prosecutor knows that he is very unlikely to get a conviction on the real crime, or the fullest extent of the crime, so he “lies” about it in order to get the best plea deal he can so at least the perpetrator will be off the streets. It might be described as “the end justifies the means”, or even the “greater good” principle. Is this a justifiable lie?
“Acts of terrorism are over-reported and lead to a misinformed public outcry that results in rampant anti-Muslim bigotry and intolerance, which we do not wish to foment in this country”
Kind of a case of “You Can’t Handle The Truth!”. Americans might misunderstand the facts or nuance of the particular case, focus only on the fact that this guy was a Muslim, and carry that to a very dangerous extreme – perhaps dragging innocent Muslims into the street and beating them to death to avenge the killing. So the “Muslim/Islamist/Terrorist” angle is downplayed. Is that a justifiable lie, or merely a mild, purposeful restatement in order to protect ourselves from ourselves? (One might be scared into accepting this within the context of the riots across the country, spawned by the racial tenor of the Rodney King incident).
“The narrative put forth by our government is that our policies have terrorism on the run, and that what we are doing is really working. This act is an aberration, an outlier, and is an isolated incident that has nothing to do with the big picture. No matter how you slice it, by describing it as an act of terrorism it will undermine much needed public support for our initiatives, and destroy the progress we have made so far”
This one seems to be a “We know more than you do, and it’s best that you don’t know because you just wouldn’t understand …”
Or how about,
“The narrative we are putting forth is failing miserably, but we can’t afford to let you know this until we figure something else out. If the real truth got out, we’d be in big trouble (side note – serious allegations were made against the Justice Department and the FBI for not following up on the connections to Al-Awlaki). By extension, you are much better off with the government you have than you would be under the other guys, so why not just calm down and let us handle things?”
Then there is the objective so eloquently stated by Rahm Emanuel,
“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” It is in the public interest to not worry about terrorism – but if we can somehow shift the focus of this crisis away from terrorism and onto the more practical issue of gun control, this will be a ‘win’ for us, and, by extension, the country.
That one is a case of “the end justifies the means”, or “with a simple lie, we can turn a big negative that no one can do anything about anyway into a positive for our party and our cause”. Of course, this too begs the initial question of “what is the good of the country?”, and whether or not the leaders who support gun control really believe it will reduce violence, or simply see it as a convenient political means to keeping themselves in power.
Are any of these lies justifiable?
Finally, there is always the belief that there are no lies at all – that this really was an act of “workplace violence”, and any connection to Radical Islam is either imagined or coincidental.
It is my personal belief that the White House, Congress, and the media provide us with a constant stream of lies told for our own good or their own – probably the latter – and are tantamount to the old “Do I look fat in this dress?” response. There really is no good answer to the question, so they may as well respond in pre-emptive self-defense, or at least in whatever way will serve their own ends most effectively.
That’s why the White House has a press secretary and a Chief of Staff, and they have staffs themselves – whose sole purpose is to spin the narrative to the benefit of … whom?
Back in the old days, when Chris Christie was a respected federal prosecutor, I heard him speak at an interstate high-school debate forum. This took place in 2005, during the heated, and extremely negative, NJ gubernatorial campaign between Jon Corzine and Doug Forrester. The amount of mud slung in that campaign was massive, the lies were rampant, and any sense of ethical conduct among the two candidates had been long lost. During the Q & A after his keynote address, Christie was asked for his comments about this campaign. In my view, he offered the most insightful “justification” for their behavior I’ve ever heard – and it was offered with the underpinnings of extensive poll research:
“No one believes anything they say anyway”.
. Is that a justifiable lie, or merely a mild, purposeful restatement in order to protect ourselves from ourselves? (One might be scared into accepting this within the context of the riots across the country, spawned by the racial tenor of the Rodney King incident).
You do understand that you are debating what is and what is not a lie with someone who has defended the “hands up, don’t shoot” lie from the Ferguson, MO fiasco as being akin to the “greater truth” fiction in Uncle Tom’s Cabin? Yes?
Not really debating, just asking questions. It’s an interesting issue, IMHO.
Of course, I grew up in the 60’s under the watchword, “Question Authority”. I did major in philosophy for a while as an undergrad, where I learned about logic and “the greater good” and the elusive and flexible nature of “truth”. Then came Reagan and “Trust, but Verify”.
If a leader tells a lie but no one believes him anyway (and he knows they don’t), is that an immoral act?
Not really debating, just asking questions.
OK, to be more clear…You do understand that you are asking questions regarding what is and what is not a lie with someone who has defended the “hands up, don’t shoot” lie from the Ferguson, MO fiasco as being akin to the “greater truth” fiction in Uncle Tom’s Cabin? Yes? Seems a fool’s errand but whatever floats your boat…
If a leader tells a lie but no one believes him anyway (and he knows they don’t), is that an immoral act?
Why limited to a leader? True of anyone. Taking your question literally (the parenthetical “and he knows they don’t” being critical here), wouldn’t that make every joke an immoral act? How many people have actually seen an actual chicken cross an actual road and understand it’s intentions? Silliness and parenthesis aside, the degree of immorality would be dependent on the intent and expected impact of the lie. Is expecting greater morality from leaders than we expect from ourselves immoral? Is neglecting to weigh the greater responsibility that leaders have for the outcomes of their decisions, be they using truth or lie in those decisions, immoral itself? Isn’t judging someone on their morality without considering the wider circumstances immoral itself? Is finding the splinter in another’s eye when one has a board in one’s own immoral? Is a lack of willingness to confront one’s own faults and such, immoral? And so on, and so on, and so on. It’s kinda like an old shampoo commercial. Only her hairdresser knows for sure. OK, two old shampoo commercials…
A consequentialist will say: If I believe that telling a lie will yield a better result than telling the truth, then I should tell the lie. If I believe that unobtanium causes cancer, then I should be prepared to lie and falsify evidence to convince people that unobtanium is dangerous. Equally, though, if I believe that unobtanium prevents cancer, then I should be prepared to lie and falsify evidence to convince people that unobtanium has a preventive effect.
This leads to the Tragedy of the Commons that we see around us. When many people use public channels for statements to advance their cause, with little regard for the truth-value of what they say, eventually the readers will discover the lies, and confidence in all statements by these people or in these areas will be eroded.
Further, so much of what is published is opinion or conjcture rather than relating to facts that we may barely expect the truth/lie distinction to apply. Since you mention climate science, it is appropriate to note that almost all of what we read in non-specialist publications is opinion and conjecture, and much of what is published in some climate journals is conjecture coloured by opinion. As for some climate scientists lying, and hiding their data from scrutiny, and conspiring in secret to mould the IPCC reports, we have more than ample evidence of that in the Climategate emails. With IPCC’s abandonment of its central estimate because evidence has made it insupportable even to the climatariat, Big Climate is over. It will take a long time to die, because so many political and commercial and national interests can still milk it over the next couple of decades. Al may have failed in his effort to become a Carbon Billionaire, but he has made his pile, and now just enjoys laps around the world in his private jets. The generation of IPCC supporters who made their CVs and grants from increased funding will retire over the next 20 years. But the damage to scientific credibility will live on. It may be time to stop blending many separate disciplines in the one catch-all term “science”.
However, it does make an interesting case-study. If I am asked to give an opinion, and I believe that it is in the public interest to … shade … the truth towards one point of view or another in a range of conjectures, as is pretty much the entire field of climate prediction, I would hardly do better than to follow the precepts of the leading Global Warming promoter Stephen Schneider:
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
Of course, what it means in the long run is eroding the credibility of the field, and to some extent, of related sciences.
If the climate change believers are lying, the consequences will be far less bad—more regulations, deployment of more green energy technology, and perhaps some negative impact on economic growth.
Mike, have you actually looked into the drastic changes to our way of life that would be required to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius?
I’ll save you the trouble of looking it up:
To hit the Paris climate goals without geoengineering, the world has to do three broad (and incredibly ambitious) things:
1) Global CO2 emissions from energy and industry have to fall in half each decade. That is, in the 2020s, the world cuts emissions in half. Then we do it again in the 2030s. Then we do it again in the 2040s. They dub this a “carbon law.” Lead author Johan Rockström told me they were thinking of an analogy to Moore’s law for transistors; we’ll see why.
2) Net emissions from land use — i.e., from agriculture and deforestation — have to fall steadily to zero by 2050. This would need to happen even as the world population grows and we’re feeding ever more people.
3) Technologies to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere have to start scaling up massively, until we’re artificially pulling 5 gigatons of CO2 per year out of the atmosphere by 2050 — nearly double what all the world’s trees and soils already do.
“It’s way more than adding solar or wind,” says Rockström. “It’s rapid decarbonization, plus a revolution in food production, plus a sustainability revolution, plus a massive engineering scale-up [for carbon removal].”
So, uh, how do we cut CO2 emissions in half, then half again, then half again? Here, the authors lay out a sample “roadmap” of what specific actions the world would have to take each decade, based on current research. This isn’t the only path for making big CO2 cuts, but it gives a sense of the sheer scale and speed required.
It’d be entirely understandable to look at this all and say, “That’s insane.” Phasing out sales of combustion engine vehicles by 2030? Carbon-neutral air travel within two decades? Cities going entirely fossil fuel–free in the next 13 years? Come on.
And fair enough. None of this is easy. It might well prove impossible. But this is roughly what staying well below 2°C entails — at least without large-scale geoengineering to filter out sunlight and cool the planet (a risky step). This is what world governments implicitly agreed to when they all signed on to the Paris accord.
Rockström and his colleagues argue that future UN climate talks should strive to create a much more detailed decade-by-decade road map along the lines of their Science paper, in order to gain much more clarity on what needs to happen to stay below 2°C.
Of course, it’s possible that if policymakers really grappled with what staying below 2°C entails, they might come away thinking it’s impractical or undesirable. They might decide that maybe we should aim to stay below 2.5°C or 3°C, and just try to deal with the severe risks of a hotter planet, from higher sea level rise droughts to crop failures, that come with it.
But something has to force that conversation. If this 2°C climate goal is going to loom over every international climate meeting, every white paper and discussion, then the least people can do is take it seriously.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/3/23/15028480/roadmap-paris-climate-goals