Hello everyone and welcome back to Happy Hour. Today we have in our studio TJ again, and he will bring us some interesting stories about philosophy.

Hi, TJ.

Hi, nice to be back.

So TJ what are we going to talk about today？

Today we're going to talk about lies. Have you ever lied to anyone Lulu？

Of course, I have. Hasn't everyone lied？

I've never lied in my life, I've never lied to anyone.

I just don't believe you. I think that is the biggest lie in the world to say that I have never lied to anyone.

I'm very pure of heart. I'm a very honest person.

But I don't believe you anyway TJ because I know you. Anyhow, so is this we’re gonna talk about today, lies?

Right, lie is , a very interesting when studies have been done about this, there was a very large study in the readers’ digest where they found that 93% of people recorded dishonesty at work or school or in business and 96% of people said they lie to people they care about their family and their friends. So that's a lot of lying, especially when we consider we normally think of lying as bad, we tell children don't lie, don't kill people, don't steal.

We won't steal or kill people, but we lie ourselves, despite the fact that we tell our children, our students do not lie.

So there is a contradiction.

Yeah, let's get back to the very beginning of this topic. What is the definition of lie or lies？

You know philosophers like to argue about things a lot, but let's just keep it straightforward for this and say lying has two parts.

Number one is intentional, you do it on purpose. The second part is that you want to misrepresent something. So you have a belief in your head about the way the world is and you tell somebody something else on purpose.

So it's not the truth. By the way you know that in court, you watch courtroom drama, you hear they take an oath and they say I will speak the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So my question is if I have only told part of the truth and left something out, would that be considered a lie？Because technically I did not lie, I did not give you any false information.

Right. This is what we call a lie of omision where you omit something. You don't say something you should have said. So you're still misrepresenting what happened. You are still not giving people a clear picture of exactly what the relevant information is.

So that is still a lie, pretty high standard. No wonder so many people have lied. By the way, is that a human specific behaviour, are humans the only animals that lie？

No, animals can lie too. There's been cases of apes like gorillas that lie when they do something that they know is bad, somebody asks them, did you do that？And then they will point at somebody else and say, no, this person did it.

But I'm sure today we're not talking about are we lying or not？Because like you said, most of us lie. You said you don't lie, but I don't believe you, I think you still do. Exactly. What are we going to focus on today？

What we're gonna talk about the ethics of lies, should we lie and when should we lie？and how should we lie？If at all some people would say don't lie; and some people think it's not very a big problem at all.

I'm sure there are different schools of thoughts, different perspectives in the field of philosophy different philosophers have very different attitudes towards lying. Should we lie？Should we not？

Right. I'm gonna start with Kant and he has a very strong opinion that lying is against the law of reason. If you think about it, then you would realize that we should just never ever lie. When you lie to somebody, you take away their rationality because they don't have the ability to. . .

Make an informed decision?

Right. And you take away their dignity when you lie to them that it's something it's a kind of abuse, right？When you conceal some thing from somebody.

I'm a bit curious. You said it's against the law of reason... So it's not about whether it's the right thing to do, whether it's ethical or not, but it's more about logic it's more about rationality.

Right. So Kant is completely rational. He thinks that we can make rules if we think about things logically we can make rules. And he thinks of everybody lies when it's convenient for them, then the whole idea of talking to each other and communicating just breaks down.

I see.

That we do damage to ourselves and we do damage to the community. It doesn't make sense. It's not logical to lie.

So no exceptions whatsoever? Even in really specific situations where lying is actually good.

The axe murderer example is a good case of how far Kant will go not to lie.

What is that？

The example is hiding in your house. Let's say you hide in my house because Brad wants to kill you that he wants to come and attack you with an axe.

Brad comes to my house and he says is Lulu hiding in your bedroom？And I say, yes.

Why would you give me out like that?

She is upstairs, second door on the left. That's what Kant says. He says that it’s law, just like one plus one equals two.

It doesn't matter if it's convenient or if you're on the moon or under the sea, whatever the circumstances, the rules are always the same for Kant. He says that he would tell the truth because that's what you should do in that situation.

So completely rational, no emotions whatsoever sounds a bit cold.

Right. And many people think Kant is a bit robotic.

Yeah, very cold. But what are some of the other perspectives？

So another perspective is the consequentialist perspective.

Consequentialist. It's all about what happens as a result.

And they would say, don't think about the rules and don't think about it. You can use logic but we use this to think about what happen in the future and usually they are talking about happiness.

So we can lie as long as the results are much better than lying. And we also have to think about whether we would be exposed or not of course, because if you lie and then someone finds out that you lied, that can be not so great as well.

The consequence wouldn't be so good. Actually, that sounds like a very pragmatic or even utilitarian attitude. For instance, people who cheat on their partners, a lot of them they cheat not because they want to hurt their partners. It's because they believe they are not gonna get caught. And there are some people even saying things like, it's not cheating if you don't get caught. Is that sort of like they are looking for the thrill of cheating whilst they think they won't get caught so they won't be any bad consequences.

These people sound a little bit shortsighted to me. Because every criminal in prison, they all think that they won't get caught. People like Harvey Weinstein they all think they get away with it until they don't.

So in today's episode, we talked to TJ about the ethics of lying. And in next episode, we are going to continue this topic and talk about white lies and home truth.

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