True Lies

True Lies

Suppose you see John steal a cookie. He did it and you saw him do it. However, you don’t believe that Johnstole the cookie because John disguised himself as Jack. You believe, falsely, that Jack stole the cookie. As it happens, you don’t like John so you decide to lie and say that John did it. You therefore say, “I saw John steal the cookie”—while believing that Jack did. You intended to say something false but ended up saying something true. Did you tell a lie? If you did, it was a true lie. No false belief was produced in anyone by your assertion of John’s guilt, even though that was your intention. No injustice occurred because of your statement—the right person was punished. Still, is it true that you lied? I think not: there are no true lies—though there can be true attempted lies. You tried to lie, but you failed. You are guilty of attempted lying but not actual lying. The case is rather like an attempted murder when you aim at a wax effigy you mistake for a living person. You can’t actually murder unless you really kill someone, but you can attempt to murder without killing anyone. Similarly, you can attempt to lie but fail in the attempt—you didn’t actually lie. Incompetent failed lying isn’t lying. It is a necessary condition for lying that the proposition you put forward is false: “false lie” is redundant and “true lie” is contradictory. A very incompetent and unlucky would-be liar could go through life never telling a lie yet always attempting to. He could not be called a liar (he is a liar manque). The same goes for perjury: someone might try to commit perjury but fail, because she accidentally tells the truth, contrary to intention. She is guilty of attempted perjury and may therefore be legally sanctioned accordingly, but technically there was no perjury, i.e., lying under oath. The same goes for truth-value gaps: if your statement is neither true nor false, it cannot be a lie. Suppose I try to lie about the state of the king of France’s head—I say “The king of France is bald”. That can’t be a lie because my statement was not false (if we follow Strawson). It is the same if I say something meaningless under the impression that I am making a meaningful statement: I have not said anything false, so I have not lied. Whether I lie is not completely up to me; it requires the cooperation of the world. It is not enough that I have a lying intention; I also need the right beliefs and the right linguistic vehicle. What I say has to be objectively false, but I may be wrong about this. Should we blame a person less if his attempted lie turns out not to be a lie? No: he had a lying will and that is what matters to blameworthiness. We should certainly not say “No harm, no foul”—no actual lie, so no blame attaching. Attempted murder is a crime, and attempted lying is unethical. You can’t plead innocence on the basis of factual error. Such cases very seldom arise (I have never even heard the possibility discussed), but the concept of lying seems clear enough—no falsehood, no lie. Lying is stating a falsehood with the intention to deceive, not merely intending to do that. What this shows, I think, is that the badness of a lie resides mainly in the falsity of what is said not in the speaker’s intention. If attempted lies never led to actual lies, i.e., false statements that lead to false beliefs, then we would not care much about the prevalence of would-be liars—they would be powerless to propagate false beliefs. Insincerity is not the problem; the problem is actual falsehood. We abominate lying because it leads to false belief, not because liars aim to produce false belief. If they failed in their aims, we would regard them as negligible cranks. There is nothing to fear in truth-telling (would-be) liars. Liars have to be able to make actually false statements in order to be a menace to society.