ghijkmnop wrote:To quote George Costanza: It's not a lie if you believe it.
I actually studied the nature of lies for my undergraduate thesis, and that's basically true. The way that most people would interpret a statement as a lie generally requires a statement to 1. be untrue, 2. be known by the speaker to be untrue, and 3. be intended to deceive.
However while these three rules work as a rough heuristic, it's not as neat and clear-cut as you might like, and I can think of several examples that break this paradigm. People don't believe white lies to be as lie-y as regular lies, suggesting that intended harm is an aspect. People often believe that people saying things they believe to be false are lies, even if they turn out to be true. People can "lie to themselves," though it's not clear if this is really seen as lying. But lies by omission are also considered lies, even though they are 100% true. They are the truth and nothing but the truth, but not the whole truth.
And then there's the big one for the point you raise: I would argue that a reckless disregard for the truth constitutes a lie. Trump probably has no idea whether what he's saying is true, and may even have convinced himself. But as far as I'm concerned, he's still lying. Similarly, in my thread on nutrition, I believe that any diet expert who makes influential policy prescriptions and either doesn't examine the evidence themself or cherrypicks the evidence to support what they already believe is engaged in dishonesty. The fact that they don't or do only with blinkers on means that I am willing to say that groups like the AHA, USDA, and WHO are lying to us, even if they 100% believe what they are saying.
But my willingness to say that they are lying to us as opposed to merely being dishonest also stems from my belief that their advice is recklessness leading to substantial harm. Taxonomical authorities continue to use many taxonomical groups which have been debunked, but because the stakes are far lower, I would accuse them of dishonesty or even laziness rather than lying, the word "lie" definitely carries a value judgment to a greater degree "than dishonesty" or "untruth."
I would say that Paul Grice's Maxim of Quality plus half of the Maxim of Quantity describes pretty well what I believe to constitute willful untruths.
- Do not say what you believe to be false. (Quality)
- Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. (Quality)
- Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange. (Quantity)
But a willful untruth is not necessarily a lie. A work of fiction is not a lie, nor is a simplification for a lay audience, nor is an expression of sarcasm, irony, or hyperbole. I would say that both the likely outcome and the intended effect determine whether such an untruth is a lie, and I also think I have a higher standard for reckless lies and lies-by-omission (the latter two points) than I do for deliberate lies-by-commission (the first point).