[lit-ideas] Re: When Did You Last See Your Father?
- From: John McCreery <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 20:33:50 +0900
Very nice.
John
On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 7:33 PM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
>
> At a LSE Popper lecture evening (some years ago), Prof.O'Hear criticised P
> for his lack of understanding of the need for society to limit its "honesty"
> [O'Hear was taking the ruthless search for truth by critical discussion,
> that underpins P's epistemology, to imply ruthless honesty in all situations
> - a crass implication that is not drawn in Popper's own work afaik].
>
> O'Hear's remarks smacked of the kind of Wittgensteinian critique of P's
> advocacy of (unfortunately termed) "social engineering" that was put forward
> by Peter Winch, and was similarly misguided and fatuous. Despite PE's post
> being unclear on this key point, it seems clear that if we accept that
> telling lies to save an innocent life is sometimes morally justified then we
> are accepting that the act of lying may sometimes be the morally correct
> thing to do - not perhaps in itself, not because lying is good-in-itself,
> but because it serves a higher moral purpose than the value of speaking
> truthfully. Even the trumpeted "value of speaking truthfully" surely depends
> on the motive, purpose, context, consequences etc.
>
> In certain situations other values, like protection of life, might
> trump the value of truth-telling: so might less dramatic values like
> protecting or enhancing other's feelings ["Yes, I love that dress (I
> couldn't care less); no, your bottom does not look big in it (it does, but
> it looks big in everything); that was delicious (if you like eating guano);
> this present is just what I always wanted (you got me this book last year
> and didn't even notice when I gave you it back for your birthday); you
> shouldn't have (you should have, and sooner)" etc.] and a panoply of other
> values that are essential to "good" human interaction. Kant's pietism and
> Enlightenment idealism may have undermined his appreciation of this, at
> least in his philosophical treatment of the issues.
>
> It is also hard to see, if we so value "honesty", how active lying is that
> much worse than 'passive dissembling' i.e. giving a misleading impression by
> not disabusing others of their false impression [the distinction
> between sins of commission and omission is a tenuous one for ethics]. Yet
> active truth-telling whatever the circumstances is less a basis for a
> sensible ethics than a Jim Carrey movie.
>
> So while there are circumstances, say a court of law or scientific
> research, where telling the truth is generally morally imperative, there are
> many others where far from imperative it is imperative we allow other
> considerations to dominate.
>
> The idea that the evolution of human intelligence, via the use of language,
> was because of the possibilities of mis-reporting [so setting up an
> evolutionary arms-race between the mechanisms for exploiting and detecting
> mis-reporting] may be prayed in aid also:- though we often tend to think of
> lies in negative terms as a means of exploitation, seen more widely the
> imaginative capacity to "lie" underpins our ability to develop interesting
> "truth". This is surely why only a narrow-minded Puritan would scream that
> it is unethical to tell children fairy-stories, when these are part of a
> process from which they can extract valuable truth from fiction and also
> learn to discriminate truth and falsity.
>
> Perhaps we should even be coaching our children to lie for the sake of
> their cognitive development:
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7730522/Lying-children-will-grow-up-to-be-successful-citizens.html
>
> Donal
> see my "The Truth About Lies" (forthcoming)
> Okay, that was a lie
>
>
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
jlm@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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