I would argue that “honesty” is a central concept for Ethics.
Applying the three basic dimensions of value, S, E, and I, which among other uses are tools of analysis, here is the (preliminary) result:
Systemic; {The legal consideration} An individual says to himself “I’d better be honest in this situation or else I’ll be committing a crime.” “I don’t want to risk going to jail, so I choose honesty.”
Extrinsic: {A prudential decision} “Honesty is in my best interest. I want a life with as few regrets as possible. So I’ll go along with that old saying ‘Honesty is the best policy.’”
Intrinsic: {Ethical} "I am ethically-committed to being honest. I want always to tell the truth, but I might - under certain extreme (and rather rare) circumstances - tell a lie …only to save a life. I want to squeeze every drop of joy and value out of life; lying will mess it up.
I don’t want to hurt anyone, so I will strive to creatively frame my response to a direct question so that if necessary it is evasive but true. I intend sincerely to speak the truth. I want to use words that heal not words that harm."
[“Truth”, as you know, was analyzed in End Note 4 of the first part of the Unified Theory of Ethics, a link to which was given below.]
it was interesting that the intrinsic is the only non-consequentialist. Intrinsic, for example, could be that it feels good to be honest. It is simpler to manage, internally. It might be good to explain what the deontological grounds are, here, for honesty.
Related the list leaves out desire. There is one principle, the intrinsic, and then two options that are avoiding consequences. It would seem to me some people are simply tempermentally honest. They can’t be bothered with lying - which often entails some mental gymnastics. There there can the motivation that it creates intimacy or rather, to make it less consequentialist, honesty is intimacy. One is closer to people. So perhaps honesty is a kind of natural state, that needs reasons to justify its removal.
Hi, Moreno
Thank you for a great post. You raise many relevant topics. Your post displays ethical insight.
Exactly You really get it, Moreno.
Once we get in the habit of working out honest answers to tough questions, it is FUN. There is an art to evading a question and yet still giving an answer the truth of which cannot be denied. [size=85]Say, for example, someone with Alzheimer’s asks, confusedly: "Where is my husband now? " She forgot that he died and is buried in a grave. A kind yet honest answer might be: “He’s still in the same place as yesterday. It’s okay. He’s there - just where he was.”[/size]
When you say it is simpler to manage honesty it reminds me of the lines of the poem: “O what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
Parent within to Inner Child: “Would you want to live in a world where everyone lies all the time?”
Inner Child: “I can’t be bothered with worrying about everyone else in the world. I have enough to worry about - such as getting more of a weekly allowance.!!!”
At what stage of moral development would you say this child is?
I don’t want to leave it out. Tell us please what you mean by that? Upgrade the analysis by explicating the role of desire, and how it correlates with desire, either directly or inversely. How IS it related?
Very good !! Well said ! You have here proposed a hypothesis to be tested by research. That’s just the kind of constructive contribution which we need more of. Moreno, keep up the good work.
Another argument for honesty is this:
Moral growth is encouraged by accurate feedback. If you are honest with a friend who asks you for an opinion you may be aiding in his/her moral development … if you frame it right.
At least, by speaking truth, you are a good role-model for others.
I never before stressed the honest way-of-life in anything I wrote, but it turns out to be what many, if not most, of the world’s population think of when you ask them “What does it mean to be ethical?” They come up with “Honesty.” (Also, they mention the values: fairness and responsibility.)
Sure, I Think a lot of White to not so White lying can be out of ‘kindness’ to the other person. Often it is not really so kind. Not simply because they do not get feedback, a taste of reality, but also because they are either being trained NOT to trust their sense you are not being fully honest with them or (really and or) they are cut off from you, in this one areas at least.
More discussion on tie topics of honesty and lying, with scenarios from life, are to be found in the booklet, Living The Good Life, pp. 40-42, a link to which is offered in the Signature below. It is the very first link listed there.
The discussion begins with a lady named Laurie arguing that “an honest lie” (by which she means what is commonly called “a"white lie"”) is at times appropriate. The author proceeds to refute that position by showing alternatives. Also, given some thought there is the the example of ‘Anne Frank hiding inside a house with the Nazis at the door asking direct questions about the whereabouts of Jews,’ A possible solution is offered to that dilemma as to how to save a life …without telling lies.
Of course, but I think such extreme situations can confuse people into thinking only such dramatic instances make it ok to lie. I think dishonesty with employers, for example, can often be just fine. This does not mean one can mess up the business, but if you have, for example, a boss who punishes people who disagree over less than important issues, it may be just fine to not voice one’s honest reactions. The Nazi situation is a situation with an extreme power differential and with evil having the greater power - at least locally and temporarily. Whenever there is a large power differential, plus some kind of maliciousness or dangerous ignorance, lying becomes a valid option.
Refer to the first post where I allowed for that. After noting the legal sanctions, and the pragmatic considerations and cost-benefit analyses, I then gave the Intrinsic perspective wherein I said that one who lives an ethical life might lie in extraordinary and extreme circumstances.
In other cases, changing the subject, or some other form of evasion to a direct question could be a way to go. Politicians often are very good at this!
Another option is answering a question with a question - turning the original question around in a form of verbal jiu-jitsu.
Yes, Moreno, many folks do fib; others are strongly tempted to do so. [And stage magicians deceive for a living. But that’s entertainment !] I am here holding up Honesty as an ideal for which to strive. It IS a high standard but it is worth coming as close to it as one can.
Sure, I noticed that you approved. I was analyzing the situation with the lying to the Nazis as part of arguing that it does nto have to be extreme or extraordinary circumstances. The work world, for example, often presents enough power differential to allow for lying to bosses.
Sure, if these work for you, fine. To me, if I am dealing with someone who, for example, does not treat me with respect, I have no obligation to be honest. It may be the best option,b ut it may not be, but I feel no obligation. I don’t think honesty has intrinsic value, but rather is a process with effects. To be honest, or even to pressure myself to come up with non-lies that are evasive (when a lie might be easier) is just a fine response to someone who does not respect me. Again, sometimes I will be honest. If being honest cannot harm me - and this harm can be incredibly mild compared to Nazis and hidden Jews - it can feel better and more expressive, for example, to be honest. But I feel no obligation to give obnoxious or abusive or disrespectufl people honest responses, even if the harm they might do is really quite ordinary.
I like the feeling of feeling like I can be honest - but this includes an assessment of the situation, the other person(s) etc. It’s a factor, but there are others.
The link did not work for me, so I found a quote. Some relationships must be recoiled from. As one simple criterion, some people do not know themselves. So they are ‘honest’ based on a skewed and shallow knowledge of themselves. If one is much more intimate with oneself, to be honest in relation to them is to create a damaging imbalance. At least if one follows a rule.
And that is not even dealing with the alcoholic boss, the sexually abusing parent and so on.
I can reframe the issue. In a lot of situations to be ‘honest’ with others is to be dishonest. To be honest implies that the other person is not abusive, can be trusted, that one is not afraid of what they do, given what they have done. Thus being ‘honest’ is a kind of lie, a pretending that the situation is different. It is cutting off natural, self-protective cautions - which is not honest either with those parts of ourselves that are in fact correctly assessing the situation. It is a kind of lying to oneself, but also a lie to the very person one is being ‘honest’ with, since it presents a skewed (openness) as if they were someone else. Of course being honest with such a person is always an option and it may be the right one, sometimes, but often it is not. With such people, of course, it is generally best to try to end the relationship, but this is not always possible and or the relationship may be limited in time in and of itself - dealing with a government bureaucrat, for example.
And of course such a way of looking at honesty could allow one to not be honest in situations where it might be better to be. But that is a part of being free, making mistakes, and just because some may not be able to deal with a flexible set of responses, rather than a moral rule to be always followed, does not mean that I might follow a rule and hurt myself - even if this hurt is fairly ordinary and mundane.
It’s not just extra thoughts, it’s extra thoughtless actions. Honest people are extremely good targets for misplaced thoughts. Honest people can’t even replace those thought to their rightful place of reaction. Total honesty is so totally worthless at times. Honestly. Total honesty is as stupid as absolute love. And yet totally necessary. Absolute love forecloses on the possibility or any attempt at a redirection, a revision for fear of violating love, on principle.
Some of this sounds like a state of confusion. Or, a therapist might size it up as denial and avoidance by means of rationalization for dishonesty.
I wouldn’t accuse you of that since I respect you too highly. [b]I am grateful that you participated in honest dialog and helped me to explore the implications of a life of honesty. I agree with Drusuz that, as he writes, “Honesty for a politician will only get him a very short career, honesty about a bomb in a big theater will only cause trampled casualties.”
At times it is actually best to withhold the “whole truth” as one thinks he sees it. However, none of us has ever seen the whole truth: the Universe is far too vast for us to even get a glimmer, given our relative size compared with its size.
A politician cannot help but deceive or withhold because s/he tells people what they want to hear in order to get liked and be elected; and makes promises they probably know (deep down) they can’t keep.[/b]
I understand your point to an extent; people with pointed awareness lie vulnerable. Clarity is needed.Though, the meaning seems a bit jumbled. I suppose I’m trying to configure thoughtless action to an honest person.
But at the fork in the road, I’d rather truly expose myself than keeping it astray.
I agree. That is why I offered an analysis of the concept “honesty.”
See the original post. And see the papers linked to below - which offer analyses of “integrity”, “morality”, “hypocrisy”, happiness", “success”, “peace”, “tyranny”, “justice”, etc.
I would argue that there are times in which you want to hurt someone. The idea of punishment and its strong persistence in America attest to this fact. Especially if your own survival depends on you hurting someone else, which would be self-defense.
Sometimes hurting someone by telling them a hurtful truth is necessary or part of a constructive criticism. For example, somebody may be offended if you tell them they’re not putting in enough effort in order to stay on a sports team. But by telling them so, you teach them something they might never have known otherwise, and also increase the chances of making your team in general stronger.
Skinner has shown that punishment of the human organism is ineffective and inefficient. The persistence of it in America is a manifestation of gross ignorance. There are better ways to handle things (with a few rare exceptions) as explained in the classic work by Karl Menninger - THE CRIME OF PUNISHMENT.
If someone takes offense at what you say, when you had no intention to hurt, that might be their problem - at not knowing how to interpret noise, or not knowing how to read where you are coming from, and what you really mean. Epictetus would have some advice to give the party who gets easily hurt. It is best for all of us to use “words that heal” [size=50] [There is a site on the internet with this title, if I am not mistaken.]
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Simon Blackburn is correct when he argues that any action that hurts is a wrong action. He is quite emphatic about that.
Such actions are unethical because they do not treat the recipient as an individual of uncountable value worthy of our highest respect, and thus they violate the very definition of the entire field.
I am sure some training, if the relevant persons were interested adn willing, could be very useful. But all over the World there are bosses who do not deserve honesty. Certainly not complete honesty. Where there is a strong Power differential and some character faults, honesty by those with less Power is a foolhardy rule.
I did read that. I suppose I was reacting to and ideal to strive towards. There are many situations where I do not strive to be honest. I do strive to increase the amount of situations where I can be honest, but a look out at the World will show this is not an easy task. Much of the time other things are priorities.
The person of good character does not so much follow rules; rather s/he tends naturally to ‘do the right thing.’ This is due to years of habit formation along ethical lines. …and knowing ‘which way is up’, namely that people are to be reverenced as having unountably-high value - even if the people are ignorant (of their own self-interest) and they act in counter-productive ways, such as not showing everyone respect.Then the person of good character is not striving to be honest, but striving to do the right thing, which may include lying. In fact in nazi Germany much of the striving of good people might very well have been towards lying, hiding, sneaking, and in Deep private being honest with a select few. Telling them to strive to be honest would just be misleading.
I suppose I don’t really care what hypothetical people in certain categories might Think.
Thank you. it was a rational argument in favor of dishonesty in some common contexts. Not all rational arguments are rationalizations.
So, should a politician strive to be honest. If they do, they likely will not get elected. then if they are a good person, they will not be in a position of Power and someone who lied will be. So what is moral for the politician?
I am nto against honesty. It requires less energy. It creates intimacy - but note, there are many people I do not want to be intimate with in any way. It allows for better cooperation and collaboration. And much more.
However it is really damaging when used in the presence of really rather mundanely unpleasant or immoral or selfish or Cold or rushed people. IOW it is a bad idea in many, many everyday situations. This is nto a rule I have. I can still say many honest things to people I do not trust. But I do not strive to be honest. If my gut + memory + reasoning offer no blocks, I tend to be honest. It is the easiest and fundamentally I avoid expending excess energy (lazy). But gut and memory and reasoning present good reasons all the time for me to withold, mislead and outright lie, especially when the relevant others have certain kinds of Power. And I err on the side of caution in many instances.
That claim at the end there needs to be argued for in more specific detail. The exceptional case with the Nazi SS officers is brought up often - but this is rare and exceptional ! {I get your point that your boss is akin to a Nazi, so let’s reflect upon this as a problem to be solved…}
As to how to solve the problem of your work situation, Moreno, maybe it would be advisable - if your boss is the owner of the business where you work - for you to change to a job at another place as soon as you can - and I realize that this is tough to do in the present economy; [size=150]or[/size] perhaps you might ask a friend to make an anonymous phone call to your bosss’s boss, saying something like this: “Did you know that [insert your boss’s name here] has this [mention the specific fault] which dampens morale and reduces productivity in the entire [shop, floor, office - whichever is appropriate…]? He ought to be replaced or in some way rehabbed to eliminate that flaw of his. A word to the wise is sufficient.” [Then hang up the phone.]
Let’s be clear about this: honesty is an ideal to approximate if at all possible. A person of good character, who considers “honesty” a virtue, would aspire to neither overdo nor under-do in life but would want to achieve a balance … I am here holding up Honesty as an ideal for which to strive. It IS a high standard but it is worth coming as close to it as one can. It should be noted that the person of good character does not so much follow rules; rather s/he tends naturally to ‘do the right thing’ due to years of habit formation along ethical lines, as well as knowing ‘which way is up’, namely that people are to be regarded as having unountably-high value - even if the people are ignorant (of their own self-interest) and they act in counter-productive ways, such as not showing everyone respect. The explanations for this, and further details of the argument, are to be found in the articles and essays linked to in the following paragraphs. Check out those selections to enable a deeper understanding of the Ethical orientation.
A man’s trapped in a flooded building. His leg is wedged underneath fallen debris which you aren’t strong enough to remove. The water is rising and without your intervention the man will drown. You have an axe. Amputating his leg will hurt. The man pleads for you to do it.
Is it wrong to amputate his leg? And would you advise against it?
I can see where you’re coming from, but I believe whilst hurting others should be avoided when there’s kinder alternatives, some situations call for one to hurt another.
I knew I could depend upon you to find the extreme, exceptional case, Joe.
I would use the axe to clear and remove the debris pinning the man down…but that’s just me. {Also, I have a really strong guy working right next door; so I would call him over to help me…}
You write: “whilst hurting others should be avoided when there’s kinder alternatives, some situations call for one to hurt another”
Yes. Ethics, however, directs us to minimize suffering, and thus we ought avoid hurting another individual as far as possible under the circumstances.
So, Joe, we agree - after all.
A universal ethics, serving as sort of a world constitution, would contain principles such as this:
Exhibit compassion and respect for all others regardless…
Encourage and appreciate what others can offer. Actively find ways to accommodate people from other cultures, with different family values. Promote human rights over corporate rule; as well as oppose governmental infringement on the inherent right of the people.
[size=85]I know people do not practice this now …so please, folks, don’t inform us of that.[/size]
You really get it, Moreno.
perhaps you might ask a friend to make an anonymous phone call to your bosss’s boss, saying something like this: “Did you know that [insert your boss’s name here] has this [mention the specific fault] which dampens morale and reduces productivity in the entire [shop, floor, office - whichever is appropriate…]? He ought to be replaced or in some way rehabbed to eliminate that flaw of his. A word to the wise is sufficient.” [Then hang up the phone.] 
The explanations for this, and further details of the argument, are to be found in the articles and essays linked to in the following paragraphs. Check out those selections to enable a deeper understanding of the Ethical orientation. 
