Jennifer Saul

 St Athanasius, meeting his persecutors, who ask if Athanasius is nearby: “He is not far from here”; rather than “He’s nowhere near”.

 “There is no sexual relationship” rather than “we have never had a sexual relationship”.

“I had coffee with him yesterday” not “He’s fine”

 Why should one method of deception be morally better than another?  I will argue that the preference is a mistake: Holding all else fixed, acts of misleading are not morally better than acts of lying. Except in very special circumstances, we might as well just go ahead and lie.

“Nope, no peanuts” NOT morally better than “It’s totally safe for you” “Does it have peanuts? I have a deadly allergy.”

 Treat this as an extreme case.  Make a weaker claim: Misleading, except in certain special circumstances, is better than lying.

 I will argue that even the weaker claim can’t be justified. The weaker claim: Misleading, except in certain special circumstances, is better than lying.

 When you are lied to, the liar bears total responsibility for your false belief. When you are merely misled, you bear part of the responsibility. This makes lying morally worse than misleading.

 Athanasius says “Athanasius is not far from here”. This is true. But audience infers to a false proposition: that the man in front of them is not Athanasius. Audience is partly responsible for their own deception.  If Athanasius had said “Athanasius is far away”, he would have said something false. Audience is not at all responsible for their deception.

 That audience is more responsible for their false belief in mere misleading case.  I will argue that this does not make lying morally worse.  Key reason: We don’t think that the victim bearing partial responsibility for something bad makes the act less bad.

 Reckless: walks through dangerous area, late at night, money hanging out of pockets.  Careful: only walks through safe areas in the daytime, money carefully concealed.  Both are mugged.  Reckless bears partial responsibility, careful doesn’t.  This doesn’t make the mugging less bad, or the mugger less culpable.

 Lying is more of a breach of faith than misleading, because audiences have a right to expect that what is said is true. They don’t have the same right with respect to what is otherwise conveyed.

 I will argue it’s not always true that audiences lack a right to expect that what is merely conveyed, not said, is true.  My focus: conversational implicature. In cases of conversational implicature, audiences have every right to expect that what is merely conveyed is true.

 Claims that are conversationally implicated are ones that the audience must assume the speaker to believe to understand them as cooperative.  Example: Letter of reference for PhD candidate says nothing but “Cedric has nice handwriting”.  Implicates that Cedric is not a very impressive student.

 My office heater is fine, but last year it was not, and I had to order USB gloves to keep warm.

 “Does your office heater work?”  “I had to order USB gloves to keep warm.”  In order to see my as cooperative, audience is required to assume me to be implicating that my heater doesn’t work. They have every right to expect this claim to be true.

 Sometimes we have a legitimate need to deceive. This need generates a norm of conversation that truthfulness is more important with respect to what we say than what we otherwise convey. This norm of conversation ‘acquires moral force’ (Adler).  Promising. But why this norm? Why not simply have a lessened demand for truthfulness when one has a morally good reason to deceive?

 Merely misleading is not morally preferable to lying.  But decisions to lie or mislead are often morally revealing.  And under certain special circumstances, merely misleading is morally preferable to lying.

 A decision to merely mislead may reveal an admirable desire to mitigate the wrong of one’s deception.  Or a decision to mislead could reveal a desire to maintain deniability for a bad act.  A decision to lie might reveal that one doesn’t care about morality.  Or a decision to lie could reveal that one is willing to take the most direct route to a morally important goal.

 Legal context: witnesses are required to truthfully answer precisely the question put to them, and lawyers are expected to make sure that everything important is explicitly spelled out. Since this rule is known to all, and accepted by all, lying is far worse than merely misleading.  “Have you ever burned a cross on the lawn of an interracial couple?”  “No.”  [Had tried to get it to light but failed.]

 Other contexts that are relevantly like courtroom: possibly adversarial political interviews.  Contexts where an agreement has been made to avoid lying, but not mere misleading.

 Suppose you feel the need to deceive.  Unless you’re in a special context, there’s no need to carefully merely mislead.  If you do choose to carefully merely mislead, you should not think that you are doing something better.  If you have been convinced by my arguments, that choice is no longer an admirable one for you: you no longer think that you will thereby minimize wrongdoing.  So– if you’re going to deceive-- go ahead and lie.