Lying is intentionally misleading a single person or group of people with a deceptive statement or action. “The moral question of whether you are lying or not is not settle by established by establishing the truth or falsity of what you say. In order to settle this question, we must know whether you intend your statement to mislead.(Chapter 1 pg. 6) When it comes down to trying to decide whether you should justify or reject a lie there are several steps you should take. You need to be able to defend your arguments for your lie in a public setting against an audience or your peers, or what Bok considers “reasonable persons”. You cannot just be able to justify your lie to yourself because then it is automatically invalid. As humans we tend to …show more content…
Can you do something else instead and come out with a positive outcome that doesn’t involve lying? There are times in the world where it is necessary to tell a lie or deceive someone. But if you are going to tell a lie you need to look at the long term repercussions of that said lie. “If lies and truthful statements appear to achieve the same result or appear to be as desirable to the person contemplating lying the lie should be ruled out”. (Chapter 2 pg. 31)
Next you need to look at what the context of your lie is? The circumstances that form the reason for the lie, because you cannot fully understand your reason for lying until you look at all aspects surrounding the lie. Are you doing it to anger someone? Is it just a little white lie? “Many small subterfuges may not even be intended to mislead”. (chapter 5 pg. 58) Is it to save some one’s life? These circumstances that surround the lie matter to the motive behind the
…show more content…
As he reads through the case he begins to realize that the officers have arrested a well-known serial rapist known in the media as “The Cross Country Rapist”. Ten years ago The Cross Country Rapist was known for using high doses of GHB to drug women before raping, them all over the country. Officers ran DNA against past cases after the man was arrested and they matched 8 other cases in 6 states. The prosecutor keeps reading more into the evidence and after reading all the reports of the past victims, he realizes that there was no way this recent victim was raped by him. When the victim had her blood taken after reporting the rape and her blood showed levels of GHB in it, but they were far too low, and there was not DNA left at the scene. As a prosecutor he really wants to be the one that puts this guy away. The statutes of limitations have run out on all the past cases and he knows they have the serial rapist in custody. The prosecutor knows that he shouldn’t put a victim on the stand and have her lie about who raped her. Should he keep the information he knows to himself and try the case and put away a known serial
According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, lying means to tell an account of an untrue event or give false information.
At the same time, however, even though people have the tendency to be dishonest, not all lies are legally prosecutable. When asked to judge another person’s appearance, for example, some tend to lie in favor of that person, just to make the person feel better. When trying to avoid doing chores, some tend to lie about being too occupied with homework. Those are what I considered to be lies in the names of politeness and laziness; lies that cause no harm to others.
The idea of whether there is a good lie and whether a lie can be justified has a different answer depending on the situation. This idea can be explored through the texts of Old School and The Odyssey. In Old School, the protagonist deceives his elite school and Ernest Hemingway by plagiarizing a story that wasn’t his and submitting it to a story contest. Odysseus from The Odyssey also deceives his family and the suitors by pretending to be a beggar. However, the motives of each character are different and that plays an important role on whether their lies are justified.
Although it is considered wrong to tell lies, it seems that literature has offered us situations where telling lies isn’t necessarily bad. Of course, lying often has a tragic outcome, but not always for the person or people who told the lie or lies. Oftentimes, these unfortunate outcomes are directed at the person about whom the lie was told. Furthermore, these stories have explained that dishonesty can result in success for both the liar and the target. Maybe we have been teaching the wrong values to our children.
Have you ever wondered how some athletes have gotten so good at a certain sport? Have you ever thought about what they did in order for them to get this good? For some the answer is simple; workout and train. But for others the answer is different; the use of performance enhancing drugs such as steroids. There are some people that argue that steroids should be legalized and allowed in professional sports. Other people argue that steroids should not be allowed. Today I am going to state my opinion and justify my reason. Steroids should not be allowed in professional sports because it can be very dangerous to the athlete’s health, it is a way to gain and un-fair advantage and it can be dangerous in both social and physical aspects.
Lying is simply an act of not telling the truth, and this definition of lying will be used in future sections of this paper. There are three groups of lies t...
She lies to the bank so she doesn’t get charged with “$60 in overdraft fees”, out-and-out lie. She does not tell the truth to her husband about her day so he does not “[keel] over,” white lie. She lies to her clients so that she does not get fired for telling the truth about the reason she is late. She lies to her friends so that her friend’s feelings do not get hurt, (Ericsson 181).All of these are justifiable because of the intent. There are consequences to telling the truth in these cases and thus Ericsson needs to lie to avoid the
The article “Rejecting All Lies: Immanuel Kant by Sissela Bok also presents the same argument. Sissela Bok presents the ideas and viewpoints of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher. Kant believed that lying was bad and that “truthfulness is statements which cannot be avoided is the formal duty of an individual to everyone, however great may be the disadvantage.” He believed lying was always bad no matter the situation. Kant said that lying “vitiates the source of law,” or makes the source of law weaker. Our whole purpose of the government is to serve justice and if everyone is lying in court, it gets harder to serve justice. The purpose of the government would not be fulfilled if people lie. According to Kant, lying also “harms the liar himself, by destroying his human dignity and making him more worthless even than a small thing.” Kant says lying makes the liar lose his or her pride and honor. And I think it probably makes the liar feel bad and makes them feel guilty. In the article “Teens Do their Share of Lying” by Loretta Ragsdell, a quote from Sabrina, a college freshman, takes about how she lied...
One may concede that if a person lies to another on the premise of a selfish goal where they are the only person who receives benefits, such as a person who borrows money without the intent of returning it, as in Kant’s example in section 4:22, they are effectively treating that other person strictly as a means to some other end, and therefore defying the second formulation which dictates that others should not be viewed purely as a means to other ends. However, as with the first formulation, there is the possibility for lying to admit of degrees and take the form of an imperfect duty. If one supposes that lying to another could be beneficial, as in a case where a small, permissible lie may boost one’s confidence and therefore chances of success, or similarly when promising insincerely may cause someone to go out and gain valuable life experience they would not have gained otherwise, the lie has the potential to prevent harm, but to actually breed positive consequences. In such a case, lying could again be seen as an imperfect duty, unlike the perfect duty insisted by Kant, and should not only avoid blame, but be celebrated as it is helping another
She adopted a broad definition of lying and she defined it as the statement that is made in order to deceive. Bok seems to distance herself from the views of both Kant and Aristotle in relation to the issues of lying. She disagrees with Kant that lying is always wrong and she states that there are situations when lying is necessary especially where it can save a life. On an equal measure she totally disagrees with Aristotle that an individual should balance between the benefits and harms to decide if lying is morally justifiable (Bok 54). He disagrees with the Aristotle approach because it ignores the damages that is done to the liar by trying to cover up such as loss of credibility if the truth is realized, use of a lot of energy in attempt to cover up, damaging of overall trust in the communication in the society and it increases a propensity to lie in the future. In addition, Bok also points out that the liar is also likely to be biased on the sense that he or she is likely to underestimate risks of being discovered and at the same time overestimate consequential benefit of lying (Bok 63). The liar is also likely to ignore the lies that become institutional and those that are isolated
Lying is when you purposely tell someone something you believe or know is false. If you told someone something you thought was true, but then it ended up being a lie, you simply have just given false information. Lying is obviously not an ideal thing to do, but sometimes it may be necessary. Here are the four types of lies.
Can you remember the last time someone lied to you? Or how about the last time you lied to someone else? Did you ever stop and ask yourself why? There are so many different reasons that a person might lie. Maybe a lie about something to keep oneself out of trouble, or even a lie to impress other people. But either way there are always going to be serious consequences or effects of lying.
Secondly, it is okay to be untruthful if you are trying to protect people. In certain situations, it is safer, and more practical for you to tell a lie rather than putting a loved one in jeopardy. To illustrate you may be in a situation where you are in a serious or dangerous situation, and you do not what anyone else involved, to keep them safe. For example, if you are getting held up for ransom, would you tell the truth to a loved one and get them involved, or lie and keep them safe? The obvious answer is to keep them safe at all costs, even if it means lying. Also, you do not want to put someone in harm’s way, so it would be ...
This sort of lie is known as a white lie. White lies are accepted by the public since they are useful for everyone who needs to hear one. Little white lies are frequently overlooked. The general public tells such a significant number of white lies they scarcely perceive themselves as lying at all. For instance, white lies incorporate telling others they are fine (when they are not), they like somebody's hair (when they honestly do not), and so on. These lies build up, one on top of another, making a slippery slope. Once individuals disclose to themselves these lies are innocuous, telling larger lies becomes plainly
A story has numerous important effects in our daily lives. It has been one of the most effective source of inspiration know to man. In this I would like to tell you about the something which was taught to me in childhood. “Behavior” the word defined as “a person who was well treated to represents themselves to others. This thing is generally comes from our family; the one quote was I always remember “Telling a lie and boast may end up in trouble”. When I tell lie to someone this quote comes into my mind. I can still remember when I was six year old and whenever I had made any mischief by saying a lie to family, my grandmother used to tell this story in brief.