Wolf,
What are the lies and who's telling them?
Did you or did you not sign the infamous 'flyer'?
Was this 'flyer' or as you refer to it, 'brochure', truthful?
Who were the six who signed it?
Are you MAN enough to admit your mistakes, or are you a lyin' and CRYIN'WOLF?
-Mike Foulks
--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
Replying to:
Oh, what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive!
A lie is a type of DECEPTION in the form of an untruthful statement with the intention to deceive, often with the further intention to maintain a secret or reputation, or to avoid punishment.
To lie is to state something one believes is false with the intention that it be taken for the truth by someone else. A liar is a person who is lying, who has lied, or who lies repeatedly.
Lying is typically used to refer to deceptions in oral or written communication.
Other forms of deception, such as disguises or forgeries, are generally not considered lies, though the underlying intent may be the same; however, even a true statement can be considered a lie if the person making that statement is doing so to deceive. In this situation, it is the intent of being untruthful rather than the truthfulness of the statement itself that is considered.
TYPES OF LIES
The various types of lies include the following:
BALD-FACED LIE
A bald-faced (or barefaced) lie is a lie told when it is obvious to all concerned that it is a lie. For example, the child with chocolate all over her face who denies having eaten the cake is a bald-faced liar. The adjective "bald-faced" indicates that no attempt has been made to hide the fact that it is a lie.
LYING BY OMISSION
Lying by omission is when an important fact is omitted, deliberately leaving another person with a misconception. This includes failures to correct pre-existing misconceptions.
LIE-TO-CHILDREN
A lie-to-children is an expression, or more specifically a euphemism, that describes a lie told to make an adult subject, such as sex, acceptable to children. The most common example is "The stork brought you." or hiding honesty and truth e.g. I will tell you when you are a little bit older.
WHITE LIE
A white lie would cause no discord if it were uncovered and offers some benefit to the liar or the hearer, or both. As a concept, it is largely defined by local custom and cannot be clearly separated from regular lies with any authority. As such the term may have differing meanings in different cultures. Lies which are harmless but told for no reason are generally not called white lies.
EMERGENCY LIE
Emergency lie is a different kind of white lie, which is employed when the truth may not be told because, for example, harm to a third party would come of it. An example of such an emergency lie would be a neighbor lying to an enraged husband about the whereabouts of his unfaithful wife, because said husband might reasonably be expected to inflict physical violence should he encounter his wife in person.
PERJURY
Perjury is the act of lying or making verifiably false statements on a material matter under oath or affirmation in a court of law or in any of various sworn statements in writing. Perjury is a crime because the witness has sworn to tell the truth and, for the credibility of the court, witness testimony must be relied on as being truthful.
BLUFFING
Bluffing is an act of deception that is not usually seen as immoral because it takes place in the context of a game where this kind of deception is consented to in advance by the players. For instance, a gambler who deceives other players into thinking he has different cards than he really does, or an athlete who indicates he will move left and then actually dodges right, are not considered to be lying. In these situations, deception is accepted as a tactic and even expected.
MISLEADING
Misleading is when a person tells a statement that isn't an outright lie, but still has the purpose of making someone believe in an untruth.
DISSEMBLING
"Dissemble" is a polite term for lying, it can be considered as just misleading but is also used as a euphemism for lying.
CAREFUL SPEAKING
Careful speaking is distinct from the above in that the speaker wishes to avoid imparting certain information, or admitting certain facts, and additionally, does not want to 'lie' when doing so. Careful speaking involves using carefully-phrased statements to give a 'half-answer': one that does not actually 'answer' the question, but still provides an appropriate (and accurate) answer based on that question. As with 'misleading', above, 'careful speaking' is not outright lying.
EXAGGERATION
Exaggeration is when the most fundamental aspect(s) of a statement is true, but the degree to which it is true is not correct.
JOCOSE LIES
Jocose lies are lies which are meant in jest and are usually understood as such by all present parties. Sarcasm can be one example of this. A more elaborate example can be seen in storytelling traditions which are present in some places, where the humor comes from the storyteller's insistence that he or she is telling the absolute truth despite all evidence to the contrary (i.e. tall tale). There is debate about whether these are "real lies", with different philosophers holding different views (see below).
Augustine of Hippo divided lies into eight kinds, listed in order of severity:
1. Lies in religious teaching.
2. Lies that harm others and help no one.
3. Lies that harm others and help someone.
4. Lies told for the pleasure of lying.
5. Lies told to "please others in smooth discourse."
6. Lies that harm no one and that help someone.
7. Lies that harm no one and that save someone's life.
8. Lies that harm no one and that save someone's "purity."
Augustine believed that "jocose lies" are not, in fact, lies.
PSYCHOLOGY OF LYING
The capacity to lie is noted early and nearly universally in human development. Social psychology and developmental psychology are concerned with the theory of mind, which people employ to simulate another's reaction to their story and determine if a lie will be believable. The most commonly cited milestone, what is known as Machiavellian intelligence, is at the age of about four and a half years, when children begin to be able to lie convincingly. Before this, they seem simply unable to comprehend that anyone doesn't see the same view of events that they do -- and seem to assume that there is only one point of view: their own -- that must be integrated into any given story.
Young children learn from experience that stating an untruth can avoid punishment for misdeeds, before they develop the theory of mind necessary to understand why it works. In this stage of development, children will sometimes tell fantastic and unbelievable lies because they lack the conceptual framework to judge whether a statement is believable or even to understand the concept of believability.
When children first learn how lying works, they lack the moral understanding of when to refrain from doing it. It takes years of watching people lie and the results of lies to develop a proper understanding. Propensity to lie varies greatly between children, some doing so habitually and others being habitually honest. Habits in this regard are likely to change into early adulthood.
Pseudo logia fantastica is a term applied by psychiatrists to the behavior of habitual or compulsive lying.
MORALITY OF LYING
The philosophers Saint Augustine, as well as Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant, condemned all lying. However, Thomas Aquinas also had an argument for lying. According to all three, there are no circumstances in which one may lie. One must be murdered, suffer torture, or endure any other hardship, rather than lie, even if the only way to protect oneself is to lie. Each of these philosophers gave several arguments against lying, all compatible with each other. Among the more important arguments are:
1. Lying is a PERVERSION of the natural faculty of speech, the natural end of which is to communicate the thoughts of the speaker.
2. When one lies, one undermines trust in society.
CONSEQUENCES OF LYING
Once a lie has been told there can be two alternative consequences: it may be discovered or remain undiscovered.
* Discovery of a lie tends to discredit other statements by the same speaker and can lead to social or legal sanctions against the speaker, such as ostracizing or conviction for perjury.
* An undiscovered lie is a latent danger to the liar who is probably aware that it may be discovered, especially if that would lead to the sanctions above, as when the liar has obtained some unjust advantage by telling the lie.
PARADOXES ABOUT LYING
Within any scenario where dualistic (e.g., yes/no, black/white) answers are always given, a person who we know is consistently lying would paradoxically be a source of truth. There are many such paradoxes, the most famous one being known as the liar paradox, commonly expressed as "This sentence is a lie," or "This sentence is false." The so-called Epimenides paradox — "All Cretans are liars," as stated by Epimenides the Cretan — is a forerunner of this, though its status as a paradox is disputed. A class of related logic puzzles is known as knights and knaves, in which the goal is to determine who of a group of people, is lying and who is telling the truth.
REPRESENTATIONS OF LYING
* Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio is a wooden puppet often led into trouble by his propensity to lie. His nose grows with every lie. A long nose has thus become a caricature of liars.
* In the manga and anime "One Piece," one of the main characters -- Usopp -- lies and tells tales regularly. He has an exceptionally long nose.
* In the film Liar Liar, the lawyer Fletcher Reed (Jim Carrey) cannot lie for 24 hours due to a wish of his son which magically came true.
COVERING UP LIES
Sir Walter Scott's famous couplet "Oh, what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive!" describes the often difficult procedure of covering up a lie so that it is not detected at some future time.
In "Human, All Too Human" philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche suggested that those who refrain from lying may do so only because of the difficulty involved in maintaining the lie. This is consistent with his general philosophy that divides or ranks people according to strength and ability; thus, some people tell the truth only out of weakness. A similar explanation is given by Paul Ekman in Why Don't We Catch Liars?
SOURCES
* Adler, J. E., “Lying, deceiving, or falsely implicating”, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 94 (1997), 435-452.
* Aquinas, T., St., “Question 110: Lying”, in Summa Theologiae (II.II), Vol. 41, Virtues of Justice in the Human Community (London, 1972).
* Augustine, St., "On Lying" and "Against Lying", in R. J. Deferrari, ed., Treatises on Various Subjects (New York, 1952).
* Bok, S., Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, 2d ed. (New York, 1989).
* Carson, Thomas L. (2006). "The Definition of Lying." Nous 40:284-306.
* Chisholm, R. M., and T. D. Feehan, “The intent to deceive”, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 74 (1977),143-159.
* Davids, P. H., Bruce, F.F., Brauch, M.T., & W.C. Kaiser, Hard Sayings of the Bible (InterVarsity Press, 1996).
* Fallis, Don. (200
. "What is Lying?" Paper presented at the Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association.
* Flyvbjerg, B., "Design by Deception." Harvard Design Magazine, no. 22, Spring/Summer 2005, 50-59. 
* Frankfurt, H. G., “The Faintest Passion”, in Necessity, Volition and Love (Cambridge, MA: CUP, 1999).
* Frankfurt, Harry, On Bull**** (Princeton University Press, 2005).
* Kant, I., Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, The Metaphysics of Morals and "On a supposed right to lie from philanthropy", in Immanuel Kant, Practical Philosophy, eds. Mary Gregor and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: CUP, 1986).
* Lakoff, George, Don't Think of an Elephant, (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004).
* Mahon, J. E., “Kant on Lies, Candour and Reticence”, Kantian Review, Vol. 7 (2003), 101-133.
* Mahon, J. E., “Lying”, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd ed., Vol. 5 (Farmington Hills, Mich.: Macmillan Reference, 2006), p. 618-19
* Mahon, J. E., “Kant and the Perfect Duty to Others Not to Lie”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, Vol. 14, No. 4 (2006), 653-685.
* Mahon, J. E., “Kant and Maria von Herbert: Reticence vs. Deception”, Philosophy, Vol. 81, No. 3 (2006), 417-44.
* Mannison, D. S., “Lying and Lies”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 47 (1969), 132-144.
* O'Neill, Barry. (2003). "A Formal System for Understanding Lies and Deceit." Revision of a talk for the Jerusalem Conference on Biblical Economics, June 2000.
* Siegler, F. A., “Lying”, American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 3 (1966), 128-136.
* Sorensen, Roy. (2007). "Bald-Faced Lies! Lying Without the Intent to Deceive." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 88:251-64.
The whole city of Chicago knows that howling wolfgang is a chronic liar. I never seen him in church, because he hangs out at Ohare staging area because he's busy telling lies to the cabdrivers. Wolfgang sells his soul to the devil.
