When Is a Lie Justified?

The question sounded simple, but the two ethicists knew that its simplicity was deceptive.

'A lie, as I understand it, is any statement designed to make another person believe what the speaker knows to be false.'

'I would accept that definition, and add that a lie is wrong precisely because it treats the listener as a means, not an end.'

Reinholt, who defended duty-based ethics, held that honesty is a rule that admits no exceptions.

'If we permit lying whenever it seems useful, then trust, which holds society together, begins to dissolve.'

'Suppose, however, that a murderer asks where your friend is hiding.'

'Surely, if telling the truth would cost an innocent life, then silence or even deception becomes the more moral choice.'

Vasquez, a consequentialist, measured actions by their outcomes rather than by their conformity to rules.

'Grant that the case is hard; even so, once we allow ourselves to lie for good ends, we appoint ourselves judges of which ends are good.'

'And history suggests that people who lie for noble reasons are rarely as noble as they believe.'

'That is a fair warning, yet a rule that forbids all deception, whatever the consequences, seems less like morality than like stubbornness.'

The disagreement turned on whether an act's rightness lies in its intention or in its effects.

'Consider a doctor who softens a diagnosis so that a frightened patient does not lose all hope.'

'Even there, I would argue, the patient has a right to the truth about his own life.'

'A kindness that depends on deception is a kindness that treats the other as a child.'

'Provided the patient truly cannot bear the news, is a small mercy really so corrosive?'

Neither wished to defend cruelty, and both distrusted the comfortable lie that flatters the liar.

'Perhaps we agree on this much: a lie may sometimes prevent harm, but it always leaves a residue of distrust.'

'I can accept that, so long as we admit that the truth, told without compassion, can wound as deeply as any lie.'

What counted as a lie, they realised, depended on a prior account of what we owe one another.

'If honesty is a duty, then it is a duty we owe to persons, not to abstractions.'

'And if it is owed to persons, then it cannot be suspended merely because the truth is inconvenient.'

Each conditional built upon the last, until the argument resembled a staircase with no obvious landing.

'Were we to lie only when it were truly necessary, the difficulty would be deciding who defines necessity.'

'That difficulty, I concede, is real; but refusing to decide is itself a decision, and often a costly one.'

The two ethicists left the question open, as perhaps it must remain.

'A moral life, in the end, is not a formula but a practice of judgement under uncertainty.'

And if judgement is unavoidable even in matters of truth, one might wonder whether a machine, which follows only rules, could ever judge, or understand, at all.