Lying Chapter 4 - Olena's

Weighing The
Consequences
Lying, Chapter 4
Sissela Bok
Contemporary Moral Problems
Professor Douglas Olena

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Chapter Preface
“What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie
for the sake of the good and for the Christian church [
…] a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies
would not be against God, he would accept them.”
Martin Luther
Falsehood, take it by itself, consider it as not being
accompanied by any other material circumstances, nor
therefore productive of any material effects, can never,
upon the principle of utility, constitute any offense at all.
Combined with other circumstances, there is scarce any
sort of pernicious effect which it may not be instrumental
in producing. Jeremy Bentham

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Chapter Outline
The Role of Consequences
• Systems

The Role of Consequences
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48 According to Erasmus forbidding all lies is
contrary to common sense.
“For utilitarians, an act is more or less justifiable
according to the goodness or badness of its
consequences.”
“Their procedure for weighing moral choice is very
similar to ways in which most of us do in fact
approach many situations of moral conflict—close,
therefore, to common sense.”

The Role of Consequences
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48 Sidgwick justifies lying based on the consequences
of the lie in that particular case.
49 “Utilitarianism generates no controversies over
how to define lying.”
“Utilitarianism simply requires an evaluation of
courses of action, be they deceptive or not.”
“In choosing whether or no to lie, we do weigh
benefits against harm and happiness against
unhappiness.”

The Role of Consequences
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49 As soon as the questions become complicated the
utilitarian method offers us no help. It becomes
increasingly difficult to measure the consequences.
Utilitarians are in as much conflict with other
utilitarians over complex issues as anyone else.
50 “A second reason to be wary of a simple-seeming
utilitarian calculation is that it often appears to imply
that lies, apart from their resultant harm and
benefits, are in themselves neutral.

The Role of Consequences
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50 The principle of veracity contradicts this facile
treatment of lies.
However for the utilitarian there is a way out of this
dilemma.
“There would be no need to see this presumption as
something mysterious or abstract, nor to say that lies
are somehow bad ‘in themselves.’ Utilitarians could
view the negative weight instead as a correction,
endorsed by experience, of the inaccurate and biased
calculations of consequences made by any one liar.”

The Role of Consequences
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51 Giving the money to the hospital instead of to the
jockey club as promised.
Though in this artificial scenario it is difficult to see
any negative effects, the effects to the liar are
underestimated.
52 There are “risks to the liar of personal discomfort
and loss of integrity, of a greater likelihood, however
slight, of having to lie again to shore up the first lie;
and of a somewhat diminished resistance to lying in
the future.”

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Systems
52, 53 “Many have labored to erect… systems: to find
a method by which to judge moral choice, or some
single principle from which judgments can be
derived, or some hierarchy among principles so as to
resolve conflicts.”
“In this way, methods, principles, and priority rules
have sprung up, forming elaborate and hotly debated
structures.”

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Systems
53 The problem with systems is that “when we have
to make difficult moral choices they give us little
help.”
“Unfortunately, there is no evidence that systems, or
overriding principles such as utility, or priority rules
among principles, lead us to clear conclusions, much
as the mind strains for such a result.”

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Systems
54 “Uncertainty and imprecision beset hard moral
choices.”
“I believe that any method, to be of help, should
originate with the actual choices people make. It
should have to look at the actual excuses they give,
to themselves and to others, the arguments by which
they appeal to principles, and the means by which
they evaluate such arguments when others make
them.”

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Systems
55 “The questions which I shall ask of justifications
advanced for different lies will, in the end, be
questions of benefit and harm, questions asking why
lying matters and what it does to individuals and to
institutions.”

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Systems
56 “A good place to begin is with the large category
of white lies. It demonstrates both the futility of
trying to rule out lies altogether and the shallowness
of the intuitive utilitarian approach.”