Second Truth Essay

  

Why Do We Tell the Truth?

Part Two

            Human beings can tell the truth; that is, they have the ability, in many situations, to discover what is true, and we have the ability, through language, to tell others what we know.  Both parts, discovering truth and communicating truth, have fascinated philosophers.

Sitting at my desk this morning, I look out the window and see my granddaughter’s car, a red Prius, sitting in the driveway.  Bekah went with her grandmother Sarah to run errands in McMinnville.  They took Sarah’s car, leaving the Prius here.  I see the car; I know where it is.  The Prius is here, not somewhere else, not in Wyoming.  I know this.

Of course, philosophers have worried much about these claims.  People fall into error, even about seemingly obvious truths.  Is it possible that Bekah bought a replica Prius and is fooling me by leaving the second one in the driveway?  Maybe someone slipped a hallucinogen into my morning tea.  Or maybe I’m dreaming.  Do we really know anything?  Does knowledge require certainty?  These and other questions are part of epistemology, the philosophy of knowing.  Skeptics say the problems are insurmountable; we never really know anything.  I think most philosophers would agree with my Intro to Philosophy professor, Arthur Roberts, that human beings often rightly distinguish truth from error.  As I said in part one of this series, we tell the truth because we can, in the sense that it is possible.

Now we turn from epistemology to a moral question.  Why should we tell the truth?

First, sharing information benefits us.  From prehistoric hunter-gatherers to contemporary engineers and builders, truthful cooperation has enormously multiplied the goods achieved by human labor.  What percentage of ancient bison-hunters brought down their quarry without the help of their fellows?  The modern engineer—whether she builds airplanes, apartment buildings, or computer chips—is even more dependent on others for the success of her work.  If we don’t tell the truth, cooperation collapses.  In the language of moral philosophy, truth-telling is “utile.” 

In philosophy class I sometimes asked students to imagine a world with no moral rule favoring truth-telling.  What would the world be like if deception, in whatever form it might occur, were as acceptable as telling the truth?  To illustrate, I ask: what time is it?  The student, who wants to escape from a philosophy lecture, says, “3:50” (the scheduled end of class).  But this is hardly imaginative enough.  The reply could just as well be, “Bananas.”  The point of the silly example is this: If there is no preference for truth-telling, human beings would not speak languages; they would grunt.

An important theory in moral philosophy, utilitarianism, hangs everything on this observation.  It is right to tell the truth, say the utilitarians, because it increases overall utility.  Everyone knows this, which is why every culture in the history of the world has had a moral preference for truth-telling, usually expressed as a rule against lying.  Further, the utilitarians say, their theory explains why every culture also approves of some exceptions to the moral preference for truth-telling.  Precisely in those cases where deception would produce (or protect) more utility than telling the truth it is right to lie.

            Is that it?  Do we tell the truth because it is useful?

            Immanuel Kant objected vigorously against what he called the “serpent-windings” of utilitarianism.  Of course, truth-telling is useful, he would say, but there is a deeper reason why we must not lie.

            Consider an experience common to many parents, babysitters, and other childcare providers.  (This is my illustration, not Kant’s.)  We teach very young children to tell the truth, sometimes punishing them for their lies.  And our pedagogy works; children tell us the truth most of the time.  But then comes an unsettling discovery.  Evidence emerges that the child—usually an older child, perhaps a young teen—lied “successfully,” deceiving the adult.  Only after some time was the deception found out.  In such cases the adult may ask, “Why did you do that?”

            In one sense, the answer is obvious.  The child deceived the adult to gain some privilege, avoid some consequence, or achieve some result that the adult would not have permitted otherwise.  The adult already knows this.  Her question—Why did you do that? —is not merely an inquiry into the child’s goal.  It’s more personal.  The adult’s real question is, “Why did you treat me that way?”  In deceiving the caregiver, the teen treats the adult as nothing more than a thing, a tool, or an obstacle.  Recognizing her own feelings, the caregiver might say, “It’s not the lie that hurts; it’s the disrespect.”

            That’s Kant’s point.  We deceive other people because we don’t trust them to do what we want them to do.  Deception is a form of manipulation, a kind of power over other people.  The parent/caregiver in my illustration feels “disrespected.”  According to Kant, that feeling points to a deep truth. 

Kant thought that human beings are, at the root, rational beings.  As such, we each have dignity.  Each rational being is capable of discovering the moral law (Kant: “Act only according to that maxim that you can, at the same time, will that it be a universal law”), because the moral law is essentially rational.  Each time we encounter a human being, we ought to think something along these lines: “Wow!  This is a rational being.  This being can recognize the one, universally binding, moral law!  I must treat this being with deep respect, respect I would offer to Gabriel the archangel or any other rational moral being.”

            I think Kant has something right here, and I suspect that most people would agree if they reflected on times when other people have lied to them.  We feel the disrespect when someone manipulates us with lies.  We resent it when politicians deceive us (however much we have come to expect political lies).  And there is almost no surer way to destroy a friendship than by manipulation and deception.

            So now we have two moral reasons for telling the truth: truth-telling is useful, and the respect we owe to other people demands it.

            Is that enough?  Is that all?  I will say more in a third essay.