Lying by Sam Harris | Issue 110 | Philosophy Now

Harris implies throughout his essay that truth and honesty should prevail in all instances of human interaction,including those who employ ‘white lies’ to protect people from uncomfortable realities and unnecessary harm.

To lie is to sacrifice your integrity, and to place the possibility of deep and meaningful bonds with fellow humans at risk.

• Lies of commission. The liar is active in his or her attempt to deceive.
  Example: A job applicant falsifying his credentials in an effort to land a desired position.

• Lies of omission. This is a passive act, involving a person’s failure to do something.
  Example: A job applicant is neglecting to list on his resume the job from which he was fired.

Skillful truth-avoiding is the evasive tactic of withholding one’s actual feelings by instead inserting a less relevant, albeit true, statement, and is far from being honest.

It is essentially to replace a lie of commission with a lie of omission.

Although Harris rails against active lies in this book, he fails to acknowledge that ‘skillful truth-telling’ is nothing more than lying by another name.

The truth-teller is a kind of liberator, rescuing the deluded individual from his protective fantasies.

Those who employ white lies in an effort to benefit others are demonstrating the “quintessence of arrogance” since in such cases the liar assumes he knows what truths can be handled by the other person.

Harris assumes that the beneficiary of these truth statements is themselves blind to reality.

Sam Harris’s major, and dubious, assumption, is that complete honesty is possible.

The concept of unconscious motives or maladaptive psychological underpinnings that we can know nothing about, or of ‘bad faith’ (a form of self-deceit), are not considered in Harris’s analysis.

Since we are then all liars by nature, the best course of action is only to lie in ways that are intended to promote another’s well being.