In his introduction to The Philosophy of Deception, Clancy Martin writes, “Sometimes we tell a lie, and there is no doubt about it. […] But most of the lies we tell, whether we are telling them to one another or to ourselves, are not nearly so clear-cut. Lies and self-deceptions seem to exist along a continuum, with cases like the extreme ones I just mentioned on either end, and in the middle the many cases where the lies we tell are inseparably mixed up with the lies we tell ourselves.” (3) This remarkable new collection of 14 essays written by some of the most prominent scholars working on deception today tries to mark the key points in this continuum. And a long, interesting continuum it proves to be: from innocent “white” lies to outrageous deception, through the finely nuanced spin, bullshit, and self-deception, it all comes to the basic philosophical question of Truth and… how to evade or completely bury it.

The book is divided into two parts: the first one entitled “The Practices of Deception and Self-Deception” presents seven papers on the mechanism of deception with its variations in the form of lying, believing the liar, and self-deception. As Martin rightfully points out, there is a well-researched plethora of writings dedicated to self-deception, while the literature on lying/deception is not that abundant. In part one, the emphasis is placed on the actual modus operandi, the “how-to,” of deception. Especially impressive is the balance achieved by the authors between the discussions of the theoretical aspects of deception and the common everyday manifestations of it, an important point which will draw readers from various backgrounds and not just the philosophically trained ones. The contributions by the late Robert C. Solomon, Harry Frankfurt, William Ian Miller, Mark A. Wrathall, David Sherman, Kelly Oliver and Paul Ekman are outstanding examples of analyses of the ways in which lies and lying influence us and our orientation in the world. Arbitrarily selected, a few remarks on these essays are in order.

Beyond pointing out several problems in the definition of ‘lie’ and ‘deception,’ Solomon’s work discusses, for example, the important issue that deception and self-deception are actually “essential to self-maintenance,” and that what we actually judge as ‘unacceptable’ or ‘unethical’ are the motives behind the lies rather than the lying itself. A sophisticated compilation of passages from previously published work — actually the only piece familiar to the reader — Frankfurt’s contribution entertains the idea that lying is harmful on a personal level because it interferes with our ability to understand the “true nature” of the world we inhabit (as problematic and general the latter might sound to a scholar).  With a now classical reading of Shakespeare’s famous sonnet 138, with references to Kant and Wittgenstein among others, the whole hurtful scope of lying and deception is presented to sieve through even the elaborate workings of bullshitting. As Frankfurt writes in a well-known passage,

The notion of carefully wrought bullshit involves, then, a certain strain. Thoughtful attention to detail requires discipline and objectivity; it entails accepting standards and limitations that forbid the indulgence of impulse or whim. It is this selflessness that, in connection with bullshit, strikes us as inapposite. (43)

In a world where political discourse, advertisements, and even culture and academe are more and more prone to bullshit, one naturally comes to ask when and how are the bullshitters and liars caught. Are they caught at all? No doubt under the influence of the popular TV series Lie to Me, I came to appreciate deeply the essay by Ekman on two interconnected issues: first, why most ordinary people (obviously not Ekman himself and his co-workers) fail to detect lying and secondly, the role of microfacial expressions in revealing concealed emotions. Together with an earlier book by him, Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Marriage and Politics (1985), looking at people and actually seeing them becomes so much more meaningful today (and challenging in one’s marriage, if I might add humorously).

Part two of the book entitled “Truth, Lies, and Self-deception: the Theory and the Ethics” covers more theoretical ground in the philosophical debates over the nature of lying and deception. Alan Strudler, Thomas L. Carson, Michael P. Lynch, James Edwin Mahon, David Sussman, Amelie Rorty and Alfred R. Mele have contributed an impressive array of essays on the definitions and the variations in lies, lying and self-deception from philosophical perspective. For example, Carson’s work is a thorough analysis of the definition of lying to explain the fine distinctions between “lying, deception, withholding information, ‘keeping someone in the dark,’ bullshit, spin, and half-truths,” while Mele tackles self-deception to illuminate its nature and the way it occurs. Rorty’s essay follows a line of argument which will alert the reader to certain ambivalent forms of self-deception and the important problem of origin as she writes,

Like deception, self-deception is a species of rhetorical persuasion; and like all forms of persuasion, it involves a complex, dynamic, and cooperative process. […] Deception and self-deception are no merely detached conclusions of invalid arguments: they are interactive processes with a complex cognitive and affective etiology. (247)

It seems to me that this emphasis on the etiology of deception and self-deception brings to the fore the point which the editor Martin Clancy also makes with the present collection of essays. Very often philosophical discussions of no doubt challenging questions overlook a simple yet telling fact: “When we lie, when we self-deceive, we distract, we confuse, we act, we posture, we vacillate, we hesitate, we form and reform and distort and assert and refute our beliefs and our attitudes. It is in this process, the way the mind actually works, that we are human.” (11) The really short of it then? Human, all too human we are, in lying to others and to ourselves.

© 2010 Rossitsa Terzieva-Artemis

Dr Rossitsa Terzieva-Artemis is an Assistant Professor in the Languages Department at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus, specializing in modern British and American literatures, psychoanalysis, and continental philosophy.