Derek: 00:27

Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. We have spent the 1st 3 quarters of 2023 delving into the depths of propaganda in action. It's been a whole lot of fun, for me, at least. A depressing sort of fun, but I've thoroughly enjoyed doing these episodes. Hopefully, you've enjoyed the content as well and learned some things along the way.

Derek: 00:50

However, if I were to leave things where they are now, if I were to just dump all of this depressing, cynic making material into your lap and then leave, I think that would be not only irresponsible of me, but it wouldn't make the world a better place at all. You'd see a little clearer how evil the world really is, but you wouldn't have the hope or the tools to do anything about it. I mean, it would be really easy just to look at how things function and conclude, well, if this is how the world works, I guess I need to give in and do the same thing. Pragmatically speaking, I think that's the conclusion that a lot of people draw, if not in theory, at least in practice. Just think back to our episode on James Olsen, a Christian and former CIA counterintelligence chief something.

Derek: 01:37

Right? He was defending torture, kidnapping, and lying, among other things, in order to protect not only the physical well-being of Americans, but economic interests too. If this is the way the world works, then why not accept it and play by those rules or lack thereof? Isn't fighting evil like trying to fight gravity? Both seem to be laws woven into the fabric of the universe.

Derek: 02:02

There are some big questions here that I hope to start exploring today. Does truth really matter? Should we value truth? Or is propaganda, manipulation, and lying something that we should understand better only so we can avoid its misuse by others while effectively wielding it ourselves? You know, us and our group, the good guys.

Derek: 02:25

Digging into this idea of truth, morality, and personal formation is gonna round out the rest of our season, and that's what I'd consider the most important part of the season. It's gonna hopefully be more of the application aspect of it. So I I really hope that you're gonna stay along for the ride. In thinking through where I wanted to start off this season, this section of the season, I thought it would be important to begin with a philosopher who is not a Christian. Now as a Christian myself, I suppose it makes more sense that I'd have a particular affinity for truth to a lot of people, you know, on the outside.

Derek: 03:01

You'd kind of peg me that way. Right? Though at the same time, there are plenty of post Constantinian Christians and American nationalists who, might make you think the opposite about Christians. But because you probably think that you have me pegged already, I wanna put my argumentation for truth on hold for an episode so I can show you that there are secular arguments for the importance of truth as well. Of course, if you're familiar with any philosophy at all, or if you read the title of this episode, then you probably know exactly where I'm going here today, and you're probably dreading it.

Derek: 03:40

That's right. I want to begin our discussion on the importance of truth with Immanuel Kant. And for those of you unfamiliar with philosophy, you'll see soon enough why Kant generally gives people some trouble when it comes to this topic. To catch you up to speed, I wanna quickly recap Kant's famous work entitled, On A Supposed Right To Tell Lies From Benevolent Motives. In that work, Kant defends the position that it is always wrong to tell a lie.

Derek: 04:09

And I do mean always. Always always. Constant from this example is that a murderer comes to your door and asks you where your friend is because he wants to kill him. Now you know the intentions of the murderer is to murder your friend, yet even then, it is a duty that you have to not lie. Now I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say it's your duty to tell the truth, but it is your duty to not lie.

Derek: 04:38

Not even to a murderer who has malicious intentions and is an imminent threat to your friend. Now as you hear Kant out, I don't want you to forget that Kant here is not arguing from a Christian or a religious standpoint. So how does he defend not lying to a murderer? I mean, such a position seems absolutely untenable. It seems heartless.

Derek: 05:00

It seems ludicrous. It seems immoral, even. Surely lying would be good in this situation. It would be the right thing to do, the loving thing to do. For Kant, there were 2 main issues to address in this question of lying to a murderer at the door.

Derek: 05:16

1st, I'll quote Kant at length here. Kant says, quote, the first question is whether a man, in cases where he cannot avoid answering yes or no, has the right to be untruthful. The second question is whether in order to prevent a misdeed that threatens him or someone else, he is not actually bound to be untruthful in a certain statement to which an unjust compulsion forces him. End quote. So first, do we have a right to be untruthful?

Derek: 05:47

And second, don't we actually have an obligation to be untruthful at some points? Now immediately following the identification of the question at hand, Kant addresses the first point as to whether we have a right to be untruthful. Again, I'll quote Kant at length. Kant writes, quote, truth in utterances that cannot be avoided is the formal duty of a man to everyone, however great the disadvantage that may arise from it to him or any other. And although by making a false statement, I do no wrong to him who unjustly compels me to speak, yet I do wrong to men in general in the most essential point of duty so that it may be called a lie.

Derek: 06:30

So far as in me lies, I cause that declarations in general find no credit, and I, hence, that all rights founded on contract should lose their force. And this is a wrong which is done to mankind, end quote. And before I unpack what Kant is saying here, I want you to note something very important, which we'll come back to over and over again in this section. Kant here is addressing truths, which, as he says, quote, in utterances that cannot be avoided, unquote. So Kant is dealing with an absolute worst case scenario and really an an absolutely unrealistic scenario, an impossible scenario even.

Derek: 07:13

It's unrealistic. It's impossible that the scenario would arise because one always, always, always has at least one other option available to them other than to lie or to divulge the full truth. And that is at least one option, the option of silence. Now silence in the face of tyrants, murderers, and others of such ilk may not carry with it pleasant consequences. However, lying or betrayal into the hands of the unjust is never your only set of options.

Derek: 07:45

That is a completely false dichotomy. Yet Kant here is dealing with the impossible with a thought experiment, with the worst case scenario for one who would always adhere to the truth or to refuse lying. What should we do if there ever arose a situation where someone gave you a magic potion or a witch cursed you and you couldn't help but give a verbal response? A response that was either truthful or untruthful. What should you do?

Derek: 08:13

It's in this context that Kant goes on to explain his position, which is that falsehood is always wrong. And Kant argues for the wrongness of lying, not because injustice is done to the murderer per se. In fact, he at least explicitly says that, you know, it's not that necessarily injustice is done to that person, but because injustice is done to all other humanity. Of course, the murder is included in all humanity. I would include him, you know, as a Christian and loving your enemies, but that's not the main focus at this point, especially for Kant.

Derek: 08:47

If I lie in a situation that I deem appropriate, then humanity knows that lying is always a tool available to me, and a tool that I think ought to be available to the rest of humanity, at least in certain instances. Lying is then forever at my disposal in situations where I deem it to be justified. Now while the vast majority of humanity would agree with me that lying to a murderer is justified, our unanimity and thinking doesn't take long to diverge from there. Can I lie to prevent getting fired for embezzlement? Because feeding my family of 6 is more important than that.

Derek: 09:27

There's a little more company profit, maybe? The CEOs get a 1,000,000 and, $10,000 bonus instead of just a1000000? I mean, isn't my family of 6 more important? Can I lie to my spouse who asks whether or not address makes her look a bit rotund? I mean, the number and diversity of situations in which some might justify lying, either because the lies seem insignificant or because they seem necessary to thriving or even for good, The the situations are endless.

Derek: 09:59

People can justify lying in almost every circumstance, and our opinions on the criteria are all going to differ, at some points, quite significantly. So if we accept that lying is legitimate, but only in justified circumstances, we completely undermine society's ability to trust and create social contracts, because someone can always justify lying in any given circumstance. Now that means that I can never have another human interaction in which I have confidence that the interaction has an expectation for honesty. Because while I might value honesty in a given situation, the other party may be able to justify lying. The acceptance of lying in any form or for any reason then undermines the dignity and credibility of the whole of humanity.

Derek: 10:45

To sum it up, let's hear again from Kant. Quote, lying always injures another. If not another individual, yet mankind generally, since it vitiates the source of justice, end quote. Okay. So Kant just answered his first question as to whether or not one has a right to lie.

Derek: 11:06

His conclusion was that, no. We do not have a right to lie since it undermines the fabric of human social interaction and functioning. But Kant still has another question to answer, which is the flip side of the first question. Kant may have explained how lying is not a right that we have, but there's still this nagging question we all should have, which is, but don't we have an obligation to lie when there's someone like a murderer at the door? I mean, Kant can argue that we're obligated not to lie, but in the face of protecting our friends against a murderer, it seems like the onus is on Kant to show how this competing obligation to protect our friend doesn't trump our obligation to not lie.

Derek: 11:47

Again, I want to allow Kant to have the first word here and then explain him a little bit afterwards. Kant says, quote, the French philosopher confounds the action by which one does harm to another by telling the truth, the admission of which he cannot avoid with the action by which he does him wrong. It was merely an accident that the truth of the statement did harm to the inhabitant of the house. It was not a free deed in the juridical sense. For to admit his right to require another to tell a lie for his benefit would be to admit a claim opposed to all law.

Derek: 12:21

Every man has not only a right, but the strictest duty to truthfulness in statements which he cannot avoid, whether they do harm to himself or others. He himself, properly speaking, does not do harm to him who suffers thereby, but this harm is caused by accident. End quote. And before unpacking this again, I want to, once again, point out a small but very important section. Kant qualifies the the lie here by saying that everyone has a duty to truthfulness in statements which they cannot avoid.

Derek: 12:58

Now we have to always keep in mind that this ideal to truthfulness, at all times, is being argued in the most extreme thought experiment possible. In a situation in which a statement must be made, in such a scenario, at least as far as I can think of it, doesn't exist in in reality and never could. There's never a moment in which you absolutely have to bear all the truth. Silence is always an option. Okay.

Derek: 13:26

So with that important point noted again, let's unpack Kant's idea here. Going back to the murderer at the door, let's say that my friend came to my house and told me that a murderer was chasing him. I, of course, let my friend into my house to hide, and he told me that he was going to the closet. Now when the murderer arrives and asked me where my friend is, given the thought experiment of being required to provide an answer, I tell the murderer the truth. My friend is in my closet.

Derek: 13:55

Now Kant asks us to think about this statement. Really, the true statement of my friend's whereabouts is like an infinite number of other statements I could make on that fateful day. The sun is shining. My porch has 5 stairs. My eyes are blue.

Derek: 14:12

My friend is located in my closet, as far as I know, because that's where he told me he'd be. Those true statements are all innocuous ones. They, in and of themselves, are inert. They're just facts of reality at that moment. What makes a statement harmful, beneficial, or negligible is not the truthfulness of a statement, but the intention of the given actor made privy to the truth.

Derek: 14:38

So if I tell a murderer the truth that my friend is in the closet, because I value human dignity, reason, autonomy, the social contract, all that stuff, I am declaring a neutral truth about the world. It's a plain fact. The accident of that truth, the fact that the truth in this given instance corresponds with a murderer's malicious intent, is not a trespass that's mine to bear. I simply divulged factual, inert information. What transforms this information into evil is the action of the murderer who seeks to use that for harm.

Derek: 15:12

But that evil is not mine to bear. It's like Augustine says, and we'll get to this in a few episodes, but Augustine says, quote, commit not thou a great crime thine own, while thou dreadest a greater crime of other men. For be the difference as great as thou wilt between thine own and that of others, this will be thine own, end quote. Now that's essentially what Kant is saying. If it so happens that my right and good action, bearing the truth as opposed to lying, ends up an accident of fate for my friend, that sin is not my sin.

Derek: 15:48

That sin is the murderer's sin to bear. Our job is to do right, which for Kant, meant creating a world in which the Social Contract would be more trustworthy and human autonomy and dignity, reason upheld. If given the most ludicrous and unrealistic situation possible, where we were faced with either lying or divulging the truth, we must not compromise our part in creating an ideal world, even to prevent another from marring that world. The sin would not only be the murderers, but ours to bear in that case, because we'd be complicit in marring the world. And that's Kant's argument in a nutshell.

Derek: 16:28

There's some other concepts that Kant explores which are interesting, like human dignity and upholding human autonomy, or the implications of telling a lie that ends up being true, and, our responsibility for that if it happened to end up being true. Like, you know, my friend tells me he's going to the closet, and I'm like, oh, I can't tell the murderer he's in the closet. So I tell the murderer, he's out hiding behind the trash cans. Well, unbeknownst to me, my friend either lied to me or decided to move from the closet, and he went and hid behind the trash cans. And so what I told the murderer ended up being true, even though I intended it as a lie.

Derek: 17:06

So Kant gets into all kinds of things. It's interesting. But the the crux of his argument and the the important parts that we're gonna run with are what I laid out here today. So I love that we can explore this, this from a non religious standpoint. I think it's really interesting.

Derek: 17:25

It's not just a stereotypically moralist religious fanatical thing to recognize how any lie unravels the fabric of society in reality. There are also some really smart secularists who, who understand that too. In closing, let me leave you with the weighty words of 2 other great philosophers, Daryl Hall and John Oates. Now make sure to put a link in the show notes to their full treatise, which you should definitely go. I actually found it on YouTube, and you should check it out.

Derek: 17:56

I think you'd appreciate it. While they weren't talking about lying in, in this treatise, I think that lying falls completely within the purview of their treatises application. The threshold of truth must be a line over which we do not cross. The truth may, in the end, cost us our body or our friend's body, if a murderer is looking for him, but we must not let a lie cost us our soul. I can't go for that.

Derek: 18:24

Now listen to the words of the greats. Easy, ready, willing, over time. Where does it stop? Where do you dare me to draw the line? You've got my body.

Derek: 18:38

Now you want my soul. Don't even think about it. Say no go. I can go for being twice as nice. I can go for just repeating the same old lines.

Derek: 18:50

You used my body, now you want my soul? Forget about it. Now say no go. Yeah. I'll do anything that you want me to.

Derek: 19:01

I'll do almost anything that you want me to, but I can't go for that. No. No can do. I can't go for that. No.

Derek: 19:12

No can do. I can't go for that. I can't go for that. I can't go for that. That's all for now.

Derek: 19:24

So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to nonviolence and Kingdom Living.