What is a lie? If a lie is an assertion believed to be false, and used with the intention of deceiving or misleading someone, what it is that one likes to deceive oneself with or mislead oneself to?
Lying has been such an integral nature of human behaviour that it has received considerable thought as to what construes a lie. There are deliberate lies and unintentional ones. There are lies that come with a forewarning, and there are others that are sprung on the unsuspected. The highly regarded deception researcher, Aldert Vrij, defined lie as “a successful or unsuccessful deliberate attempt, without forewarning, to create in another a belief which the communicator considers to be untrue.” Later It was further modified as a successful or unsuccessful deliberate manipulation of language, without forewarning, to create in another a belief that the communicator considers to be untrue. Of course, the language includes within its definition silence, a loaded question or even a gesture that misleads.
And lies could be of denial, and of omission. One could lie by fabricating something that does not exist or did not happen as there are lies of minimisation, materially altering the extent and magnitude of an event or fact. In the same manner, there could be lies of exaggeration as well.
And lastly there are lies and untruths that enjoy social acceptance and sanction seen in the moral or ethical context. An untruth spoken to protect someone from certain harm, for example to save a child from a grievous injury, could fail the usual definition. Such nuances matter where lies are an object of sanction or disapproval, even punishment.
Given this protean nature of lies, and rather wide scope of their interpretation ,it may appear that we do lie to ourselves, at least occasionally, not necessarily with the intention of deceiving ourselves but reinforcing a flawed hope or belief.
A woman may genuinely believe that she is very beautiful. Every time she stands before a mirror she tells herself she is very beautiful. Does it constitute a lie spoken to herself. Or a man may believe he is very virile and strong, and he always boasts about it. Is it a lie or a self-deception?
The proposition, therefore, in the restricted sense of the definition of a lie, is problematic. I would like to believe that it is impossible to lie to one self. Self-deception, self-illusion, exaggerated estimation of one-self, all this is
possible, even understandable but that they constitute lying to one self, I would vigorously refute.
Making a statement about one self while being certain that it is not true, or even offering information about oneself knowing well that they are misleading , are common human trait. A whole branch of human psychology deals with it. It is deprecated and discouraged. And there could be no disagreement on the consensus that such behaviour makes one untrustworthy at best and immoral at worst. Yet, the fact remains that the very same person knows deep within himself as well that he is lying. But this constitutes lying about oneself, not lying to oneself.
Many psychologists believe that very few people are completely honest and all humans have self-deception. That self-deception whether arising out of ‘depressive realism’ or to protect one’s ego, whether to gather courage or to seek unfair advantage, are pernicious and harmful, is an agreed position. Yet, branding this reality in binaries of black and white, good and bad, desirable and despicable will be a mistake and a presumptive value-loaded view of the human nature. French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre saw all self-deception, no matter how mild, as a form of what he called””bad faith’’: an unwillingness to discover one’s essence as conscious being and take true responsibility for oneself. How should one place self deception from this perspective? Sartre may not find universal resonance but he did have a point. It is a pathology not a preference, a compulsion not a manipulation.
The question then boils down to this key issue- should self-deception be treated as a lie perpetrated wilfully or without intention, purposefully or inadvertently on one self? Seen from the perspective of a commonly perceived understanding, self-deception could be described as lying to one-self but it does not pass the basic test. Is it intended to deceive one self or is ian act arising out of a genuine and bonafide belief?
My essay is not in defence of self deception but it does argue that self deception is not lying, because lying involves conveying something that one knows or believes to be wrong with the express intention of misleading. A genuine belief, and an action following it, without any intention of misleading, by no account, could be termed as lying.
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