White Lies: Lies here are those with the best of intentions. Say that someone has a terrible haircut and their friends tell them that it looks great. This is the standard white lie.
Lying to yourself: Neitzche said that memory yields. We can change or distort our reality to ourselves. This has to do with error and skepticism; but it could be more and less active. It can be more and less dictated by the will.
Straight up lying: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lying
lie
1 [lahy] Show IPA noun, verb, lied, ly⋅ing. –noun1. | a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood. |
2. | something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture: His flashy car was a lie that deceived no one. |
3. | an inaccurate or false statement. |
Bullshit: Harry G. Frankfurt makes the distinction between lies and bull shit. Lies are deliberate distortions of the truth, but this still indicates a sort of reverence and respect for the truth. Bullshit has no such boundaries.
Partial Truth: I met a kid who never "lied" to his parents. He did it by systematically telling them only parts of the truth that were relevant to the conversation, but also only the ones that told the story that he wanted to tell them. Sure, he never lied, but this is something devious in and of itself.
Exaggeration and Hyperbole: My girlfriend gets me for this constantly. Exaggerations are almost by definition untrue. Nevermind your experience. It's not true and you know it.
Partial truths and lazy mistakes: Now we are further and further into the nebulous world of ethics. When, praytell, is a person lying if they are too lazy to look something up. Could we fault someone for saying that Pluto is a planet? Is that a lie.
Moreover, it seems that ethically speaking, a lie is always wrong. But by utilitarian standards, there are of course times when lying is correct, or right. There are some big and fun ethical issues that we will get to in later posts.
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