Seven Lies About LyingByERROL MORRIS; NYTimes, August 5, 2009http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/seven-lies-about-lying-part-1/?ref=errolmorris

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant Success in Circuit liesToo bright for our infirm DelightThe Truths superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children easedWith explanation kindThe Truth must dazzle graduallyOr every man be blind Emily Dickinson (#1129)

WikiMedia CommonsJosephs Tunic Diego Velzquez, ca. 1630I was talking to Ricky Jay about lying and deception. I had an example from the Bible, specifically about Jacob and his 12 sons. (Five of them are depicted by Velazquez, above.) Ricky interrupted: Which one? Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Napthali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulon, Joseph or Benjamin?Uh . . . Joseph.Ricky Jay is an actor, bibliophile, historian of magic, arguably the greatest living sleight-of-hand artist, and a master of the art of deception. He seemed to be the perfect person to consult on the relationship between deception and lying. After all, its his business. I was telling the story about how the brothers sell Joseph into slavery.ERROL MORRIS: They take his coat, rip it, smear it with blood, and show it to Jacob. They dont tell Jacob that Joseph was eaten by a wild beast; Jacob makes the false inference himself. My theory is that deceit does not require language. To lie, you have to make a statement. You have to say something in words for it to be a lie. But deceit only requires misdirection. All it requires is the intent to have someone think something that is different from what you believe.RICKY JAY:Right, it can be verbal.

ERROL MORRIS:It can be, but it doesnt have to be. Whereas lying has to be verbal.RICKY JAY:Lying has to be verbal. Do I believe that?[a pause]ERROL MORRIS:And it cant be accidental. You can accidentally deceive somebody, but you cant accidentally lie to somebody. If youre lying to somebody, you have to know youre doing it.RICKY JAY:Ive written about verbal deception, for example, the P.T. Barnum sign TO THE EGRESS to make someone believe something that was other than what was intended. Even though there was nothing wrong with it its deceptive. [The sign is intended make people believe that they are about to visit some exotic animal, rather than heading to the exit.] I wrote an article about verbal deception in Jays Journal on the Bonassus.The Bonassus was presented in 1821 as this extraordinarily exotic creature. Ill read just the opening: The Bonassus, according to contemporary handbills, has been captured as a six-week-old cub deep in the interiors of America blah, blah, blah It was presented to a populous eager for amusement and edification this was in London whose appetite for curiosities both animal and human was insatiable. The attraction said, A newly discovered animal, comprising the head and eye of an elephant, the horns of an antelope, a long black beard, the hind parts of a lion, the foreparts of a bison, cloven-footed, has a flowing mane from shoulder to fetlock joint and chews the cud. And underneath the line, Take him for all in all, we neer shall look upon his like again. Shakespeare.

Jays Journal of Anomalies, courtesy of Ricky JayAnd I say,Using every conceivable method of prevarication, the playbills of the day unabashedly conceal the true identity of the newly discovered Bonassus, this new genus thats a quote of the African Kingdom had never before been seen in Europe. He was none other than the American Buffalo. As for never seeing his like again, in 1821 the buffalo was the most numerous hoof-footed quadruped on the face of the earth.ERROL MORRIS: Perfect.RICKY JAY: This is an issue called Verbal Deception Deciphered.ERROL MORRIS: You were also telling me about a magician who refuses to lie.RICKY JAY: He died recently. His name was Jerry Andrus, and he lived in Albany, Ore. And he always claimed that it was because he lived in Oregon that he had to invent his own stuff. He really was an original thinker in terms of magic. He just died. He was almost 90. [1]

Tyson Smith, Skeptical Media LLC; Jerry AndrusBut he wouldnt lie in doing an effect. So if he said, Im going to place this card in the middle of the deck, then thats what he did. [Ricky picked up a deck of cards and proceeded to offer an impressive display of legerdemain.] If I say to you, Im going to take this card, whatever it is, the King of Clubs, and you can see that Im going to push that, right, into the center of the deck. O.K., you saw me do that clearly?ERROL MORRIS: Yes.RICKY JAY: And yet, the King of Clubs is right here. [It is sitting at the top of the deck.] So I truly did not push it into the center of the deck. I made you think that I pushed it into the center of the deck. But I didnt push that card into the center of the deck and then show it to you on the top of the deck.ERROL MORRIS: You may not be lying, but youre still deceiving me.RICKY JAY: Right, Im absolutely deceiving you. He would also deceive you. He might go so far as to say, It may appear as though Im putting the card in the center of the deck. But he would never say, I am putting the card in the center of the deck. He would not lie.ERROL MORRIS: But doesnt that alert people to the fact that they are being deceived? Doesnt that make it more difficult to perform the trick?RICKY JAY: Yes! It does make it more difficult, but thats just the kind of guy he was. So he would never say, Im dealing the King of Clubs on the table, and deal the bottom card and not the King of Clubs. He would not lie. He was an enormously principled fellow.

ERROL MORRIS: But do you have a problem lying?RICKY JAY: Not only do I lie, I take real pleasure in lying, in the transmission of magic effects. Its creative, how you do it. I could, indeed, put the King of Clubs in the center of the deck. So in this case, I want you to see that the King of Clubs is in the center of the deck. All right? Thats not a lie. And yet the King is now on top. I dont think this was in his repertoire. But in that effect I did not lie to you at all. So thats kind of fascinating.

Private Collection of Ricky Jay

ERROL MORRIS: I wonder if this bears out what I was saying before, the difference between a lie and a deception, that he would not allow himself a verbal lie.RICKY JAY: But he would still absolutely deceive you.ERROL MORRIS: But not lie.

Private Collection of Ricky JayRICKY JAY: You could wonder whether Im lying to you now, about those two things and how they differ, because you dont know. Because I know that you cant follow the sleight of hand Im doing to absolutely know for certain. And Im not going to expose the method to show you that, but as your friend, Im going to tell you that nothing about this was a lie. Everything I said in the transmission of these two effects was true. But in magic, there is magician to magician lying and obfuscation. To obfuscate the reconstruction of the effect when a magician is fooled by another magician doing magic. In my career thats not been the major passion, but its been the passion of a number of my mentors. The crowning achievement for them would be to create magic good enough to fool other magicians. For me, the most exciting thing is to create good magic thats entertaining for an audience, and it would be lovely if a magician was fooled as well. But its an entertainment art. Dai Vernon, the greatest sleight of hand figure in the history of the art, rarely performed. But he invented magic and had an enormous influence on the whole range of sleight of hand. And so often the magic he was doing was to fool other magicians. You dont want the magicians to be able to reconstruct it. So in the course of it, the other magician is not only being fooled by the physical deception, but made to think that something might have happened which did not happen, and if you thought that, you could never reconstruct how the effect was done.ERROL MORRIS: So theres a misdirection followed by a lie.RICKY JAY: In any order. But youre right, the lie part is verbal. Youre saying, Remember, you shuffled the cards. Remember, you divided the deck. And in this list of things youre doing, one of them may be untrue. You may be lying. Ah, I did shuffle the cards. I did this but I didnt do that. Youre reinforcing something that never happened.

Private Collection of Ricky JayERROL MORRIS: A deception and a lie.RICKY JAY: Deception is one of the things that Im interested in. Its a major component of my work. If someone said you had to sum up your interests in life in one word, the word would probably be deception. I think it encompasses more things Im interested in than any other single word I can think of. Brindemours illusion of levitating a man. A 17th century engraving of a two-headed archer, which portrays him as a legitimate human anomaly. That clearly can not and did not exist. Right? The Davenport Brothers, who were the first performers to become famous from the cult of spiritualism, who convinced people that they were able to make manifestations while locked within a sealed cabinet. Incredibly successful. Chabert, the human salamander, who entered an oven with a raw steak in his hand: he emerged tartar, the steak was cooked to perfection. All of it based on real deception.P.T. Barnums sign TO THE EGRESS is Ricky Jays example of a linguistic deception that is not a lie. There are no false statements just a concatenation of misleading descriptions and associations. [2] You might think that once we have distinguished between lying and deception (and two kinds of deception, verbal and otherwise) that our problems are over. But lying is often identified with the avoidance of the truth or the acceptance of a falsehood. And it is to the theme of lying, truth and falsehood that I turn in the second part of this essay.Ricky Jay and I had begun our discussion of lying and deception with the story of Joseph, specifically with (Genesis 37:29-34) [3]. Its worth a closer look. (Here is a summary.) Joseph is the 11th and favorite son of Jacob. His father had made for him a magnificent coat a coat of many colors. Several of his brothers out of jealousy decide to kill him. Reuben, the oldest, convinces the other brothers to throw him in a pit instead. He is then sold as a slave to a band of traveling merchants. The brothers kill a goat, cover the coat with blood and then show the coat to their father. (This version is from the Blue Letter Bible, but I have also included in the footnotes the King James and several other translations.)29 When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was not in the pit, he rent his clothes30 and returned to his brothers, and said, The lad is gone; and I, where shall I go?31 Then they took Josephs robe, and killed a goat, and dipped the robe in the blood;32 and they sent the long robe with sleeves and brought it to their father, and said, This we have found; see now whether it is your sons robe or not.33 And he recognized it, and said, It is my sons robe; a wild beast has devoured him; Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces.34 Then Jacob rent his garments, and put sackcloth upon his loins, and mourned for his son many days.In Josephs Tunic (ca. 1630), Velazquez has seized on one moment from the story (Genesis 37:33-34).

Dan Mooney for Errol MorrisThe brothers return with Jacobs coat. But is it a lie or a deception? Or both? Josephs brothers show the torn (and bloody) coat to Jacob, their father, who jumps to the conclusion that his son has been killed by wild animals. Its my sons robe; a wild beast has devoured him. But the Bible doesnt say that the brothers actually lie to their father. Rather they deceive their father by showing him the bloody coat and their father draws the incorrect inference, namely that Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces [4]. The brothers claim is, of course, disingenuous at best: This we have found; see whether its your sons robe or not. But the brothers know its Josephs robe. And they havent exactly found it. They manufactured it.In the Velazquez painting, there is no lie. No linguistic misdirection. Just five of the brothers deceiving Jacob, the father, by displaying Josephs torn and bloody coat. It is the ocular proof that Othello demands from Iago. And like Desdemonas handkerchief it leads to a false inference and to an error, although not quite as tragic as the error made by Othello.Velazquezs interest in naturalism, the reddish-brown of the dried blood, focuses our attention on the brothers attempt to deceive Jacob. The robe is not that bloody. Jacob merely jumps to the wrong conclusion that Joseph has been killed by wild animals. Two brothers seem actively involved in the deception. Two seem hidden in the background, and another stands with his back to us, hiding his face from his fatherandfrom us.Contrast the Velazquez with a Bible illustration of the same scene produced a couple of hundred years before Josephs Tunic. It is from Speculum humanae salvationis of Cologne, ca. 1450. [5] The hyperbolic treatment of the blood makes it much easier to believe that Joseph was actually devoured by wild animals. It also makes it much easier to believe that Jacob was deceived by the brothers. With all that blood there was less of a reason to lie. Graphic horror instead of the subtlety of Josephs Tunic. There is no academic distance here, as there is in the Velazquez.

Den Haag, Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum, 10 B 34, 26v. (www.meermanno.nl)From Speculum humanae salvationis of Cologne, ca. 1450.These two images have much to teach us about the relationship between deception, lying and the truth. But they also teach us that deception depends on visual clues, as much as it depends on language. Just what (if anything) do the brothers say to Jacob? Perhaps the say a lot. Perhaps they say nothing other than what is recorded in the Bible. Is it a lie? Or just a deception?We think we know what a lie is, but the moment we try to define it, we run into trouble. Take the definition in the Oxford English Dictionary. (A dictionary definition in an essay should be seen as a red flag, or at the very least, an amber cautionary light, but please bear with me.) According to the O.E.D., a lie is a false statement made with intent to deceive. The O.E.D. complicates matters by telling us that to deceive is to cause to believe what isfalse, to mislead as to a matter offact, to lead into error [emphasis mine] [6]. It also tells us that in modern use, the word [lie] is normally a violent expression of moral reprobation, which in polite conversation tends to be avoided, the synonyms falsehood and untruth being often substituted as relatively euphemistic. This is where the trouble begins. Are falsehood and untruth really synonyms for a lie? Is lying an attempt merely to mislead or an attempt to get someone to believe that which is false? Or is lying used in two different ways? Here, I believe the O.E.D. is merely reinforcing a standard confusion. I would argue that all that is needed for lying are beliefs about what is true or false not knowledge of what is true or false [7].The fact that there are these two senses of lying gets us into trouble. When we focus on intent, the goal of lying seems utterly clear. When we focus on truth and falsity, we are often led into error to the seven lies about lying that follow [8]. Each of these seven principles about lying, often taken to be true, I believe are false. Whether we are lying about lying or merely self-deceived about lying, I will leave for the reader to decide. (Please be assured that I am not discussing the morality of lying, simply misconceptions that we have about it.)1. Lying is the opposite of telling the truth.It is often assumed that when we lie, we know the truth that our brains are reality recorders or truth recorders. (This idea is similar to the nave view of photography namely, that a photograph provides a truthful copy of reality. And to answer true or false questions about reality all we need to do is read the answers off of a photographic image.) But we can think something is false, without it being false. And we can think something is true, without it being true. Heres an example of how you can lie and tell the truth at the same time. If you think Abraham Lincoln is alive and you go around telling people that he is dead, youre lying, but what you are speaking is the truth. The idea that the brain is a truth recorder persists despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary [9]. The phenomenon of false memories, the unreliability of eyewitness testimony and so on all emphasize our ability to stray from the truth and to be unaware of it. They all speak to the fact that what we believe to be true and what is true are two very different things.2.Lying is telling a falsehood.This is the flip-side of No. 1, and it leads to the preposterous idea that truth and falsehood can be determined with a machine. Lie detectors from the polygraph to Charles McQuistons voice stress analyzer to brain scans depend on the view that truth can be recovered from the brain or the body [10] [11]. As such, they are routinely used to determine whether someone has committed a crime. But if someone who has committed a crime believes he is innocent, then his false claim of innocence wouldnt be caught by the lie detector. The machine, at best, does not determine whether a statement is true or false, but only whether there is a disparity between what is believed and what is communicated to others. [12] I have often wondered about standards of proof what one person versus another person will accept as proof. Say, a quantum field theorist versus a reporter for The National Enquirer. In this Enquirer article, Julio Platner, a businessman, reports on his abduction by aliens. But did it really happen? The Enquirer is clearly concerned about this very question.To further check Platners story, The Enquirer had a tape of his statements analyzed using a Psychological Stress Evaluator (PSE), a device used by more than 300 law enforcement agencies to determine if someone is telling the truth by measuring the stress in his voice. Declared Charles McQuiston, a former U.S. intelligence officer who coinvented the device, Platners voice is completely stress free. Hes telling the truth no doubt about it. Added Dr. Adolfo Pizarro, the physician Platner saw after his abduction, In my professional opinion, there was an extraction of blood or some material. I have treated him for six years and can declare that Platner has always been calm, sound and sane. Hes well-respected and an ideal citizen.Platners voice is completely stress free, but that doesnt mean (even if you buy into McQuistons argument) he was abducted by aliens. It only means that Platner believed he had been abducted by aliens. But what if one of the aliens had warned Platner that he would be very sorry if he ever revealed his abduction to another earth-creature? Wouldnt that create stress in his voice? And given McQuistons criteria wouldnt that mean he had not been abducted. (From the drawing Platner provided, it seems as though he had fried eggs for breakfast.)

The National Enquirer3.Lying leads to narrative inconsistencies.The common wisdom is that people whose stories change are telling lies. But its often liars (not truth-tellers) who are able to tell consistent stories. They have their stories down. They practice them, plan them and achieve complete consistency in every retelling. Those of us who are trying to tell the truth (or at least recalling memories about what we believe to be the truth) probably will provide inconsistent narratives. Memory is, of course, not infallible. We casually rely on it but often dont realize how a version of events based on memory may change. To make matters worse, we often impose a spurious narrative consistency on our beliefs so that they accord with others. Sadly, when there is a contest between the facts and our narratives about what we have experienced, our narratives invariably win. People repeat narratives not observations [13]. Sir Walter Scott wrote, O what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive. (Marmion, Canto VI, XVII) But why should we think that the truth is less tangled than a lie? Scott also wrote, although it is rarely quoted, perhaps because it isnt part of a cautionary tale, I cannot tell how the truth may be; I say the tale as it was said to me.4.Lying can never be justified.There is the extreme view that lying is always bad, and hence can never be justified. The philosopher Immanuel Kant insisted that one should always tell the truth. His argument is linked to the categorical imperative, Kants standard from which all moral law is derived [14]. Thomas Jefferson, in a similar vein, wrote to his nephew, Nothing is so mistaken as the supposition, that a person is to extricate himself from a difficulty, by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an untruth, by an injustice. This increases the difficulties tenfold; and those, who pursue these methods, get themselves so involved at length, that they can turn no way but their infamy becomes more exposed. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the worlds believing him [15].In the face of these moral prohibitions, is the implacable fact that lying is endlessly justified. Often it takes the form of the argument that the ends justify the means. We generally suppose ourselves to be moral creatures and when an apparent example of our immorality appears we find a way to rationalize that behavior. Early commentators on lies and lying recognized this. St. Augustine, who became one of the first taxonomers of prevarication, provided a hierarchy of really rotten lies, sort of acceptable lies, indifferent lies and beneficial lies. He was even willing to admit that lying was sometimes not so bad [16]. Of course, the taxonomy of lies leads to the slippery slope, where various justifications are brought to bear on various ethical problems, including lying. But who decides which justifications are acceptable and which are not? If justifications of our actions were scrupulously disallowed, how would we be able to function?5.Lying will be punished.Perhaps. But not as often as truth-telling. Lying effectively in many situations is generally superior than telling the truth, because often we have to search our minds for the truth, whereas a good lie can be easier to produce (though of course caution is indicated if the lie can be easily unmasked). Invariably a skillful liar makes a calculation about his chances of being exposed and avoids situations where a lie can be revealed. Lying is punished only if it is detected. A more reasonable assessment would be that ineffective and unskillful lying is severely punished. No one is held in greater contempt than an unskilled liar.6. Lying is avoidable.Mark Twain, in his essay On the Decay of the Art of Lying, realized the importance of skillful lying, No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. Twain goes on to make an event stronger point: that lying is unavoidable. No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our circumstances the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without saying. No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful and diligent cultivation therefore, it goes without saying that this one ought to be taught in the public schools even in the newspapers [17].7.Lying is a threat to the truth.No. Lying and the truth can exist side-by-side. In No. 1 and in 2, I have tried to disconnect lying from truth and falsehood. We lie based on what we believe I would also like to remind readers that all sorts of lies have been told throughout history billions upon billions of them. (A conservative estimate.) But the real problem is not lies but people believing them. If people werent so ridiculously credulous, lying would be a far more risky enterprise. I have already mentioned that lies are about things we believe, not things we know. Heres one compelling reason. If lies are told to someone about what they already know, they wouldnt be effective. If I know something, then it is extremely difficult for someone to lie to me about it. I know that I am writing this essay in Cambridge, Mass. You could tell me otherwise, but I wouldnt believe you. Id just think you were a liar. I know that Im in Cambridge, Mass. Period.Lies are effective because we are insecure about many of our beliefs and are quite vulnerable to the suggestion that those beliefs might be false. And they work because we might be predisposed to believe them already. Othello doesnt know that Desdemona is faithful. Indeed, he fears the opposite. Iago is able to lie to Othello precisely because Othellos passions are enflamed by jealousy and it is possible for him to imagine Iagos claims as the truth.And there is another dirty little secret about lying in the pursuit of truth, some lying is invariably necessary. Kant, who was searching for some universal moral principle, believed that if everybody lied the world would fall into shambles. Nobody would ever trust another person. But everybody does lie, the world does function after a fashion, and it is not at all clear that, if lying were eliminated, the world would be a better place. My hunch is that if we ever find so-called intelligent life on other planets or in other galaxies, they will be adept liars, too.I asked Ricky Jay about a world without lying.RICKY JAY:When youre talking about Kant and trust, it made me think of one of the ways I tell people about the con game. I say, You wouldnt want to live in a world where you cant be conned, because if you were, you would be living in a world with no trust. Thats the price you pay for trust, is being conned. And its very easy to substitute being lied to. Right?ERROL MORRIS:Tell me more.RICKY JAY:Well, its hard to reduce these things down to a sentence or two. But somebody once asked me about that. It was one of these things that I blurted out in an on-air interview, and then afterwards thought about it, and realized it is legitimately what I feel. Its the price you pay. Yes, you have Bernie Madoff, but if everyone you knew spoke the truth, it would be almost as terrible as if everyone you knew lied.We navigate through a farrago of lies, deceptions and self-deceptions. But they do not prevent us from seeking the truth, from looking outside our mental prisons and trying to uncover the true nature of the world that surrounds us.Joseph Being Sold by His Brothers (from the Casa Bartholdy fresco cycle), an 1817 painting by Johann Friedrich Overbeck, depicts the underlying reality of what actually happened to Joseph. The sons tell their father, This have we found: see now whether it is your sons coat or not. But they didnt find the coat, and Joseph wasnt eaten by wild animals. He was sold into slavery, as seen in the Overbeck. A cropped image from Wikipedia provides only a detail from the complete mural. The full mural shows more of the story of deception: in the foreground, the well into which Joseph was thrown and, on the extreme left, the goat that was sacrificed [18]. The Bible story contains a curious admixture of lies, deceptions, self-deceptions and false inferences. As such it provides a good object lesson for real life. The two paintings the Velazquez (1630) and the Overbeck (1817) are tidy bookends to any story about lying. They portray the lie and the underlying reality that the lie is designed to hide.Of course, there are terribly injurious lies lies with intent to do harm, to hurt and to betray. But once again truth and falsehood have little to do with it. William Blake wrote in Auguries of Innocence:A truth thats told with bad intent,Beats all the lies you can invent.

Wikimedia Commons / Dan Mooney for Errol Morris / Art ResourceJoseph Sold By His Brothers Johann Friedrich Overbeck, 1817FURTHER READING:Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, second edition (New York, 1999) An updated version of St. Augustine.Ricky Jay, Jays Journal of Anomalies, (New York, 2003)A brilliant compendium of oddities that gets better with every re-reading.David Lykken, Tremor in the Blood: Use and Abuses of the Lie Detector (New York, 1998) The standard reference work on lie detection.Margaret Talbot, Duped: Can Brain Scans Uncover Lies? The New Yorker, July 2, 2007. An excellent history of modern ideas about lie detection. Alas, she doesnt bring up the central argument against lie detectors (and fMRIs, in particular) that neither truth or falsehood is inside the brain, and hence cannot be recovered with a machine. Any machine.Mark Singer, Secrets of the Magus (pdf), The New Yorker. A profile of Ricky Jay.Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying. An 1885 address to the Historical and Antiquarian Society of Hartford, Conn. Twain defends skillful lying, which he declares to be the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, mans best and surest friend.

FOOTNOTES:[1] For more information see the Andrus Web site,jerryandrus.org.[2] Ricky is uncertain about whether the sign was designed to remove customers from the premises or merely to get them to pay for admission twice. You leave the show, then you have to pay to get back in. [3] The story of Joseph is from Genesis. It contains several examples of deception and lying.Genesis (37:29-34): Blue Letter Bible Revised Standard Version. 1996-2009.[4] Other Translations:King James Version:And they sent the coat of many colours, and they brought it to their father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it be thy sons coat or no.World English Bible:They took the coat of many colors, and they brought it to their father, and said, We have found this. Examine it, now, whether it is your sons coat or not.Douay-Rheims:Sending some to carry it to their father, and to say: This we have found: see whether it be thy sons coat, or not.Websters Bible Translation:And they sent the coat of many colors, and they brought it to their father; and said, This have we found: know now whether it is thy sons coat or not.[5] Museum Meermanno Westreenianum, The Hague, from Speculum humanae salvationis of Cologne (manuscript Den Haag, MMW, 10 B 34),biblicalart.com.[6] A number of writers have suggested that lying is not linguistic. I would beg to differ, as can be seen in my discussion with Ricky Jay. There can be no lying without language. To lie, you must start with a statement that you believe to be true or false. Deception, on the other hand, does not require language. You can deceive without words. The story of Joseph, insofar as the brothers present the bloody robe to Jacob, and Jacob makes the incorrect inference ( a wild beast has devoured him ), is about deception rather than out-and-out lying.[7] The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophyacknowledgesthese difficulties and proceeds to provide a couple of dozen definitions, examples and counter-examples of lying. The end result, how-ever, is to make the overwhelmed reader wonder whether lies and lying have any coherent meaning at all. Instead of proliferating definitions not unlike a nuclear arms race I would like to point out that we have a number of serious confusions about lying and try to clarify them.[8] The number seven has a well-established provenance with respect to lying. Shakespeare in As You Like It speaks of a lie seven times removed.Touchstone: Upon a lie seven times removed: bear your body more seeming, Audrey: as thus, sir. I did dislike the cut of a certain courtiers beard: he sent me word, if I said his beard was not cut well, he was in the mind it was: this is called the retort courteous. If I sent him word again, it was not well cut, he would send me word, he cut it to please himself: this is called the quip modest. If again, it was not well cut, he disabled my judgment: this is called the reply churlish. If again, it was not well cut, he would answer, I spake not true: this is called the reproof valiant: if again, it was not well cut, he would say, I lie: this is called the countercheck quarrelsome: and so to the lie circumstantial, and the lie direct.[9] We have audio discontinuities, particularly those in speech, which can interfere and distort our reality. And many cognitive discontinuities include semantic, topic and criterial ones. This is also represented on film, where we miss frames of information. This problem is particularly pronounced with foreign films where experiments have shown that we experience a discontinuity in understanding a film when our eyes shift from the subtitles to the picture itself. The most common discontinuity is the saccade, the discontinuous jumping from place to place of our eyes. We dont even notice it, thinking our view of reality is continuous, just as we are unaware of the blind spot in our eyes where we cannot see a thing.[10] There are many different kinds of lie detectors. There are lie detectors that depend on autonomic responses (blood pressure and skin conductivity), like polygraphs, and others that depend on the measurement of brain activity specifically, by measuring cerebral blood flow. There are even a number of new corporations devoted to this methodology No Lie MRI (a catchy rhyme) and the Cephos Corporation.Their Web sitestates under the banner, New Truth Verification System, No Lie MRI, Inc. provides unbiased methods for the detection of deception and other information stored in the brain. This is O.K. as far as it goes, but it is followed by the even stronger claim, The technology used by No Lie MRI represents the first and only direct measure of truth verification and lie detection in human history! The investigator is (essentially) looking inside the subjects head. The idea is based on the premise that lying takes more effort than truth telling and hence requires more blood flow. As a result of this increased blood flow areas of the brain light-up in fMRI scans. I dont doubt that areas of the brain light up and that fact may mean something. But, once again, fMRIs [functional MRIs] do not get around the fact that the brain is not a reality recorder nor a truth recorder, namely that reality isnt up there to be re-covered in the first place. And so, its hard to look at these new high-tech brain scans as anything more than updated versions of phrenology.[11] Indias Novel Use of Brain Scans in Courts Is Debated, The New York Times, September 14, 2008.[12] Galileo believed that the earth revolves around the sun and not vice versa. Is anyone suggesting that they should have used a lie detector to decide whether he was telling us the truth? The truth of Galileos ideas hinge on the evidence presented for his beliefs (or on our unsuccessful attempts to falsify them), not on our ability to scan his brain. Its not what is inside someones head that matters, its what happens in reality. Two separate things are at stake here: detecting lying and determining the truth. Clearly, it is possible to detect one without determining the other.[13]Margaret Talbot writesin The New Yorker, A liars testimony is often more persuasive than a truth tellers. Liars are more likely to tell a story in chronological order, whereas honest people often present accounts in an improvised jumble. Similarly, according to DePaulo and Bond [Bella DePaulo, of the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Charles Bond, Jr., of Texas Christian University], subjects who spontaneously corrected themselves, or said that there were details that they couldnt recall, were more likely to be truthful than those who did notthough, in the real world, memory lapses arouse suspicion.[14] Kant wrote, There are therefore, ethical rules which impose a plain obligation and render the action obligatory as for instance Thou shalt not lie. (Kant, Lectures on Ethics); also to be truthful (honest) in all declarations is therefore a sacred unconditional command of reason, and not to be limited by any expediency. (Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Appendix I), and I cannot wish for a general law to establish lying be-cause no one would any longer believe me, or I should be paid in the same coin.[15] The Life and Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Including All of His Important Utterances on Public Questions, from State Papers and from his Private Correspondence.[16] St. Augustine lists eight types of lies. The first type of lie is a deadly one which should be avoided and shunned from afar, namely, that which is uttered in the teaching of religion, and to the telling of which no one should be led under any condition. The second is that which injures somebody unjustly: such a lie as helps no one and harms someone. The third is that which is beneficial to one person while it harms another, although the harm does not produce physical defilement. The fourth is the lie which is told solely for the pleasure of lying and deceiving, that is, the real lie. The fifth type is that which is told from a desire to please others in smooth discourse. When these have been avoided and rejected, a sixth kind of lie follows which harms no one and benefits some person, as, for instance, when a person, knowing that anothers money is to be taken away unjustly, answers the questioner untruthfully and says that he does not know where the money is. The seventh type is that which is harmful to no one and beneficial to some person, with the exception of the case where a judge is questioning, as happens when a person lies because he is unwilling to betray a man sought for capital punishment, that is, not only a just and innocent person but even a criminal, because it belongs to Christian discipline never to despair of the conversion of anybody and never to block the opportunity for repentance. The eighth type of lie which is harmful to no one and beneficial to the extent that it protects someone from physical defilement, at least, from that defilement which we have mentioned above. (Augustine, On Lying, Treatises on Various Subjects)[17]Mark Twain: On the Decay of the Art of Lying.[18]Johann Friedrich Overbeck,Joseph and His Brothers, Neoclassicism and Romanticism

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