Anglo-American common language philosophy developed in the UK after World War II as a result of the belief that Naziism had found its conceptual underpinnings in the philosophy of figures like Hegel and Nietzsche. Many of its early proponents had been intelligence officers or codebreakers, some combat soldiers as well.

Some of their work I find a little weird. Take J L Austin’s famous essay “How to do things with words,” which analyzes the sentence “There are cookies on the sideboard, if you want them.” Suppose, however, you don’t want them. Are they still there?

lying

Much more useful is the analysis of what a lie consists in.

The litmus test is not simply the factual correctness of what is said. After all, the speaker might be misinformed. Rather, the essence of a lie is the intention to mislead. If you say, for example, that a man with a gun advanced on the officers–and “forget” to mention that the gun was not in the man’s hand, but rather secured in a holster at the base of the man’s back and neither visible nor easily accessible–and possibly not loaded and with the safety on to prevent firing, that’s a lie. The sentence, in isolation, may be true as far is it goes, but it’s framed in a way to make it a key element in advancing a false narrative about what has occurred. Very Third Reich-ish.

Another element in lying is what one might call the misuse of ritual circumstances. If we’re in a comedy club and are listening to a performer telling jokes, for example, we all know that the entertainer’s purpose is to be funny. So we understand that what’s said may be an exaggeration of real events, or simply not true at all. But that’s ok. We know what comedy is about and we’re in a comedy club, after all.

In contrast, if we’re at a government briefing and listening to a high official from the Justice Department describe a potential crime, our expectation is that what we hear will be the truth, and nothing misleading. We should get all the important, relevant facts and nothing extraneous. So when that official says a man with a gun approached ICE officers, and “forgets” to mention that the gun was not in the man’s hand but rather in a holster behind his back, underneath his clothing and out of reach, that’s not really an accidental omission. It’s a lie. …a lie, because the intention is to trick the hearer into drawing a false conclusion. One might try to defend the officials in question by saying they’re bring tricked by ICE or that they figure lying is ok, but neither is a good look. And of course in this case there are videos that show the true state of affairs.