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Epistemic Diligence and Honesty

Written by Rebecca Brown

All else being equal, it is morally good for agents to be honest. That is, agents shouldn’t, without good reason, engage in non-honest behaviours such as lying, cheating or stealing. What counts as a ‘good reason’ will vary depending on your preferred ethical theory. For instance, Kant (in)famously insisted that even if a murderer is at the door seeking out their victim you mustn’t lie to them in order to protect the victim’s life. A rule utilitarian, in contrast, might endorse lies that can generally be expected to maximise expected utility (including, presumably, lying to murderers about the whereabouts of their intended victims).

What will actually count as being dishonest will vary depending on your preferred conception of honesty. If honesty has very extensive requirements, failure to volunteer relevant information when you know someone would find it useful might be a failure of honesty. On a narrower account, perhaps even ‘paltering’ – misleading by telling the truth – might not count as dishonest so long as what the agent says is technically true.Read More »Epistemic Diligence and Honesty

Are Public Health Institutions Honest?

By Rebecca Brown

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted various cracks in the function of our public institutions. One notable concern is the way in which scientific – including health – information is communicated to the public. Communication can serve different purposes. In the context of COVID-19, communication has been essential: describing the nature of the novel coronavirus, the risks it posed to health, the measures likely to reduce its spread. Some of this communication was aimed at changing people’s behaviour in order to control the infection. For instance, people were told to wash their hands regularly, for at least 20 seconds, and to avoid touching their face. Much of this information was uncertain. Emerging data on COVID-19 presented ever-changing estimates for infection and case fatality rates.

There are particular demands that are made of health communication. It needs to reach a wide audience, delivering often quite technical, uncertain information to people with varying degrees of health literacy. It needs to encourage behaviours likely to promote individual and public health and avoid causing unnecessary panic and alarm. It must also, one might argue, avoid misleading people about the facts as they are best understood. This last point suggests that health communication should adhere to the demands of honesty. 

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Lying About Santa: The Sequel

Written by Ben Davies

Another Christmas, and another blog about the ethics of Christmas-based lying.

Around this time last year, Alberto Giubilini wrote a post about whether we should allow children to believe in Santa. Alberto was pretty scathing about some of the arguments in favour of Santa-based honesty, but I want to offer some ethical considerations in favour of this unpopular view.

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