Lying, acting and trust

A spy's message to his handler about troop movements is intercepted. The message is then changed to carry the false information that the infantry will be on the move without artillery support and sent onward. Did those who changed the message lie?

To lie, one must assert. But suppose the handler finds out about the change. Could she correctly say: "The counterintelligence operatives asserted to us that the infantry would be on the move without artillery support?" That just seems wrong. In fact, it seems similar to the oddity of attributing to an actor the speech of a character (though with the important difference that the actor does not typically speak to deceive). The point is easiest to see, perhaps, where there are first person pronouns. If part of the message says: "I will be at the old barn at 9 pm", it is surely false that the counterintelligence staff asserted they will be at the old barn (even though, quite possibly, they will--in order to capture the handler), but it also doesn't seem right to say that the counterintelligence staff asserted that the spy will be there.

The trust account of lying, defended by Jorge Garcia and others, seems to fit well with this judgment. On this account, to lie is to solicit trust while betraying it. But one can only betray a trust in oneself. The counterintelligence operatives, however, did not solicit the handler's trust in themselves: rather, they were relying on the handler's trust in the spy, and that trust the operatives cannot betray.

But there are some difficult edge cases. What if a counterintelligence operative dons a mask that makes him look just like the spy, and speaks falsehoods with a voice imitating the spy? But what if a spy goes to a foreign country with an entirely fictional identity? I am inclined to think that on the trust account the two cases are different. When one imitates the spy, one relies on the faith and credit that the spy has, and one isn't soliciting trust for oneself. When one dresses up as someone who doesn't exist, I think one is trying to gain faith and credit for oneself, and it seems one is lying. But I am not sure where the line is to be drawn.

"Why are you telling me this?" and protocols

Suppose you want to convince me that I have no hands but are unable to lie (and I know for sure you are unable to lie). However, you know a lot more than I about something, perhaps something completely irrelevant to the question. For instance, suppose you know the results of some very long sequence of die rolls that's completely irrelevant. It seems you can fool me with the truth. For you can find some true proposition p about the die rolls such that I assign an exceedingly low probability to p. You then reveal to me this disjunctive fact: p is true or I have no hands. Then: P(no hands | p or no hands) = P(no hands) / (P(p) + P(~p and no hands)) ≥ P(no hands) / (P(p) + P(no hands)). (Exercise: check the details.) If P(p) is sufficiently small, relative to my prior probability P(no hands) (which of course is non-zero--there is a tiny chance that I was in a terrible accident and superb prostheses have just been developed), this will be close to 1.

But of course, whether I have hands or not, if you know a lot more about something than I do, you will be able to find a truth that I assign a tiny probability to. So I really shouldn't be deceived by you. Rather, I should take myself to have learned p. Your disjunction is equivalent to the material conditional that if I have hands, then p. I know I have hands. So, p. But what about the Bayesian calculation, which is mathematically correct?

This is a protocol problem. If I happened to ask you whether the disjunction "p is true or I have no hands" was true, and you then revealed it to me that it was, the Bayesian calculation would have been correct. But the actual protocol was that you picked out a truth that I took to be unlikely, and disjoined it with a claim that I have no hands. If I knew for sure that this was your protocol, I would have learned two things: first that p is true, and second that p is true or I have no hands. The second would have been uninformative in light of the first, and so there would be no deceit. But of course if the above were to really happen, I wouldn't know for sure what your protocol was.

In real life, when someone tells us something odd out of the blue, we often ask: "Why are you telling me this?" The above case shows how epistemically important the answer to this question can be. If you tell me (remember that you are unable to lie) that you're telling me this to get me to think I have no hands, I will suspect that your protocol may be to find an unlikely truth and disjoin it with the claim that I have no hands. As long as I have significant suspicion that this is your protocol, your statement won't shake my near-certainty that I have hands. But if you tell me that you were telling me this because you decided, before finding out whether p was true, that you were going to tell me whether or not the disjunction is true, then my near-certainty that I have hands should be shaken. I wonder how often "Why are you telling me this?" involves a case of trying to find the protocol and thus to figure out how to update. Rarely? Often?

Upscaling baud rates

There is almost no philosophy here. :-)

Suppose I want to send some data to a device that runs at baud rate a from a serial device that runs at a different baud rate b.  If a > b, I am out of luck.  Probably likewise I'm out of luck if they're close.  But if a is much smaller than b, then I can emulate the lower baud rate a from the higher baud rate device, by rescaling the bit data, taking into account mark and stop bits.  Unfortunately, required mark and stop bits will introduce some problems into the bit stream--but if you're lucky, your receiving device will just treat these problems as a glitch and ignore them.

For instance, suppose I want to send the hex byte
53 (ASCII 'S')
from a device running at 57600 baud (8 N 1) to a device running at 9600 baud (also 8 N 1).  It turns out that if I transmit
E0 7F 00 1F 7E F8  
this may be a decent approximation.

For when I send the longer byte string, what actually goes over the wire is:
0000001111011111110100000000010111110001001111110100001111110
(where red zeros are start bits and blue ones are stop bits, and data is sent least-significant-bit first).
The bit pattern for hex 53 (including the start and stop bits) should be:
0110010101
which with a perfect 6X (=57600/9600) rescaling would be:
000000111111111111000000000000111111000000111111000000111111

Putting the two side-by-side we get the following bit differences:
0000001111011111110100000000010111110001001111110100001111110

000000111111111111000000000000111111000000111111000000111111

(the final zero in the first stream doesn't matter).  

If you're lucky, the device you're talking to will take the highlighted bits to be glitches and ignore them and the data will get through just fine.

The code for scaling the bitstream is here (it's GPL3 on the face, but feel free to use DataLink.java under the BSD 3-clause license if you prefer). 

Would one ever need to do this?  Maybe.  I want to make the Mindflex toy EEG headset behave just like the MindWave Mobile EEG headset.  To do that, I hook up a Bluetooth-to-TTL-serial link to the Mindflex toy headset, and I need to send the hex data 02 to the toy headset to switch it to the mode that the MindWave Mobile headset runs at.  Unfortunately, that 02 needs to be sent at 9600 baud, and then the headset will switch to 57600 baud.  This alright if you can control the baud rate of the serial link on the fly, as has been the case when I've been using a Brainlink with custom firmware (and an Android app to switch to the mode that works like the MindWave).  But I want to switch to a simple HC-06 link, and those can't adjust baud rate dynamically, so I will have to use the above trick.  (I've already tested the trick using the Brainlink and that works.)  

I said there was almost no philosophy here.  The little bit of philosophy is the curious self-observation that in my programming work, a not insignificant proportion of what I do is fooling devices.  In the above case, I am fooling a device that expects a 9600 baud connection into "thinking" it's getting one.  This is an entirely morally innocent kind of "deception".  I suppose the Kantian point is that when we try to deceive people, we are treating them in a way that is appropriate for machines.

Intuitions on lying and deception

My intuition that lying is significantly different from some other forms of deception is driven by an intuition I have about speech being special vis-à-vis the virtue of honesty.

Consider: "She told us she is going to go to Cracow, and she is an utterly honest person, so even though we are her enemies, we can rely on her going to some city named Cracow at least at some point in the future." This seems a reasonable thing to say.

But consider: "Her footprints at this intersection lead to Cracow. She is an utterly honest person, so she must be going to Cracow." That is surely mistaken reasoning. It is not a sign of dishonesty that one lays a false trail, unless one has promised (implicitly or explicitly) not to do so.

The tie with promises seems significant to me. An honest person only makes promises that she intends to keep.

Now, let us suppose that George prefaces every assertion with: "I promise that I will now only say something sincere." That would be dreadfully annoying (there are characters in fiction who do this kind of thing). Part of the reason for the annoyance is that it is quite unnecessary. The commitment to speak only sincerely is already there in the assertion that follows the preface.

As our Savior told us, our yeas should be yeas, and our nays, nays. Nothing more is needed, because our yeas and nays already include a commitment to speak sincerely. This commitment is part and parcel of making an assertion rather than musing out-loud, asking a question, making a promise, quoting a line of poetry, etc. Indeed, much or even all of what distinguishes an assertion from other speech acts is precisely this commitment to speak only the truth. (Actors on stage do not make assertions or promises.)

Granted, sometimes we emphatically do promise to speak the truth in some matter. I think that is not a sign that we ordinarily have no such commitment. Rather, the promise is a moral-gravity booster, in the way in which making an oath is a legal-gravity booster (if one speaks falsely under oath, one commits perjury, instead of merely hampering an investigation, etc.) One could similarly boost the moral gravity of ordinary promises by promising to keep the promise. To boost the moral gravity of an obligation is simply to bring it about that it would be a greater offense to go against the obligation.

If I am right that asserting p is normatively equivalent to promising to say only the truth or maybe to say only something one believes and then saying a sentence that expresses p, and if I am right that an honest person does not make promises she does not intend to keep, then an honest person does not lie. But various non-linguistic kinds of deceit involve no commitment, explicit or implicit, for the deceiver to be breaking, and hence under some circumstances will be compatible with honesty.

Deception and lying

There is good reason to think lying is always wrong. Lying is wrong on Kantian grounds: it treats the other person as a tool to one's ends rather than as an autonomous rational being, and the practice of lying would undercut itself if universalized. Lying is wrong on natural law grounds: it is clearly a perversion of the nature of assertoric speech, using speech for the opposite of its natural end of communicating truth. Lying is malevolent, except perhaps in outré cases: in lying, we act to bring it about that the other has a false belief, and it is surely intrinsically bad to have a false belief. Lying is wrong on personalist grounds: in making an assertion one solicits the other's trust, but in deliberately speaking falsely, one betrays that trust in the act of soliciting it. And lying is wrong on theological grounds: God is truth, and the Book of Revelation lists liars among the damned.

On the other hand, even those who are willing to agree that lying is always wrong are unlikely to think there is anything wrong with sticking one's hat out on a stick so that one's enemy might shoot at it while one sneaks away. It is hard enough to protect the innocent against unjust aggressors without lying (and, alas, sometimes impossible). But to do so without any deceit is nigh impossible.

But some people—even very smart people—do in fact consider lying and deceit to be the same thing. After all, in both cases, it seems, one is trying to do the same thing, namely to induce a false belief, and if so, then the malevolence argument would make deceit be wrong for one of the reasons that lying is.

I once found this very puzzling. And then a colleague gave me the beginning of an answer. In cases of deceit, one is trying to get the other to do something, rather than trying to get the other to believe something. I think this story can be filled out in a way that makes for a neat distinction between deceit and all but perhaps outr´ cases of lying (more on those later). On the face of it, one might argue that if I stick out my hat, my intention is to bring it about that

1. my enemy will think I am under the hat, and will shoot, and the commotion will cover my escape.

It seems that the enemy's belief that I am under the hat is essential to the success of the plan.

But this argument is mistaken. What is essential is that the enemy should take herself to have evidence that I am under the hat. She does not have to believe that I am under the hat to shoot. She only needs to take herself to have more evidence for my being there than for my being in any other particular place. That is all that is needed to rationally justify her shooting under the hat. And her belief that she has this evidence is in fact a true belief—she indeed does have such evidence. Now, an epistemically less cautious enemy may actually form the belief that I am under the hat. But here I can apply double effect. She forms the false belief on the basis of the evidence. I intend her to have the evidence and to shoot. The evidence is sufficient to lead to her shooting. I do not have to intend her to form that false belief. I suppose things go better for me if she does, but I need only intend that

2. my enemy will take herself to have more evidence for me to be under the hat than anywhere else, and will shoot, and the commotion will cover my escape.

(A lot of these ideas developed in conversation with the aforementioned colleague. In fact it may be that there is very little that is mine here.)

The same can be said when I lay a false trail at a cross-roads when I am pursued by the enemy. I only intend what is needed for the accomplishment of my plan. Belief that I've taken road A, when I've taken road B, is not needed. All that's needed is that my enemy have strong evidence that I've taken road A, since having strong evidence that I've taken road A is sufficient to justify her following road A. There is no evil in her having such strong evidence. The evidence consists, after all, of a truth—the truth that there are footprints leading A-ward.

The principle of double effect can justify some cases of deception—I may foresee the other's forming a false belief, but I don't intend that belief formation, either as an end or as a means. And, typically, I don't even foresee that belief formation—I only foresee the possibility of it, since I do not know how epistemically cautious the other person will be. All that I intend is for the other person to have evidence for a false belief, and to act on that evidence.

Of course, in some cases of deceit, one is positively intending that the other have a false belief. For instance, a student plagiarist might desire not merely that her parents have evidence of her innocence, but that her parents positively believe her innocent. If she then manufactures evidence for her innocence with the intention that her parents believe her innocent, the above will be no excuse.

If this story is right, and if it is not to justify well-intentioned lies every bit as much as deceits, then there must be a crucial difference between how assertions function and how evidence functions. Assertions cannot simply be intended as yet another piece of evidence. For if they are, then in affirming a falsehood, we are not trying to induce any false belief in the other, but we are simply manufacturing misleading evidence. And, indeed, I do think assertions directly justify beliefs, in ways that are not merely evidential.

We can now go back to the reasons for believing lying to be wrong, and see if they apply to cases of deceit where one is not intending false belief but only misleading evidence. The Kantian "using" argument may not work (I used to think it would work, but I am not so clear on that). Maybe one is not circumventing the other's rationality, but only ensuring that the other act on unclear evidence. Nor is it clear that the practice of generating misleading evidence is not universalizable. Even if everybody who has good reason to deceive generates misleading evidence, there will be enough cases where non-misleading evidence is generated unconsciously that the evidence will still have some weight. Making footprints or putting a hat on a stick are not actions that have a natural end that is being circumvented here in the way in which lying circumvents the natural end of assertion. So the natural law argument against lying fails to show deception to be wrong. If the double effect considerations above are correct, the malevolence argument fails. The personalist argument also fails, because when we take something as evidence, rather than as testimony, trust in another person need not be involved. I do not trust persons to leave footprints leading to them—I have no right to feel betrayed if they leave footprints pointing in other directions. God is truth, but the cases of deceit that I have defended are not directly opposed to truth, since they do not involve an attempt to cause a false belief.

Final comment: Twice I mentioned that there could be outré cases of lying where there is no intention of causing false belief. These would be cases where one does not expect to be believed. There could, for instance, be cases where one knows that the other person is expecting one to lie, and so one says something false, in order to lead the other to true belief. I don't know if this is really a betrayal of trust since there is no trust. I don't know if people would count this as lying—it doesn't, for instance, meet the Catholic Catechism's definition of lying as a false assertion intended to deceive. But if one wishes to count this as a case of lying, it is a form of lying that may be significantly morally different from the others.

Lies, deception, testimony and faith

One of the routes to being epistemically justification that p is true is to be told by a reliable reporter that p. This is justification by testimony. On the other hand, I might be told something by you and not accept it as testimony, but instead treat the fact that you told it to me as evidence, doing a Bayesian update of my credences based on the fact that you said the thing. If I treat your saying that p in this way, my credence that p may go up and may go down (e.g., if I think you're lying so that your asserting that p makes it more likely that p is false). Moreover, there is a difference between accepting your testimony and taking your assertion of p to be evidence for the truth of p. I want to focus on this difference, and say a few things about the difference between lying and deception.

The first point I want to make is that I can only take your assertion that p is true to be testimony if either you made the assertion to me, or I stand at the end of a chain where you told it to A₁, A₁ told it to A₂, and so on, until we get to someone who told it to me. Suppose that instead I stand in no such chain. Instead, I overhear your saying that p to B. Then I cannot properly accept p as testimony, since you were not speaking to me. That you asserted p to B is evidence for p, if I think it is likely you were telling the truth to B, but it is not testimony to me. Testimony is at least a ternary relation: A testifies that p to B (where B might be an individual or a group). If I am not testified to, I cannot properly believe on testimony.

Here's one reason. It is perfectly permissible to speak in ways that your interlocutor understands but which others will misunderstand. You do have a responsibility to ensure your interlocutor will not misunderstand. If you have a foreign vegan guest whom you know to think that the English word "egg" denotes a kind of plant (eggplant, say), you are neglecting not just your hostly responsibilities but your responsibilities as a speaker in saying: "This dish is made of egg." In fact, you are lying—in speaking, you are inviting your guest to take your words as testimony to the dish being made of a kind of a plant. You are giving false witness.

When we speak we have a responsibility not to be misunderstood by an interlocutor, and the interlocutor in turn gain the right—barring defeaters—to take what she thinks you've said as true. This right is tied to the responsibility. But when I overhear your asserting p to B, you have no responsibility to ensure my understanding you—your only responsibility is to ensure that B understands. Thus you do not confer on me the right to take what I think you've said as true.

Suppose this is right. Assume that you know that George is at Mark's house, but want to mislead me. You are talking with Frank and notice that I am listening in (maybe I am behind the arras, and you hear a rustle). You tell Frank: "George is at Jennifer's house", but you do so with a wink that ensures Frank doesn't take your words as literal truth. I don't see the wink, of course, so I come to have evidence that George is at Jennifer's house. But you haven't lied to me. You haven't lied to me because you weren't speaking to me, though you expected me to hear. Your properly speakerly responsibilities were to Frank, and these you fulfilled.

Note, too, that it may be that you are not even intending that I believe George is at Jennifer's house. It could be that you are merely intending that I take myself to have evidence for George's being at Jennifer's house. (This point is based on an idea of Mark Murphy's.) And in intending this, you are intending that I believe something true, viz., that I have evidence for George's being at Jennifer's house. My believing this is likely all you need for your purposes, since whether I actually believe on the evidence or not, presumably the presence of the evidence will get me to look for George at Jennifer's house, if I want to find him.

I once read in an early 20th century moral theology textbook (Smith, I think) that someone who is tortured and says something false is no more lying than an actor on stage, because she is not really engaging in the practice of assertion, but is uttering words more like a madman (I am very loosely paraphrasing the main idea from memory). Here is one way of saying something like this in the above setting. If I am torturing you, you shouldn't expect me to take your words as testimony. Instead, you would expect me to take your words as your way of saying whatever it takes to get the pain to stop. Thus if you say something that is false, you are not offering me testimony, but simply bringing it about that I have evidence of the Bayesian, not testimonial, sort.

In summary, here are some claims that I suspect are true, though I have not given much of an argument for many, or perhaps any, of them:

• Lying is not just deceitful or misleading speech. It is speech that provides (or maybe: is intended to provide) false testimony to the person being lied to. When you are not providing testimony to me, e.g., because you are not talking to me, you are not lying to me.
• It is a speaker's responsibility not to be misunderstood by the interlocutors.
• There is a difference between being known to be a listener and being spoken to, and only someone spoken to can be lied to.
• Credences should be differently updated on testimony than on evidence.
• There is an epistemic virtue, which I will call "the doxastic aspect of faith", which is the virtue of appropriately updating on testimony.
• Presumably, demons believe many claims made by Jesus, because they have evidence that Jesus is God and that God does not lie. However, this need not be the same as even the doxastic aspect of faith, because it may be that the demons are updating on Jesus's words considered as evidence, and not as testimony directed to them. Likewise, it would be possible for a human being to come to believe that what Jesus said on some topic is true without having even the doxastic aspect of faith in Jesus.