Let your "yes" be yes

Jesus seems to have forbidden swearing, insisting that our “yes” should be a yes, and our “no” a no and that everything else is “from the evil one” (Matthew 5:34-37). A strong reading of this would take Jesus to be forbidding all oaths. By and large, the Christian tradition has not taken that to be the correct reading. In the US, many people who accept the Bible, including presumably this text in Matthew, swear in court on the Bible.

A plausible reading is that Jesus is engaging in hyperbole to command an integrity such that there be no need for oaths. For Christians, the same norms of integrity apply to simple assertions as to sworn depositions. I will assume that this is the correct reading.

Suppose one thinks, contrary to the main line of the Christian tradition, that it is sometimes permissible to lie. Then one has to think that it is also permissible to lie under oath in precisely the same circumstances in which it would be permissible to lie without oath. But this is an implausible consequence.

Let’s say that it’s permissible to lie to save an innocent life—that’s one of the most given criteria. Then, we have the consequence that it is permissible to swear to a false alibi for someone whom you know to be innocent in a capital case if you foresee that otherwise he will be convicted. This is already implausible. But it also means that, implausibly, even in a good and free society one might have good reason to keep one’s moral views secret. For if it were known that according to one’s moral views it would be permissible to provide a false alibi when one took oneself to know that the accused is innocent in a capital case, then one’s true alibi would be of little worth in such cases, too.

Second, whatever criterion one has is going to admit of borderline cases. For instance, in the case of “saving an innocent life”, at one end, there is the case where it is certain that the person will live if and only if one lies. Near the other end, the probability of survival is slightly bigger if one lies. It is implausible that one can permissibly lie just to give someone the slightest increase in probability of survival. If that were so, then it would be permissible to swear to a false alibi (assuming, as per my reading of what Jesus said, that swearing falsely is permissible whenever false assertion is) even when it is very likely that the innocent accused in the capital case will be let off, as long as it slightly increases the innocent’s chance of survival, and that can’t be right. And somewhere in between there will be borderline cases.

But now consider a borderline case of the permissibility of lying. If it is only borderline whether it is permissible to engage in a simple lie, to swear falsely in such a case would be simply wrong, not just borderline wrong. But this violates Jesus’s principle that the norms regarding simple lies are the same as the norms regarding false oaths.

It seems to me that the best reading of the situation is that:

1. Lying under oath is always wrong.

2. And so, lying is always wrong.

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.