Lying and Deception: Theory and Practice

Thomas Carson offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date investigation of moral and conceptual questions about lying and deception. Part I addresses conceptual questions and offers definitions of lying, deception, and related concepts such as withholding information, keeping someone in the dark, and half truths. Part II deals with questions in ethical theory, and argues that standard debates about lying and deception between act-utilitarians and their critics are inconclusive because they rest on appeals to disputed moral intuitions. Part III explores deception and withholding information in sales and advertising, bluffing in negotiations, the duties of professionals to inform clients, lying and deception by leaders as a pretext for fighting wars, and lying and deception about history (with special attention to the Holocaust), and cases of distorting the historical record by telling half-truths.