Dear Alex, There is an older lady who sits next to me at work who is…quirky. I can only hear her, not see her, because there is a high cube wall, and she talks to her husband on her work phone twenty times a day.

On Tuesday, I think it was, she is having her post-lunch conversation with her husband, and he must’ve asked what she ate for lunch. She says she had a salad and it was actually really good. Then, like two minutes later, she reveals that it was actually a chicken gyro that came with a side salad.

Is that lying?

Eavesdropping in Earnest

Dear Eavesdropping, Thanks for reaching out. I’d be happy to address this question, but must first issue a disclaimer that, as your note was not extremely detailed, I will have to project a bit regarding a few specifics. In doing so, I hope I don’t make any inaccurate assumptions about your colleague, who — for the sake of ease and whimsy — I will henceforth refer to as Nicolette. That said….

Your uncertainty as to whether Nicolette is lying is warranted. On one hand, I’m sure you’re thinking, she has made no false utterance. On the other, Nicolette attempted (seemingly successfully) to mislead her husband.

I don’t think it productive to be overly literal here. If I wanted to, I could point to Dictionary.com, where the sixth definition of the word “lie” is “to express what is false; convey a false impression.” It seems clear to me that Nicolette has reached that threshold. That said, other dictionaries may differ. I, therefore, consider it wiser to examine the broader question through other lenses.

Daydream opportunity #1: Imagine yourself conversing with someone and making the following comment: “I can’t believe that some people are dumb enough to think that left-handed people are unintelligent.” Now, let us imagine that your interlocutor, in bad faith, begins quoting you as having said “left-handed people are unintelligent.” Is your friend lying? While you said everything she said you said, she is purposefully misrepresenting your opinion.

Nicolette, too, is misrepresenting the truth. But is misrepresenting the truth the same as uttering a lie?

Daydream opportunity #2: Imagine yourself eating lunch at a picnic table in a park. Two of your acquaintances walk past you, each brandishing guns, and disappear behind a tree. Moments later, you hear a single gunshot and then see your two friends run away. The police come to the scene, find a dead body, and ask if you saw who shot the victim. You tell them “no.” Let us ignore, for a moment, the weak investigative work of the police officers. Are you lying?

The words you have said are true. But you are lying by omission.

In courts, witnesses are asked to swear they are telling “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” — without “the whole truth” component, witnesses would lie by omission and testimony could be near meaningless.

But, you’re wondering, is lying by omission lying lying?

(To be clear, the fact that the term includes the word “lying” is no real proof. “Ice cream cake” is not really a cake, by any sane definition, nor is an “ice cream sandwich” a sandwich.)

According to an article in The Cut, it might depend on who you ask. The article cites a study from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology which seems to indicate that the speakers of these quasi-falsehoods think they are not being totally dishonest, while those being quasi-lied to differ.

But, let’s drill down a bit further. Any observer can understand that Nicollete — and, indeed the potential liars in our examples — are deceiving through their speech. If you prefer to use a term other than “lying” as a synonym for “deceives by speech” or want to argue that lying by omission is a branch of truth, well, I think you’re fighting an uphill battle, but I may not be able to prove you wrong on a semantic level.

I will say that, on moral grounds, I think there is a small distinction to be made, as the notion of lying by omission seems somewhat less distasteful than verbalizing indubitable falsehood. Someone who only omits pertinent information has standards — they may not quite be the standards of honesty, as we think of it conventionally, but they are standards, nonetheless. Someone willing to fabricate will, in all likelihood, make more frequent and severe lies.

All in all, I am wary to decry Nicolette too much. I am sure that — despite my general striving for honesty — I myself have, at times, misled by omission and likely justified it because it wasn’t really lying.

That said, objectively — yes, I think Nicolette is lying.

Alex

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