A Moral Comparison between Lying and Misleading

of Care and of Truth

Abstract

Is there a moral difference between lying and misleading? Some philosophers argue that lying is worse than misleading, especially in that lying is a direct violation of Truth (e.g., Chisholm and Feehan, 1977; Webber, 2013), and some argue that the moral relevance between lying and misleading does not exist (e.g., Jennifer Saul 2012). There is one particular argument that states people should better lie, as defended by Rees (Rees, 2014). Rees' central argument is that misleading is a greater betrayal of the deceived's engagement in the conversation than lying, which is a more significant harm. In this essay, I will demonstrate how Rees's argument stems solely from the Care of the deceived and argue that people should also consider the perspective of Truthfulness. The two perspectives, of Care and of Truth, form a two-axis plain that separates the discussion into four sections and discusses them separately. For the scope of this paper, I discuss only scenarios where Care is at stake but the Truth is not and the scenarios where Truth is at stake but Care is not, both in which I argue lying and misleading are morally equivalent.