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Honesty
Honesty
The Philosophy and Psychology of a
Neglected Virtue
C H R I S T IA N B. M I L L E R
1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197567494.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
To Lillian Joyous Miller
For all the joy and laughter you bring to our lives
Contents
I . T H E P H I L O S O P H Y O F HO N E S T Y
I N T E R LU D E
I I . T H E E M P I R IC A L DATA
If you ask people today to name some of the virtues, honesty will often
show up on their list. It is a perfectly familiar virtue. It is also widely
accepted as a virtue. Unlike some other character traits, such as chas-
tity or humility, there is little controversy about whether honesty is a
moral excellence that is worth cultivating.1 It seems clear enough, too,
that honesty is a tremendously important virtue. Parents want to de-
velop it in their children. Close relationships typically depend upon it.
Employers value it in their employees.
Yet, despite these observations, philosophers have—stunningly, in
my view—almost completely omitted the virtue of honesty from their
professional writing. This is one of the only books to discuss the virtue
of honesty in detail since at least the 1970s.2 Furthermore, at the time
I was writing these words, there had been almost no articles in main-
stream journals in analytic philosophy on the virtue of honesty in at
1 As Linda Zagzebski (1996: 158) writes, “honesty is on all accounts a moral virtue.”
Similarly Tara Smith (2006: 75) claims that honesty “is probably the single most widely
endorsed virtue by people of divergent views on many other aspects of morality’s
substantive instruction.” And Howard Curzer (2012: 195) remarks, “Honesty is on
everyone’s list of virtues.”
2 Sissela Bok’s 1978 book, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life is the book
most comparable to this one that I am aware of, but it was focused narrowly on lying,
which is only one kind of dishonest behavior. Tom Carson’s 2010 book, Lying and
Deception: Theory and Practice has just one chapter on honesty as a virtue. He also notes
that “philosophers have written very little about the concept of honesty and the idea of
honesty as a virtue” (257). See also Michaelson and Stokke (2018), which is an edited
volume focused more narrowly on lying with little discussion of the virtue of honesty,
as well as chapter 5 of Karen Stohr’s (2012) On Manners. Also noteworthy is Bernard
Williams’s 2002 book, Truth and Truthfulness, and Andreas Stokke’s 2018 book, Lying
and Insincerity.
Interestingly, Bok herself was making the same observation back in 1978 about the
lack of work in this area: “The striking fact is that, though no moral choices are more
common or more troubling than those which have to do with deception in its many
guises, they have received extraordinarily little contemporary analysis. The major works
of moral philosophy of this century, so illuminating in other respects, are silent on this
subject” (xix).
x Preface: A Neglected Virtue
least fifty years.3 Edited volumes and monographs have snippets of dis-
cussion here and there,4 but even the leading collections on the virtues
and vices tend to omit honesty and dishonesty altogether.5 To make
matters worse, major Western philosophers such as Aristotle have had
little to say about honesty.6
What explains this neglect, especially when there has been a huge
resurgence of interest in virtue and virtue ethics dating back at least to
the 1970s? I do not have a good answer to this question.7 In the case of
the virtue of modesty, for instance, Julia Driver wrote an important and
controversial article, which helped to launch a small research industry
on this virtue.8 However, until just recently, no one has taken that first
step with respect to honesty, which might in turn spark responses and
refinements.9
It could be that philosophers have felt that there just is not much
of philosophical interest to say about honesty. Or perhaps they have
tended to assume that, at the end of the day, honesty is not really a dis-
tinct virtue in its own right and can be reduced to other virtues, like
justice and truthfulness. Or what is most likely the case is that since no
one is saying much about honesty, philosophers haven’t formed many
assumptions about it one way or the other. Their attention has been
elsewhere, and it has simply been overlooked.
3 The closest journal article in the neighborhood might be Louis Guenin’s 2005 paper,
“Intellectual Honesty.” Martin (1993) has some discussion of honesty, although much
of its focus is on love. In her 2003 paper, Tara Smith spends two paragraphs on what the
virtue of honesty is and devotes the rest of the paper to why honesty is valuable. Also rel-
evant is Carr (2014), although it did not appear in a philosophy journal.
Slowly our team here at Wake Forest University has been trying to change this trend.
See, for instance, important papers by two of my former postdoctoral fellows (Wilson
2018; Roberts and West 2020), as well as not so important papers by Miller (2015, 2017a,
2019a, 2019b, 2020a, 2020b, forthcoming a, forthcoming b) and the papers in our edited
volume on honesty, integrity, and truth seeking (Miller and West 2020).
4 For an exception, see Baier (1990).
5 See, e.g., Timpe and Boyd (2014).
6 The closest Aristotle gets is the virtue that pertains to truthfully talking about one-
self (1127a114–1127b33), although he does at one point note in passing that there are
other issues pertaining to being truthful, and that on his view they should fall under
the heading of justice (1127a33–1127b1). For related discussion, see Carson (2010: 257–
258) and especially Curzer (2012: chapter 10).
7 For Bok’s speculations, see her 1978: xx, 10–12.
8 See Driver (1989).
9 For my attempt, see Miller (2017a).
Preface: A Neglected Virtue xi
For the past decade, my interest in the topic of character has combined
more conceptual work in philosophy with the results of empirical
studies in psychology. This book will be no exception. Part I is on the
conceptual side and will offer a new account of the virtue of honesty.
In the process it will take up themes such as the scope of the virtue, the
motivational dimension of honesty, the role of practical wisdom, and
what the corresponding vices are to honesty.
Chapter 7 will serve as a bridge chapter or interlude between the
conceptual and the empirical parts of the book. Its focus is on tax-
onomy, and it will raise several conceptual issues about how to cate-
gorize people’s character in this moral domain. But it will also draw on
empirical work being done in positive psychology with the Values-in-
Action classification.
Part II turns to questions about whether most people as a matter of
fact do have the virtue of honesty and, if not, what their character looks
like instead. Here I dive into the latest research literature on stealing,
promise-breaking, lying, and cheating. The last chapter in this section
tries to put all the pieces together by offering an explanatory account
of the data, followed by a moral assessment of how good most people
would turn out to be if the explanatory account is correct.
The book ends with an afterword on how to close what I have called
the “character gap.”10 In this case it is the gap between how our char-
acter should be (deeply honest) and how it tends to actually be. I sug-
gest, at least in a preliminary way, that the ideas offered in the book
can provide some guidance as we start to think about strategies for be-
coming better.
Let me be up front about two topics I will not be exploring in the
book, especially since some readers might be expecting a discussion
10 Miller (2017d).
xii Preface: A Neglected Virtue
of them. The first topic is the definition of lying. There is a small but
growing literature on how exactly to define lying, given that the tra-
ditional definition, which dates back at least to Augustine, has been
widely rejected.11 This literature has quickly become complex and
technical, and for my purposes I do not need to delve into it. My focus
will be on uncontroversial cases of lying.
Second, I do not consider whether lying is ever morally permissible.
Here too we find a long-standing view which in recent years has faced
steadfast resistance. While there are a few defenders of the strict posi-
tion that lying is always morally wrong,12 most ethicists today allow for
exceptions, say in emergency rescue cases where a family of Jews can
be protected from the Nazis. Although my own sympathies rest with
the majority, I will try as much as possible to remain neutral on this
debate.
Intended Audience
My most recent book, The Character Gap: How Good Are We?, was a
trade book written for a nonacademic audience and did not presup-
pose any background in philosophy or psychology. In this book, I have
returned to more academic writing, although down the road I hope to
use the ideas here in a book for a wider audience. But for now, this is a
book aimed mainly at academics in philosophy, psychology, and reli-
gion, as well as others who are interested in the virtue of honesty. It will
use some of the machinery of contemporary analytic philosophy, but
hopefully the writing will be accessible to graduate students and un-
dergraduate majors in these fields. Many of the chapters should also be
accessible to a well-informed nonacademic audience.
The central ideas in this book were first developed for a conference
on character that we organized at Wake Forest University, whose pa-
pers were subsequently published by MIT Press as Moral Psychology,
volume 5. I am grateful for all the support of my coeditor of that
volume, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, as well as his very helpful feed-
back. The next big step was the opportunity to be on leave for an
academic year to expand the discussion from a paper to a book manu-
script. Thanks so much to the Wake Forest University Reynolds leave
program and the Thomas J. Lynch Fund for so generously supporting
me during this year. Win-Chiat Lee and Ralph Kennedy were my de-
partment chairs during the writing of this book, and I couldn’t have
asked for better. They are extraordinary.
Work on this book has spanned two major grant projects I have been
fortunate to be a part of at Wake Forest: the Beacon Project, funded
by the Templeton Religion Trust, and the Honesty Project, funded by
the John Templeton Foundation. Naturally the opinions expressed
here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views
of either Templeton foundation. Special thanks to Chris Stewart, John
Churchill, Alex Arnold, Sarah Clement, Michael Murray, and Richard
Bollinger.
Peter Ohlin at Oxford University Press has once again been a joy
to work with, and I am very appreciative of his support of my work.
Many thanks as well to Meridith Murray for preparing the index so
carefully. The two reviewers for Oxford, one of whom subsequently
identified himself as Paul Bloomfield, sent along tremendously
helpful comments that substantially improved the book. I am greatly
in their debt. The same is true of the Honesty Project reading group,
which workshopped the conceptual chapters and caught a number
of problems. Thanks so much for helpful comments to Emily Austin,
William Fleeson, R. Michael Furr, Eranda Jayawickreme, Kathleen
Stimely, Gregory Robson, Logan Martin, Cameron Silverglate, and
xvi Acknowledgments
1 For an earlier version of the ideas in this chapter, see Miller (2017a).
Honesty. Christian B. Miller, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2021.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197567494.003.0001
4 The Philosophy of Honesty
2 For more on virtues, virtuous actions, and acting from virtue, see Hurka (2006),
Crisp (2015: 268–269), and Battaly (2015: 111). It is also true that there can be causal
dependency in the other direction as well, if the performance of honest actions helps to
develop and strengthen one’s possession of the virtue of honesty.
Preliminaries to Developing an Account of Honesty 5
Now the focus is on the traits of character of these individuals. Thus for
Roberts to have the virtue of honesty, he has to have some stable ten-
dency or disposition of the honest sort.
This should be a familiar picture of how character traits work from
the philosophy literature.3 Roberts’s honesty can give rise to honest
thoughts about, say, the fact that exaggerating a charity donation on his
taxes is cheating, and consequently how cheating on his taxes would
be wrong. These thoughts in turn can lead him to act in honest ways,
in this case by reporting the correct figures on his taxes. The honest
disposition itself is distinct, though, from these thoughts and actions.
It plays a causal role in giving rise to them, and in turn is part of the
causal explanation for them.
Furthermore, thoughts stemming from an honest disposition would
not be activated all the time in every situation—exceptions might in-
clude sleeping, watching TV, or looking at one’s phone out of boredom.
Rather, only certain situations Roberts is in which are relevant to this
trait—such as parties or classrooms—activate his honest disposi-
tion. Trying to accurately predict when this will happen depends on a
number of specific features of his psychology, such as what he notices,
how he interprets events in his surroundings, what else is going on in
his mind at the time, and so forth. Once activated, though, his honest
disposition can play an active role in his psychology. Using the philo-
sophical jargon, Roberts’s honest thoughts can go from being merely
dispositional thoughts, to being occurrent thoughts.
These occurrent thoughts, it should be noted, need not be con-
scious. Roberts may not even recognize them in the moment if they
are functioning subconsciously. Presumably most of the time we have
a variety of subconscious occurrent beliefs and desires which are
3 I have discussed this picture at great length in Miller (2013: chapter 1) and
(2014: chapter 1). There I consider the metaphysical nature of character traits, their role
in causing and explaining behavior, and their irreducibility to mere patterns of behavior.
Since the discussion there applies straightforwardly to the case of honesty, I have not
taken the space here to repeat it.
6 The Philosophy of Honesty
Naturally the honest thoughts and feelings won’t always translate into
honest actions. Sometimes the environment will not cooperate, say
if one is prevented from speaking or acting. Sometimes other, more
important considerations come into play, say in cases where lying or
cheating could prevent a terrorist attack. But other things being equal,
the triggering of an honest disposition gives rise to occurrent thoughts,
which in turn give rise to intentional action.
So far so good. Yet while (H) might be helpful in shedding some
light on honesty qua character trait, it doesn’t shed much light on hon-
esty. Why not? Because we could say the very same thing about many
other virtues too. Consider compassion, for instance:
Virtues in general are causal dispositions that typically give rise to their
own relevant thoughts and actions. Same with the vices as well.
So the work of this section has been to provide some helpful back-
ground about character traits, which will frame what follows in the
book. Let us now turn to some of the distinctive features which set
honesty apart from the other virtues, starting with its scope.
Preliminaries to Developing an Account of Honesty 7
Lying
Misleading
Stealing
Cheating
Promise-breaking
This list is meant to capture the central ways in which we can fail to
be honest, but it is not intended to be exhaustive. I will consider some
additional possibilities at the end of this section. First, though, let’s ex-
plore each of these five in more detail.
8 The Philosophy of Honesty
Lying. It seems clear enough that someone who reliably tells unjustified
lies is not someone we would tend to call honest, especially if they are
more than just everyday or white lies.
What is involved in lying? The short answer is that there is little
agreement among philosophers about how to characterize lying rigor-
ously. On what can be considered the traditional account:
4 For a helpful review of different subtle variations in formulating the traditional ac-
count, see Saul (2012: 3–8) and Fallis (2018: 26 fn. 2).
5 See Bok (1978: 20–21) and especially Krstić (2019: 643).
6 See Fallis (2010, 2018), Carson (2010: chapter 1), Stokke (2013, 2018, 2019), and
Krstić (2019). For doubts about whether even Augustine held the traditional view, see
Griffiths (2004: 27–30). And Aquinas famously did not (MacIntyre 1994: 316).
One way to argue that the traditional account is insufficient is to require that the be-
lief in question be false, and not just believed to be false. Tom Carson (2010: 16; see also
Barber 2020: 144) has made this argument, but like many philosophers working in this
area (e.g., Saul 2012: 5; Lackey 2013: 239 fn. 9; Stokke 2018: 32–36), I find this additional
requirement implausible and will not consider it further here.
Preliminaries to Developing an Account of Honesty 9
Suppose that I witness a crime and clearly see that a particular indi-
vidual committed the crime. Later, the same person is accused of the
crime and, as a witness in court, I am asked whether or not I saw the
defendant commit the crime. I make the false statement . . . for fear of
being harmed or killed by him. However, I do not intend that my false
statements deceive anyone. (I hope that no one believes my testimony
and that he is convicted in spite of it.) . . . [In addition] suppose that
I know that the crime and my presence at the scene of the crime were
recorded on a video camera so that there is almost no chance that the
jury will believe that I believe what I am saying.7
A ‘bald-faced’ lie like this one is still a lie. But there is no intention to de-
ceive on the part of the speaker. Right from the outset, each party to the
conversation believes that the claim in question is false (and believes this
about each other’s beliefs too, and so forth). So the traditional account is
in need of revision, or so at least according to this line of criticism.8
A number of alternative accounts have been proposed to try to
improve on condition (ii) by making use of resources such as asser-
tion, intending to represent oneself as believing, warranting the truth,
common ground, narrow plausibility, and communication.9 Some
have even given up on the hope of providing necessary and suffi-
cient conditions for lying, opting instead for a prototype account.10
Fortunately for our purposes we do not have to enter into this diffi-
cult and increasingly technical discussion. Even if we cannot precisely
draw a conceptual fence around the concept of lying, it is clear that
(i) we know most lies when we see them, and that (ii) honesty pertains
to lying. All the cases used in this book will be clear cases of lying.11
Of course, there is a further and much better known debate
about lying, which has to do with whether it is morally justifiable in
7 Carson (2010: 20). For modifications to this example to try to handle criticisms, see
Krstić (2019).
8 For much more, see Krstić (2019). For a helpful review of different kinds of
2018), and Krstić (2019). For some resistance, see Tollefsen (2014: 22–25).
10 See Fallis (2010: 13).
11 Furthermore, as Don Fallis (2010: 4, emphasis his) has helpfully pointed out:
10 The Philosophy of Honesty
certain cases. Augustine and Kant are notorious for adopting strict
prohibitions again lying in all cases.12 Some still follow their lead today,
including Paul Griffiths and Christopher Tollefsen.13 Most contem-
porary philosophers, it would seem, go in the other direction.14 They
tend to point to certain cases of minor white lies which they suggest are
morally permissible. Or, perhaps more forcefully, they appeal to cases
where lying would prevent severe harm, such as lying to save a Jewish
family from the Nazis or to stop a terrorist attack.
Suppose that in certain instances, it is indeed all things considered
morally permissible to lie. There is an interesting question about how
that bears on the virtue of honesty. Is it that lying is still an expres-
sion of dishonesty and in opposition to what the honest person would
do—yet it is outweighed by some other virtue or opposing moral
considerations? Or is it that the virtue of honesty makes exceptions for
lying in certain cases, so that lying to the Nazi at the door in no way
detracts from a person’s honesty? I will not pause to consider this ques-
tion now, but will return to it in c hapter 3.
Again, fortunately for my purposes we can bypass the controversy,
such as it is today, about whether lying is ever morally permissible. If
not all lies, then at least the vast majority of them are not morally jus-
tifiable. A person who reliably tells those sorts of lies is someone who
fails to be honest.
approach, see Decosimo (2010). So too in the case of Kant; for a different approach, see
MacIntyre (1994: 344) and Guenin (2005: 187).
13 See Griffiths (2004) and Tollefsen (2014). See also Finnis (1980), Murphy (1996),
Garcia (1998), and Pruss (1999). For related discussion, see MacIntyre (1994).
14 See, e.g., Carson (2010). For related discussion, see MacIntyre (1994) and Stokke
(2019).
Preliminaries to Developing an Account of Honesty 11
Some writers argue, however, that a speaker can unintentionally mislead an audience.
Thus Stuart Green (2006: 76) writes, “Untrue statements made by mistake are not de-
ceptive, although they might cause a listener to be misled. For example, if Bill mistakenly
tells Hillary that he was at home in Chappaqua on the night of 3 February, when in fact
he was in New York City, Bill might cause Hillary to be misled, but he has not deceived
her.” Similarly Carson (2010: 47, emphasis his) writes, “It is not self-contradictory to
say that someone misled another person unintentionally or inadvertently.” See also Saul
(2012: 2 fn. 5, 71).
If these philosophers are right, then talk of ‘misleading’ in this book should be un-
derstood as restricted just to cases of intentional misleading.
16 MacIntyre (1994: 336), Strudler (2010: 171–172, 177–179), Fallis (2010: 2), and
Saul (2012: 2). For similar examples, see Adler (1997: 437–438), Garcia (1998: 516), and
Williams (2002: 96).
17 Williams (2002: 96).
18 As Don Fallis (2009: 38) writes, “you are not lying if you make a statement that
you believe to be true. In fact, you are not lying even if you intend to deceive someone
by making this statement.” See also Guenin (2005: 183), Williams (2002: 96–101), and
Tollefsen (2014: 156, 165).
The ‘typically’ in the text above is included since some writers claim that misleading
can also happen when something is said that has no truth value (Green 2006: 78).
19 As Peter van Elswyk (2020: 1158) nicely puts it, “A speaker misleads by using a sen-
tence to somehow convey but not say a disbelieved proposition. A proposition may be
conveyed but not said because it is a conversational implicature, a presupposition, or
another variety of not-at-issue content.”
Guenin (2005: 200) helpfully notes that causing the formation of a false belief need
not be the only goal of someone who is trying to mislead. She may instead be trying to
preserve a false belief in another person, or eliminate a true belief, or stop the formation
of a true belief.
For more on the contrast between lying and misleading, see Adler (1997,
2018), Garcia (1998: 518– 519), Williams (2002: 96– 101), Fallis (2010), Carson
(2010: chapter 2), Stokke (2013, 2018), van Elswyk (2020), and Viebahn (forthcoming).
12 The Philosophy of Honesty
23 For an interesting proposal whereby the priest ends up lying to the human audience
Guenin (2005: 182), Fallis (2010: 5, 7), and Stokke (2013: 354).
25 For a helpful discussion, see Decosimo (2010: 672– 677), who argues that on
Augustine’s view this would be treated as a case of lying rather than mere misleading.
26 Carson (2010: 57). A reviewer shared another example of leaving the lights on a
timer when I am out of town in order to make would-be thieves think that I am at home.
27 Carson (2010: 55). Similarly Stokke (2018: 7–8) writes, “all reasonable theories of
lying agree that you have not lied unless you have made what is variously called a state-
ment, saying something, or an assertion.”
‘Making a statement,’ though, needs to be considered broadly since it need not in-
volve a verbal utterance. As Green (2006: 77) notes, “One can lie, for example, by nod-
ding or shaking one’s head in response to a question, using sign language, sending smoke
signals, or making other gestures.” Garcia (1998: 515) claims that making speech acts is
the key point of difference. Doubtless there will be difficult conceptual issues here about
where to draw the line between what does and does not count as making a statement
(see Saul 2012 for extensive discussion). Historically relevant is Augustine on lying as
requiring “false signification,” which ends up leading to a very expansive conception of
lying (see Decosimo 2010 for helpful discussion).
28 For a similar approach to using the category of ‘deception,’ see Bok
(1978: 14), Frankfurt (1988: 128), Garcia (1998: 515), Guenin (2005: 199), Green
(2006: chapter 5), Tollefsen (2014: 164–165), van Elswyk (2020), and Matey (forth-
coming: 2). Some writers, such as Carson (2010: chapter 2), prefer to use the label
14 The Philosophy of Honesty
Stealing. Someone who reliably steals property that others have a right
to possess, for insufficiently good moral reasons, is not someone we
would tend to call honest.30
Imagine a secretary who is taking home expensive supplies from the
company every night. We would call that person a dishonest employee,
and he should get fired on the grounds of being dishonest. Or imagine
a CEO who is diverting the company’s retirement funds into her own
foreign bank account. She would be a dishonest leader of the company.
Complications arise when the societal norms surrounding property
in a given situation are fundamentally immoral or unjust. Consider
child slavery today. If someone helps to secretly rescue an orphan from
an abusive factory owner and brings him to a safe country, there is a
sense in which the rescuer is stealing. This is a merely ‘factual’ or ‘de-
scriptive’ sense of stealing.31 But it is not an immoral sense of stealing,
since there was no actual moral right by the factory owner to possess
and enslave the child. Hence one might think there was no moral
wrongdoing involved in liberating the child.
One upshot is that we can still make sense of the notion of stealing
even in cases where there is a widely held but mistaken belief that a
‘deception’ more narrowly so that lying often does not fall under the heading of de-
ception. That is what I did in Miller (2017a) as well, especially since ‘deception’ is a
success term, whereas ‘lying’ is not (Carson 2010: 46). But some people have told
me that this was confusing, so I have chosen instead to just refer to ‘lying’ and ‘mis-
leading.’ For those who prefer Carson’s approach, they are welcome to swap out the
terminology accordingly.
29 See Adler (1997, 2018), Garcia (1998: 524– 527), Williams (2002: 118– 119),
Green (2006: 78–81), Strudler (2010), Saul (2012: chapter 4), Webber (2013), Stokke
(2013: 352–353), Rees (2014), Carson (2018: 158–159), and Barber (2020).
30 Carson (2010: 63).
31 For a similar example and terminology, see Green (2006: 91).
Preliminaries to Developing an Account of Honesty 15
property right exists. Let us call cases like these cases of stealing given
mistaken property norms.
There may also be cases where even though social norms sur-
rounding property in a given situation are just, stealing is morally per-
missible, all things considered. Call these cases of stealing given correct
but morally outweighed property norms. For instance, to prevent her
family from starving, a parent might steal from a supermarket. Or to
stop a hurricane from destroying their house with their children in-
side, a couple might steal some unused plywood from their neighbor’s
yard, even though it would be unreturnable after the storm hits. In
both cases we might say that the supermarket and the neighbor had a
property right to the possession in question, and that this right was ac-
curately understood by the people committing the theft. Nevertheless,
competing considerations morally justified taking those possessions
from their owners.32
We will return to these cases in chapter 3. For now I want to make
one final point about stealing. As with lying, it is difficult to pin down
the precise boundaries of the concept of ‘stealing’ via informative
necessary and sufficient conditions. But—and this will apply to the
remaining categories as well, so I won’t repeat it again—we can still
proceed without that conceptual rigor in hand. All I need is the claim
that there are many clear cases involving acts of stealing which a
person’s honest character would never permit.
their fans, their fellow players, and their sport. Tiger Woods, Kobe
Bryant, and others who broke the rules of their marriage agreement
by committing adultery were being dishonest toward their spouses.34
Bernie Madoff cheated investors out of millions of dollars with his
Ponzi scheme and is a paradigm example of someone engaging in dis-
honest activities.
It may be that some breakings of the rules are also dishonest
even when the rules are not just and/or participation is involuntary.
Consider a case like this:
The Fight. Atticus has been forcibly enslaved and thrown into the col-
iseum to fight against the Roman gladiator for the entertainment of
the crowd. Atticus is not given a fair chance; he has only a wooden
shield to use against the armor and sword of the gladiator. But he
manages to sneak in a small piece of metal which, at a key moment
in the battle, he uses to cut the gladiator’s throat. This is against the
rules, and the crowd boos and calls Atticus a cheater.
34 Here I rely on ordinary language expressions for acts of adultery, like ‘he’s a cheater’
or ‘she cheated on him.’ It may be, though, that adultery is best understood as primarily a
matter of promise-breaking rather than cheating. Nevertheless, there is a sense in which
an agreement is reached to enter into a special relationship and maintain that relation-
ship, with the understanding that each party must not violate certain rules or norms, one
of which is the prohibition against infidelity (provided of course they did not agree to an
open marriage instead).
35 Green (2006: 63) writes, “The rule that the cheater violates must be fair, issued by
Similarly, as with stealing, there may be cases where the rules are
indeed fair and just, but where it is still morally permissible to cheat in
order to, say, save someone’s life. Here is one such potential case:
say by forgetting or being distracted. Yet it is not clear to me that all such unintentional
breakings of promises should count as failures of honesty.
37 For helpful general discussion of promises, see Green (2006: chapter 9).
18 The Philosophy of Honesty
rightly complain that, absent a legitimate excuse, the company was dis-
honest in its dealings with her.
Once again there is a descriptive and a normative sense of the rele-
vant concepts.38 The lawn care company had made a morally legitimate
promise. A Nazi leader who promises to personally lead the execution
of a Jewish family, has not. Yet there is still a clear sense in which he has
made a promise. To later break the promise and release the Jews would
be a case of promise-breaking given immoral rules.
Not surprisingly, there can be cases of promising-breaking given
accurately understood and justified but morally outweighed
obligations. I make a promise to meet my friend for lunch. On the way
to the restaurant, I come across a dying person on the side of the road
who needs to be taken to the hospital. I am the only one who can do it
quickly enough to save his life. I accurately recognize that I have a jus-
tified obligation to meet my friend, but also that it is outweighed by the
well-being of this dying stranger.
Once again, there is a complex relationship here with honesty, as we
will explore in more detail in chapter 2. But for now all that matters is
that there seems to be a relationship between promise-breaking and
failures of honesty.39
38 Ibid., 109.
39 The same applies to the breaking of vows and oaths, both of which are distinct from
promises. For helpful discussion, see Fruh (2019). While I won’t discuss vows and oaths
in what follows, much of what I say about promises will carry over to them as well.
40 For similar observations and related discussion about the broad scope of the virtue
of honesty, see Baier (1990: 259), Hursthouse (1999: 10), Smith (2003: 518; 2006: 75–
77), Guenin (2005: 222), Adams (2006: 128–130), Carson (2010: 63, 257), and Wilson
(2018: 265). For helpful analysis of these and other categories, including ways in which
they are distinct from each other, see Gert (1998: chapter 8) and Green (2006).
Preliminaries to Developing an Account of Honesty 19
There are still other forms of dishonesty besides these, such as treason,
embezzlement, extortion, obstruction of justice, insider trading, black-
mail, and bribery.46 But stepping back from all these variations, let me
end this section by making three general observations.
First, I take the five primary forms above to be distinct failures or
kinds of dishonest behavior. In some cases, there can be more than
one kind involved, to be sure. For instance, a thief might have to lie
to a store clerk to help hide his stolen goods. But we can also imagine
cases where there is no overlap. For instance, the thief might just bra-
zenly walk out the front door with a case of beer, not lying to anyone.
Or the adulterer can give misleading answers about where he was last
see Cohen (2002), Carson (2010: 58–63), Stokke (2018: chapters 6 and 7), and Gjelsvik
(2018).
46 For excellent discussion of most of these, see Green (2006). Some consider gossiping
to also fall under the heading of dishonesty, although it strikes me as a borderline case.
Same for humbug, which Frankfurt (1988) discusses at length in his article on bullshit.
For keeping in the dark, spin, and half-truths, see Carson (2010: 53–58).
20 The Philosophy of Honesty
night without lying. While his previous night’s activity was a form of
cheating, his verbal report to his wife was not. And so on—I won’t go
through every possible combination here.47
The second observation is that a deeply honest person is someone
who does not reliably engage in any of these forms of behavior.
Excellence with respect to each of them is necessary for being honest
overall. On the flip side, reliable failure with respect to just one of them
is sufficient for not counting as honest overall. If it is possible, for in-
stance, to be highly misleading in answering questions, but otherwise
refrain from lying, cheating, stealing, and promise-breaking, then still
that would be enough to fail at being an honest person overall.
Finally, with the help of these ways of failing at being honest, we
can now say something more positive about the ways of succeeding
too. With respect to each failure, I want to suggest that there is a corre-
sponding virtue:
Truthfulness: The virtue of being disposed to reliably tell the truth for
good moral reasons.
these categories such that, upon deeper reflection, one may collapse into another. For
instance, Tom Hurka suggested to me that lying might be understood as involving the
breaking of implicitly formed promises, and W. D. Ross, Charles Fried, and Tom Carson
have developed similar views (see Carson 2010: 24; 2018: 149–150 for references and
discussion). I am skeptical, though, that all five of these categories will collapse into each
other in similar ways. For helpful arguments supporting this claim, see Green (2006).
See also Guenin (2005: 180).
48 The ‘sufficient’ is important, since a sufficient presentation need not be a complete
presentation. This usage of ‘forthrightness’ departs from Guenin (2005: 202), who takes
it to apply to what I am calling truthfulness as well.
I am understanding forthrightness to be distinct from frankness, which can also
be a virtue. Someone who is exhibiting virtuous frankness is sharing information in a
supererogatory way, but without oversharing. More sharing is involved, in particular,
than is required for forthrightness. It is often associated with spontaneously providing
information that is unsolicited, but one can be frank even when asked a question. Hence
the reply, “To be frank . . .” The key point here is that frankness is a distinct virtue, and
one can fail to be frank while still being honest. Thanks to Emily McTernan for helpful
discussion.
Preliminaries to Developing an Account of Honesty 21
49 In his influential discussion in Truth and Truthfulness, Bernard Williams (2002: 11)
identified “two basic virtues of truth, which I shall call Accuracy and Sincerity.” Since
neither of these labels appears above, it is worth making the connections. ‘Sincerity’ for
Williams turns out to be the combination of what I call ‘truthfulness’ and ‘forthrightness.’
He characterizes it initially as, “a disposition to make sure that one’s assertion expresses
what one actually believes” (96), but then goes on to note that this is too narrow because
it does not encompass cases of misleading as well (97). ‘Accuracy,’ on the other hand, has
to do with the process of acquiring true beliefs. It is an epistemic virtue, rather than a
moral virtue, and so will not fall within the scope of this book.
Similarly, in her discussion of Hume on honesty, Annette Baier (1990) uses ‘ve-
racity’ as the label for what I call ‘truthfulness’ and ‘forthrightness.’ The opposing vice is
‘mendacity.’ And in his paper “Honesty in Love,” Mike Martin (1993: 499) uses ‘probity’
for what I call ‘being respectful of property’ and ‘proper compliance.’
22 The Philosophy of Honesty
Honesty
Being Fidelity to
Proper
Truthfulness Forthrightness Respectful Promises
Compliance
of Property
thiness, see Martin (1993: 499). Robert Roberts and Ryan West (2020: 98–99) use two
categories as well: truthfulness and justice.
Alexander Jech suggested to me that trustworthiness could be a unifying theme
through all five categories. This is not the approach I develop in this book, but it is worth
considering.
51 See, e.g., Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, Question 109, Article 3, https://www.
Justice
Trustworthiness
Veracity
Hopefully the scope of honesty is now a bit clearer. But we are still
only scratching the surface of what the virtue involves.
To make more progress, let’s now turn to the project of offering some
kind of account of this virtue. A first attempt will be made in the next
chapter. In the remainder of this one, I want to briefly suggest four
desiderata that any such account should aspire to meet.52 These are
each intended to be defeasible. In other words, one can make a case
for why meeting a particular desideratum is not, after all, an important
task to accomplish. If the case can be made successfully, then there’s no
blemish on the proposed account in that respect. But the key point is
that the case needs to be made in the first place. Otherwise, failing to
satisfy a desideratum is a mark against the view.53
52 Here I have been helped by the excellent discussion in Wilson (2018), which draws
Language: Finnish
Kirj.
Lukialle.
I. Alkupuuhat.
II. Oulusta Tervolaan.
III. Tervolasta Rovaniemeen
IV. Rovaniemeltä Auttijoen suulle.
V. Auttijoen suulta Paanajärvelle.
VI. Paanajärvellä.
VII. Retki Vartiolammille.
VIII. Paanajärveltä Kuusamon kirkonkylälle.
IX. Kuusamon kirkolla. Karhujahdille. Kuusamon kansa ja sen olot.
X. Kuusamon kirkolta Iijoen suulle.
XI. Iistä Ouluun.
XII. Lopuksi.
Lukijalle.
Arvo K.
I. Alkupuuhat.
Ja sitten pitkin kevättä, kun vaan toisiaan tavattiin, aina oli aijottu
retki kohta keskustelun aineena. Hankittiin tarkemmat kartatkin ja
niiden mukaan sitten sommiteltiin lopullinen matkasuunnitelma.
"Ja Vaasassa sitä sitten tavataan", oli viimeiset sanat, kun kättä
lyöden pääkaupungissa erosimme ja kukin lähti kotiseudullensa
viettämään nuo jälellä olevat muutamat keväiset viikot.
"Vai niin, vai niin! No –." Ja sitten niitä alkoi tulla kysymyksiä jos
minkälaisia. Pian kuitenkin pääsimme jo siksi paljon heistä edelle,
ettei enään huutamallakaan tehdyt kysymykset voineet meitä
saavuttaa. Ukot kyllä viimeiseen asti koettivat. —
Pian tuli toinen este eteen. Pato oli tuossa poikki joen, ihan
rantaan asti, ei väylää vähäistäkään. Ei muu neuvoksi, kuin vetää
koko vene täysineen poikki niemen, jonka päästä pato alkoi. Ja kun
teloja alle pantiin, niin "niinhän se meni kuin messinkihöylällä"
kolmen miehen terhakasti hankasiin tarttuessa; se oli ensimäinen
"taivallus", mutta ei suinkaan viimeinen.