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Preamble: What Is the Subject?
My title is a come-on, but it suggests the issues the paper embraces. The notion of a professional liar suggests someone who tells lies for a living, perhaps someone who tells lies well, with conviction and with aplomb, certainly someone whose stock in trade includes the capacity to utter the well-judged falsehood. The sort of example I have in mind is the beau ideal of a British civil servant according to Lord Armstrong's testimony in the Spycatcher case: someone who is "economical with the truth" when he must be, who is not on such an occasion likely to squirm with embarrassment, nor to bluster out of a feeling that he is not carrying with conviction. He may even have a fastidious sense that he ought not to presume too far on his audience's credulity, lying to them in a tone that suggests that he certainly intends to deceive them, but that he does not propose that they should feel utterly foolish. A finance minister or one of his officials discussing the prospects for a devaluation of the currency might well pride himself on lying thus.
The paper does not explore the notion of the well told falsehood in the detail I would like, but relies on the thought that there might be such a thing as the well told professional lie to explore a very small part of the obligation to tell the truth and to lie under certain conditions as it attaches to the performance of certain professional roles. Obvious professions include doctors, lawyers, and politicians, and doubtless university teachers, too. I say a lot about the first, something about the second, a little about the third, and maintain a decorous silence about the last. I take it that we all know rather too much about the fibs by which we prop up the morale of students and colleagues.
Such novelty as is possessed by what follows lies in my attempt to pursue the plausible but indistinct thought that to sort out our ideas of when lying is permissible or perhaps even mandatory we must understand what relationship the passing of information and disinformation is serving. Lying within marriage offers an example. The "little white lie" is acceptable to...