First post for Ideas Cafe

Hi,

The Ideas Cafe was started a little over a year ago in New Westminster, BC, Canada.

We wanted to have a gathering to discuss various interesting aspects of life, philosophy, and society.  We meet every Wednesday and skip the third Wednesday of the month to attend the local Simon Fraser University's Philosopher's Cafe.

Please feel free to look at www.ideascafe.net for a feel of the topics we discuss.

Last Wednesday, Mano moderated the SFU cafe about honesty.

While we all know that an honest person do not lie and that Kant made it a categorical imperative that one should never lie because a single lie will make one a dishonest person and we all know that we cannot trust a person that have lied.

In other words,  if someone comes to you to say that he had lied to you before but he is now telling you the truth. Do you trust him that he is not lying to you now?

This seems such a simple logical issue.  Why would a person of integrity ever want to lie at all?

Unfortunately,  as we all know, life is just not that simple. 

The other side of the argument is the "murderer at the door" scenario.  If the Nazi SS is knocking on your door asking if you are hiding any Jews in your house and you have Anne Frank in your cellar,  what should you do?

Or, perhaps even less dramatic, do you tell your friend that his new car is awful, or someone's elaborate makeup just don't quite do them justice?

Do you give up your reputation as "the honest person" in these circumstances as surely this reputation will be ruined.  Is a white lie still a lie?  How big a white lie has to be to break a person's honesty reputation?

An illuminating comment at the cafe was made by Andrew who said "would we really trust our information with someone who cannot lie?"

The complicated reality of our lives is that there are conflicting considerations in most of our actions and as Shula said; "do no harm", or "do the most good" is very often the better strategy than following some black and white principle.

When and how we compromise our principles is dependent on our discretion and perhaps we should trust someone with discretion rather than someone who is "principled" to a fault.

But how do we judge someone's level of discretion?  Does one less than perfect judgment make someone indiscreet forever?

We wish for the silver bullet to give us that one perfect answer but it never is.

I cringe to admit that there was a time when I would use the "slippery slope argument" as a reason for not doing something that may drift or degenerate into something far worse.

Now I look at life as full of slippery slopes that we have to navigate through,  careful not to slide to the bottom but also understand the unusual circumstances that led some of us to slide further down the slope than others while we all try to make it over to the other end of the slope rather than not trying at all.

Clear as mud is the conclusion which is great opportunity to explore the topic again!

Oliver.