Download or read book The Varnished Truth written by David Nyberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone says that lying is wrong. But when we say that lying is bad and hurtful and that we would never intentionally tell a lie, are we really deceiving anyone? In this wise and insightful book, David Nyberg exposes the tacit truth underneath our collective pretense and reveals that an occasional lie can be helpful, healthy, creative, and, in some situations, even downright moral. Through familiar and often entertaining examples, Nyberg explores the purposes deception serves, from the social kindness of the white lie to the political ends of diplomacy to the avoidance of pain or unpleasantness. He looks at the lies we tell ourselves as well, and contrary to the scolding of psychologists demonstrates that self-deception is a necessary function of mental health, one of the mind's many weapons against stress, uncertainty, and chaos. Deception is in our nature, Nyberg tells us. In civilization, just as in the wilderness, survival does not favor the fully exposed or conspicuously transparent self. As our minds have evolved, as practical intelligence has become more refined, as we have learned the subtleties of substituting words and symbols for weapons and violence, deception has come to play a central and complex role in social life. The Varnished Truth takes us beyond philosophical speculation and clinical analysis to give a sense of what it really means to tell the truth. As Nyberg lays out the complexities involved in leading a morally decent life, he compels us to see the spectrum of alternatives to telling the truth and telling a clear-cut lie. A life without self-deception would be intolerable and a world of unconditional truth telling unlivable. His argument that deception and self-deception are valuable to both social stability and individual mental health boldly challenges popular theories on deception, including those held by Sissela Bok and Daniel Goleman. Yet while Nyberg argues that we deceive, among other reasons, so that we might not perish of the truth, he also cautions that we deceive carelessly, thoughtlessly, inhumanely, and selfishly at our own peril.
Download or read book Why Leaders Lie written by John J. Mearsheimer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents an analysis of the lying behavior of political leaders, discussing the reasons why it occurs, the different types of lies, and the costs and benefits to the public and other countries that result from it, with examples from the recent past.
Download or read book Liar written by Robert Feldman and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-03-31 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever told someone they looked 'great' when they really looked awful? Ever said you'd be 'there in a second' ... knowing it would be more like five minutes? Ever made up an excuse to get out of a difficult situation? Or claimed that you never told lies? Never? Liar! But don't feel bad - we all tell lies, all the time. Two to three times in a ten-minute conversation is the average according to the latest research. From the 'white lies' that help smooth over tricky social situations to lies told with intent to harm, lying plays a huge - and crucial - role in our society at every level. Drawing on mindboggling examples of real-life liars who were caught in the act as well as years of research into deception, Robert Feldman, one of the world's leading authorities in the field, reveals the truth about why we lie, including how children learn to do it, what it costs us, how we benefit and how it can fail with catastrophic consequences.
Download or read book Truth and Truthfulness written by Bernard Williams and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-28 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to be truthful? What role does truth play in our lives? What do we lose if we reject truthfulness? No philosopher is better suited to answer these questions than Bernard Williams. Writing with his characteristic combination of passion and elegant simplicity, he explores the value of truth and finds it to be both less and more than we might imagine. Modern culture exhibits two attitudes toward truth: suspicion of being deceived (no one wants to be fooled) and skepticism that objective truth exists at all (no one wants to be naive). This tension between a demand for truthfulness and the doubt that there is any truth to be found is not an abstract paradox. It has political consequences and signals a danger that our intellectual activities, particularly in the humanities, may tear themselves to pieces. Williams's approach, in the tradition of Nietzsche's genealogy, blends philosophy, history, and a fictional account of how the human concern with truth might have arisen. Without denying that we should worry about the contingency of much that we take for granted, he defends truth as an intellectual objective and a cultural value. He identifies two basic virtues of truth, Accuracy and Sincerity, the first of which aims at finding out the truth and the second at telling it. He describes different psychological and social forms that these virtues have taken and asks what ideas can make best sense of them today. Truth and Truthfulness presents a powerful challenge to the fashionable belief that truth has no value, but equally to the traditional faith that its value guarantees itself. Bernard Williams shows us that when we lose a sense of the value of truth, we lose a lot both politically and personally, and may well lose everything.
Download or read book Why Kids Lie written by Paul Ekman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1991-02-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this helpful book, Dr. Paul Ekman, a world-renowned expert on lying, shows parents how to deal effectively with the variety of lies children of all ages tell—from little white lies to boasting and bragging to the outright concealing of information. “My son Billy lied to me and he’s only five. Is that normal?” “I know Joanne is lying when she tells me she doesn’t smoke pot, but I can’t prove it. What should I do?” “Heather won’t tell me what she does on her dates. She says it’s none of my business, but don’t I have a right to know?” You’ll learn what motivates a child to lie, why some kids lie more than others, what to do if you suspect or discover your child is lying, how you can encourage your child to tell the truth, and more—all in easy-to-understand, practical language that makes this an invaluable book for every family.
Download or read book Lying written by Sam Harris and published by Four Elephants Press. This book was released on 2013-10-23 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As it was in Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, and Othello, so it is in life. Most forms of private vice and public evil are kindled and sustained by lies. Acts of adultery and other personal betrayals, financial fraud, government corruption—even murder and genocide—generally require an additional moral defect: a willingness to lie. In Lying, best-selling author and neuroscientist Sam Harris argues that we can radically simplify our lives and improve society by merely telling the truth in situations where others often lie. He focuses on "white" lies—those lies we tell for the purpose of sparing people discomfort—for these are the lies that most often tempt us. And they tend to be the only lies that good people tell while imagining that they are being good in the process.
Download or read book I m Telling the Truth but I m Lying written by Bassey Ikpi and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-08-20 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! In I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying Bassey Ikpi explores her life—as a Nigerian-American immigrant, a black woman, a slam poet, a mother, a daughter, an artist—through the lens of her mental health and diagnosis of bipolar II and anxiety. Her remarkable memoir in essays implodes our preconceptions of the mind and normalcy as Bassey bares her own truths and lies for us all to behold with radical honesty and brutal intimacy. A The Root Favorite Books of the Year • A Good Housekeeping Best 60 Books of the Year • A YNaija 10 Notable Books of the Year • A GOOP 10 New Favorite Books • A Cup of Jo 5 Big Books of Fall • A Bitch Magazine Most Anticipated Books of 2019 • A Bustle 21 New Memoirs That Will Inspire, Motivate, and Captivate You • A Publishers Weekly Spring Preview Selection • An Electric Lit 48 Books by Women and Nonbinary Authors of Color to Read in 2019 • A Bookish Best Nonfiction of Summer Selection "We will not think or talk about mental health or normalcy the same after reading this momentous art object moonlighting as a colossal collection of essays.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy From her early childhood in Nigeria through her adolescence in Oklahoma, Bassey Ikpi lived with a tumult of emotions, cycling between extreme euphoria and deep depression—sometimes within the course of a single day. By the time she was in her early twenties, Bassey was a spoken word artist and traveling with HBO's Def Poetry Jam, channeling her life into art. But beneath the façade of the confident performer, Bassey's mental health was in a precipitous decline, culminating in a breakdown that resulted in hospitalization and a diagnosis of Bipolar II. In I'm Telling the Truth, But I'm Lying, Bassey Ikpi breaks open our understanding of mental health by giving us intimate access to her own. Exploring shame, confusion, medication, and family in the process, Bassey looks at how mental health impacts every aspect of our lives—how we appear to others, and more importantly to ourselves—and challenges our preconception about what it means to be "normal." Viscerally raw and honest, the result is an exploration of the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of who we are—and the ways, as honest as we try to be, each of these stories can also be a lie.
Download or read book Against Lying written by St. Augustine and published by . This book was released on 2018-08 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: n order to discover the Priscillianist heretics, who think it right to conceal their heresy not only by denial and lies, but even by perjury, it seemed to certain Catholics that they ought to pretend themselves Priscillianists, in order that they might penetrate their lurking places.
Download or read book The Liar in Your Life written by Robert Feldman and published by Twelve. This book was released on 2009-08-03 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Liar in Your Life, psychology professor Robert Feldman, one of the world's leading authorities on deception, draws on his immense body of knowledge to give fresh insights into how and why we lie, how our culture has become increasingly tolerant of deception, the cost it exacts on us, and what to do about it. His work is at once surprising and sobering, full of corrections for common myths and explanations of pervasive oversimplifications. Feldman examines marital infidelity, little white lies, career-driven resumé lies, and how we teach children to lie. Along the way, he reveals-despite our beliefs to the contrary- how it is nearly impossible to spot a liar (studies have shown no relationship between nervousness, lack of eye contact, or a trembling voice, and acts of deception). He also provides startling evidence of just how integral lying is to our culture; indeed, his research shows that two people, meeting for the first time, will lie to each other an average of three times in the first ten minutes of a conversation. Feldman uses this discussion of deception to explore ways we can cope with infidelity, betrayal, and mistrust, in our friends and family. He also describes the lies we tell ourselves: Sometimes, the liar in your life is the person you see in the mirror. With incisive clarity and wry wit, Feldman has written a truthful book for anyone who whose life has been touched by deception.
Download or read book Lying and Truthfulness written by Stewart Clem and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-05 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws on the thought of Thomas Aquinas to provide an innovative approach to the ethics of lying and truthfulness.
Download or read book Lying and Christian Ethics written by Christopher Tollefsen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-28 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Defends Augustine and Aquinas' controversial 'absolute view' of lying: it is always wrong, even when for a good cause.
Download or read book Spy the Lie written by Philip Houston and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-07-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three former CIA officers--the world's foremost authorities on recognizing deceptive behavior--share their techniques for spotting a lie with thrilling anecdotes from the authors' careers in counterintelligence.
Download or read book The Truth about Lying written by Stephen Costello and published by The Liffey Press. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this forthright and fascinating study, Dr Stephen J. Costello, philosopher and logotherapist, takes us on a profound journey into the intricate and intriguing nature of the dynami of lying. Drawing on philosophy, logical puzzles and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Costello investigates the types of lies we tell, the lies that include a good deal of truth, how and why children lie, the lies lovers tell, self-deception and much more. In the final section of the book Costello focuses in particular on how men and women lie in different ways. Men, he argues, lie in the guise of truth while women tell the truth in the guise of a lie. Men tend to be more direct while women are more deceptive. Men lie to create a better image of themselves, women lie to make others feel more comfortable. Provocative, while also frequently amusing, The Truth about Lying is a pithy primer on the act and art of lying. “This is an absolutely fascinating book . . . a quite extraordinary range of information . . . I can only encourage everyone to read it and thoroughly enjoy it as I did.” - Ivor Browne, from the Foreword
Download or read book Truth About Lying written by Stan Walters and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2000-05 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Communication skills can make a big difference in whether people tell you the truth or not. Knowing when to ask the next question, the behaviors that signal when the whole story isn't being told, and what questions to ask can help you cut through deception and lying so you can have confidence in your communications. Based on the same methods used by law enforcement professionals, but appropriate for everyday interactions, these skills and techniques can be applied in almost every situation. Without threats or intimidation, Walters' strategies can improve relationships and communication by teaching how to spot a liar and, more importantly, how to get to the truth.--From publisher description.
Download or read book Duped written by Timothy R. Levine and published by University Alabama Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A scrupulous account that overturns many commonplace notions about how we can best detect lies and falsehoods From the advent of fake news to climate-science denial and Bernie Madoff's appeal to investors, people can be astonishingly gullible. Some people appear authentic and sincere even when the facts discredit them, and many people fall victim to conspiracy theories and economic scams that should be dismissed as obviously ludicrous. This happens because of a near-universal human tendency to operate within a mindset that can be characterized as a "truth-default." We uncritically accept most of the messages we receive as "honest." We all are perceptually blind to deception. We are hardwired to be duped. The question is, can anything be done to militate against our vulnerability to deception without further eroding the trust in people and social institutions that we so desperately need in civil society? Timothy R. Levine's Duped: Truth-Default Theory and the Social Science of Lying and Deception recounts a decades-long program of empirical research that culminates in a new theory of deception--truth-default theory. This theory holds that the content of incoming communication is typically and uncritically accepted as true, and most of the time, this is good. Truth-default allows humans to function socially. Further, because most deception is enacted by a few prolific liars, the so called "truth-bias" is not really a bias after all. Passive belief makes us right most of the time, but the catch is that it also makes us vulnerable to occasional deceit. Levine's research on lie detection and truth-bias has produced many provocative new findings over the years. He has uncovered what makes some people more believable than others and has discovered several ways to improve lie-detection accuracy. In Duped, Levine details where these ideas came from, how they were tested, and how the findings combine to produce a coherent new understanding of human deception and deception detection.
Download or read book Lying and Truthfulness written by Kevin DeLapp and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-11 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology provides a set of distinctive selections that explore both Western and Eastern views of lying and truthfulness, including selections from Augustine, Grotius, Aristotle, the Mahābhārata, Confucius, Kant, Plato, Sunzi, Han Feizi, Aquinas, the Lotus Sutra, Hobbes, Hume, Locke, Bacon, Nietzsche, and more. Hackett Readings in Philosophy is a versatile series of compact anthologies, each devoted to a topic of traditional interest in philosophy or political theory. Selections are chosen for their accessibility, significance, and ability to stimulate thought and discussion.
Download or read book The Virtues of Mendacity written by Martin Jay and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2010-05-10 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Michael Dukakis accused George H. W. Bush of being the "Joe Isuzu of American Politics" during the 1988 presidential campaign, he asserted in a particularly American tenor the near-ancient idea that lying and politics (and perhaps advertising, too) are inseparable, or at least intertwined. Our response to this phenomenon, writes the renowned intellectual historian Martin Jay, tends to vacillate—often impotently—between moral outrage and amoral realism. In The Virtues of Mendacity, Jay resolves to avoid this conventional framing of the debate over lying and politics by examining what has been said in support of, and opposition to, political lying from Plato and St. Augustine to Hannah Arendt and Leo Strauss. Jay proceeds to show that each philosopher’s argument corresponds to a particular conception of the political realm, which decisively shapes his or her attitude toward political mendacity. He then applies this insight to a variety of contexts and questions about lying and politics. Surprisingly, he concludes by asking if lying in politics is really all that bad. The political hypocrisy that Americans in particular periodically decry may be, in Jay’s view, the best alternative to the violence justified by those who claim to know the truth.
