Is it Ever Ok to Lie?

Questions from the Unsettled Mind

The answer to this question is “no, never” or “yes, and a lot more often than you might think,” depending on exactly what we mean by a “lie.” The problem is complicated by the multiple ways people use that term. For example, you’ll often hear someone confess to you, “I lied,” when what the person really means is nothing more than, “I made an error.” But being mistaken is not the same thing as lying, since lying requires a deliberate intention to tell a falsehood, a condition that is absent when we make mistakes. Thus, mistakes are not lies, and we would do well not to confuse them. Why? Because we use certain terms to convey automatic moral condemnation, and lying is one of these terms.