Who gets to decide when someone is lying?

[Clueless Morgan]

I'm taking a Coursera.org class on argumentation and was immediately embroiled in the discussion forum thread called "The Bible/Koran is unreliable evidence to support the claim "Christian God/Allah exists""

To make a long story short, the thread devolved into a discussion of what is reliable evidence, specifically the reliability of anecdotal evidence versus empirical/scientific evidence, and I presented the following argument:

(1) Evidence that is based on lies or omissions of known relevant contrary facts is not reliable evidence.
(2) Anecdotal evidence could be based on a lie or the omission of known relevant contrary facts.
(3) It is irrelevant whether the person relaying the anecdote is cognizant of whether their anecdote contains a lie or omission of known relevant contrary facts.
_________________________________
.:. (4) Anecdotal evidence is not always reliable.

To which a fellow student responded:

I don't know if you argument could be valid but judging by your initial premises ... which is wrong in fact ... who gets to determine what are lies or omissions ... are these the same words or different ... are omission lies ... or the other way round? ... I'm guessing it is not a sound argument although your conclusion is true.

I responded to other points in his post in thread, but the relevant portion I wish to discuss here is in bold above.

My response to him on this point was as follows:

Linguistically, lies and omissions are defined by the English language (see below).

It seem that what you're getting at, though, is "who gets to make the determination that someone is lying or omitting relevant facts?" I suppose the best answer to that is "the person who discovers the lie or omission has taken place." Unfortunately, this means that a lie can persist for years, decades, even centuries without being uncovered. Piltdown Man, for instance, was presented as the remains of a previously unknown hominid ancestor in 1912. Though some at the time expressed skepticism about its origins and legitimacy when it was discovered, it wasn't definitively exposed as a hoax until 1953 (41 years later) when Joseph Weiner and Kenneth Oakley found evidence that the teeth had been artificially altered in shape, newer chemical testing was available to authenticate the age of the fossils, and it was discovered that they weren't even fossils, they were just old bones painted and stained to look like fossils. In the case of Piltdown Man, the people who got to determine that Piltdown Man was a hoax were... the people who discovered that Piltdown Man was a Hoax.

My question for you is: Is my reasoning circular? The person who discovers the lie is the person who makes the determination that someone else is lying... right? (Assuming, of course, that they are not in on the lie, nor had prior knowledge of the lie before it was put into effect.)

I see this rational in a very similar light to the anthropic principle where our universe must be (at least partially) suitable for life because we are here to observe it, and a universe that is wholly unsuitable for life would not have life in it to observe it. In the case of Piltdown Man, the people who made the final determination that Piltdown Man was a hoax were the ones who found definitive evidence that Piltdown Man was a hoax.

So... Am I using circular reasoning? Because it seems to me that I'm not, that the only person (or people) who could logically determine that someone is lying is the person (or people) who discover the lie. Or is it circular and all circular reasoning logically entails itself which is why it's circular?

Crap, maybe I should have taken a logic class before this one...

[Angrboda]

Calling something a lie, rather than simply false or wrong, implies an intention. Only the person doing the telling has sufficiently privileged perspective to say one way or the other as to intent. As a general rule, inferring intent from actions and circumstantial evidence is itself notoriously unreliable, and is also subject to the same type of confirmation problems as the original testimony. (Is the witness to the lie him or herself too biased to be reliable?)

[Clueless Morgan]

Calling something a lie, rather than simply false or wrong, implies an intention. Only the person doing the telling has sufficiently privileged perspective to say one way or the other as to intent. As a general rule, inferring intent from actions and circumstantial evidence is itself notoriously unreliable, and is also subject to the same type of confirmation problems as the original testimony. (Is the witness to the lie him or herself too biased to be reliable?)

I agree that calling something a lie implies intention to deceive, and in the case of Piltdown Man the perpetrator of the hoax (the person who forged the skull and jaw) was never caught or discovered so intention to deceive in this case is not clear. But intention to deceive can be inferred from the circumstantial evidence, can it not?

With that said, I will also agree that no evidence is ever perfectly reliable because there will always be an element of human subjectivity and error present to some extent. What you can have, though, is enough evidence to warrant justifying one side or the other of an argument - whether someone is or isn't lying. Isn't this how criminal trials work? Evidence that has been gathered is presented making a case for the imprisonment of a criminal; the prosecution either makes their case and the criminal is put away, or the defense sows enough reasonable doubt to get their client off. You could do the same thing in showing someone is lying; either the people with the evidence of the lie make their case with the evidence they have or enough reasonable doubt is present to refrain from calling the person a liar. Neither situation is air tight (an innocent person can still be imprisoned for a crime they didn't commit, just like an honest person can be accused of a lie they didn't tell) and no evidence is perfectly reliable, but you can gather a good (convincing) set of data that points to a particular conclusion, and you could have a lack of falsifying data to disprove your argument (evolution being an example of lots of positive evidence and no evidence falsifying the theory).

My original question remains, though: If a lie is perpetrated, the only person who could expose the lie would be the person who discovers the lie, again, assuming they were not in on the lie nor had prior knowledge of the lie. To be more encompassing, I suppose you could restate the argument as "The only person who could expose a lie would be a person who has knowledge of the lie" which would cover anyone who is in on the lie (a member of a conspiracy can rat on their fellow conspirators), has prior knowledge the lie is going to be perpetrated or is being perpetrated (maybe they overheard someone planning the lie or saw them carrying it out) and anyone who uncovers information a lie has been perpetrated after the fact (Weiner and Oakley uncovering evidence that Piltdown Man was a hoax years after Piltdown Man was discovered).

C'mon, Kichi, no help here?

[No_God]

[Godscreated]

In a world of no absolutes how can one possibly lie, as it has been made clear here twisting things to fit your ideas are not lies, except when atheist claim Christians lie. Double standard.

GC

[LostLocke]

In a world of no absolutes how can one possibly lie, as it has been made clear here twisting things to fit your ideas are not lies,

"My eyes are brown.", I say knowing full well they are blue.

Did I just lie?

[downbeatplumb]

In a world of no absolutes how can one possibly lie,

What do you mean by no absolutes?
There is currently a car parked out side my house.
This fact is absolutely true.
Its my car I parked it there.
It is verifiable, I could take a picture with a copy of today's paper and prove it to you.

as it has been made clear here twisting things to fit your ideas are not lies, except when atheist claim Christians lie. Double standard.

GC

If you knowingly twist or alter things to fit your argument/view point then it is a kind of lie.

[Godscreated]

In a world of no absolutes how can one possibly lie,

What do you mean by no absolutes?
There is currently a car parked out side my house.
This fact is absolutely true.
Its my car I parked it there.
It is verifiable, I could take a picture with a copy of today's paper and prove it to you.

as it has been made clear here twisting things to fit your ideas are not lies, except when atheist claim Christians lie. Double standard.

GC

If you knowingly twist or alter things to fit your argument/view point then it is a kind of lie.

It's quite cute seeing you two living your lives in kiddy mode.

GC

[Esquilax]

It's quite cute seeing you two living your lives in kiddy mode.

GC

Do you actually know how to continue an argument beyond your first petty snipe, or are you just happy to shit and run?

[Whateverist]

In a world of no absolutes how can one possibly lie, as it has been made clear here twisting things to fit your ideas are not lies, except when atheist claim Christians lie. Double standard.

GC

It isn't that hard. It is only surprising to you that the world continues to spin on its axis exactly as before in spite of our disbelief. But then, you've had your head filled with wool for sometime.