Topics Ethics

Question Is Privacy a form of lying? To keep something private is to regulate truth, it's deciding who should learn the truth and who shouldn't (whether it be on a personal scale or a larger collective scale such as a political organisation). Usually, things are kept private in order to prevent judgment from outside parties, but is it not right that people should be able to make judgments based on the truth? For instance, why do we usually keep our sexual encounters private? Should we not make judgements based on the real truth either of one's character or organisation as opposed to being kept from the reality by the mitigation of information? what if there were no privacy? what if humans were only ever completely honest about their situations? is privacy an arbitrary social construct? would a world without privacy be chaos? P.S is there any interesting reading on this topic you might recommend?

Accepted:
October 28, 2017

Comments

Here's a first-pass response.

Here's a first-pass response. Lying is saying something that you know is false in an effort to get someone to believe it. If I don't say anything, and I don't try to mislead you about the facts, then I'm not lying. And so if I keep something private, I'm not lying.

In fact, that's a bit too simple. Suppose there's something about me that would come as a big surprise to people who know me. Perhaps it's some unpopular opinion I hold, for example. I've never denied having this opinion, but I've never admitted it either. I just artfully avoid the topic whenever it comes up. I'm keeping my opinion private, but I'm doing it in a way that's meant to preserve the impression people have.

It's still not right to say that I'm lying, but it's plausible to say that I'm not being honest. I'm deliberately keeping information from people that would make a difference to them if they knew it. However, it doesn't automatically follow that I'm doing something wrong. Yes: ideally people should make judgments based on the facts. However, this doesn't mean they're entitled to all the facts. Sometimes it's fair to think that something about you is nobody else's business.

To develop our example a little further, suppose that if people knew my opinion, they'd shun me and treat me badly. But suppose that my opinion is well within the realm of things people can reasonably believe; it's just that in this setting, it's not considered acceptable. Maybe I'm an atheist living in a community of people with very strongly-held religious beliefs, for example. Let's suppose I bear these people no ill-will; I just don't want my life disrupted by a pointless conflict over religion. Why would I be obliged to tell them? Where would their right to pierce the veil of my privacy come from?

I don't know what things would be like if nobody kept anything private. That's a hard question about the dynamics of the social world, and I doubt anyone really knows. All I can say is that I have no desire to live in a world like that, and I don't think the people I know are behaving badly if they don't let me in on all the facts about their lives. For sure: withholding information about yourself is sometimes wrong. But from the fact that it's sometimes wrong, it doesn't follow that it's always wrong or even that it's routinely wrong.