- Published: December 20, 2021
- Updated: December 20, 2021
- University / College: University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
- Language: English
- Downloads: 37
Deception would have been something to deal with in a very easy manner, if we could all think beyond what we have in our minds. If we could detect the thoughts of other people and perceive the broader picture of situations, most human beings would not fall into various forms of deception, fraud and other forms of misleading situations and interpretations. Aristotle stated that we cannot be sure of what other people are thinking because the devil himself has no idea of what is in the mind of another person. Therefore, human beings tend to pass judgments on what they think in their individual minds based on the facts they have. This paper posits that due to the fact that we have no direct contact outside our minds, human beings are susceptible to deception. The paper therefore argues that the human being’s ability to be deceived is only based on the fact that we can draw conclusions only on the information we know and understand in our minds.
Deception is almost always something that is defined in an objective manner by most people. It includes telling a person something that is not true. And we tend to believe this because we might find the pattern of presentation to be logical. Hence, the truth in every situation can be said to be objective and of one type or form. Therefore, lies are just told by people who conjure new information and present it to mislead or maliciously present a given situation.
Detection is not easily done when a person is not knowledgeable of all relevant facts. Hence, a person who is told a lie cannot find out the truth unless he gets all the facts and all the relevant information in order to independently clarify and state that the information given to him is false. Therefore, our vulnerability to be deceived is contingent on our ability to know and understand all the information that is relevant and necessary to draw a logical conclusion.
Therefore, it can be said that when a person has an insight to all the facts and information, that individual is less likely to be deceived. However, when a person has only limited and incomplete facts about a given situation, that individual is limited and can be deceived on many occasions and in several ways by a person who is malicious and desires to mislead him.
In demonstrating this trend, Plato stated that education enlightens a person in his Allegory of a Cave and that is because we naturally lack the ability to live above deception because we are born without knowledge of certain things. Due to that, he compared our situation and our status of lacking knowledge and information to decipher truth from falsity to being in the dark. When you are in a dark cave, you cannot see what is going on around you. You live with what you believe to be true or right. In that case, anyone in the cave can say anything and an individual cannot really tell whether it is true or false.
Therefore, when people are living under a situation without the ability to understand information and test the facts independently, they can be said to be living in a chained existence. They are told things and they accept it at face value because that is what they have known all their lives.
In other words, we have to have the ability to think and figure things out clearly. Otherwise, human begins will be very much opened and susceptible to deception. This is a known fact that leads to a second aspect of the debate – how do we protect ourselves from being deceived by people? How can we define what is true and what is not. If we are able to figure that out, the extent to which people’s abilities to know and have information outside the scope of just what they have in their minds can help them to predict people’s thoughts better and understand what is true and what is indeed false.
Identifying what is true and what is false is done by examining and critiquing things empirically. The ability to tell whether something is right or not can be done based on a series of criteria that must be used as a measure to transparently and openly test and evaluate facts in order to draw conclusions on a given matter. Therefore, the only way of ensuring that we can analyze and live above deception is to find ways of testing information and through this, we also need to get as much facts as we can in our minds in order to understand a phenomenon and draw logical and appropriate conclusions on them in order to decipher between right and wrong. This can be done by getting more information and studying a process and situation more closely.
John Locke argued that there must be a scientific approach through which people can examine and critique information in order to decide on whether the information is true or false. This can be done by having a procedure or system through which an individual can test and examine the facts of a situation based on evidence to draw on conclusions. This means that what is right and what is true can be defined and detected in order to deal with the consequences and the implications of a given situation or matter.
It can thus be said that there is a form of deception in the general sense that can be avoided if a person builds more competency and more knowledge of the facts of a given situation. However, there is the question of pure deception and malicious deception, it tends to be something that no amount of knowledge can be applied to detect and handle and in such situations we are constrained by our inability to know what is in the thoughts of others.
In Edgar Allen Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, it was apparent that Fortuna was not privy to the facts of what Montresor planned to do to him. Rather, he was innocent and could not detect the deception in all his actions and all the processes that he carried out on him. Hence, he ended up getting him drunk to weaken all his abilities to analyze and review things independently and also deceptively and misleadingly tying him up and killing him. In the process, when Fortuna recovered from the stupor of his drunkenness, he realized something wrong was being done. However, Motresor told him more lies and misled him further only to achieve his intent of killing Fortuna for what he believed to be an insult that could only be resolved through the killing and death of Fortuna.
Therefore, in some unilateral cases and situations, what a person knows and allow hat a person’s knowledge might be will not be able to protect him from deception or detect a selfishly misleading lie told by another person for a specific gain. Therefore, in such situations, deceptions occur due to the failure of individuals to think beyond what they can think within their own independent minds. This is something that cannot be detected and malice is something that can hardly be reviewed and analyzed. Thus, a unilaterally malicious lie is one that cannot be easily known by a person. And this renders any human being potentially vulnerable to malicious lies that are told on the basis of fabricated information that is meant to mislead and deceive a person.
In the broader context, there are some situations and matters in which it is almost impossible to detect lies that are told to a person, especially by a person who is trusted and authoritative. St. Augustine examined the concept of literary truth in his Solioquies published in the year 387 where he proposed that there is a distinction between different sorts of lying and deception. One of them is based on the fact that there is a perceptual illusion where something that is real and clear is presented to a knowledgeable person in a manner that makes it appear in a different manner.
This includes the presentation of some kind of information in a “ subjective” arena where something that is not true is painted and presented by a person through a set of well crafted information and details that might not be true. Therefore, in some metaphysical and spiritual contexts, some information might be presented and crafted to be good. And these appeal to the emotions of a listener and excite those emotions. In those cases and situations, a very knowledgeable listener might fall into deception simply because the information is being presented in a manner that sounds good and nice. Therefore, there is an illusionary connection that leads to the vulnerability to be deceived.
Conclusion
The study identifies that deception is more likely to occur when people have no direct contact with an approach of empirically testing facts that are presented to them. Hence, people with limited knowledge on how to test information independently and verify them are more vulnerable to lies and deception. However, in some cases of malicious deception, the fact that a person cannot know what is in the mind of another person gives room for deception and this is often done in an atmosphere of emotional excitement and illusionary presentation of information to make it look good and true.
Works Cited
Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle. New York: Point Blanc Classic, 2014. Print.
Borchert, Donald. Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2nd Edition. Farmington Hills: Thomson Gale, 2006. Print.
Hiedegger, Martin. The Essence of Truth: On Plato’s Cave Allegory and Theaetetus. Indianapolis: Bloomsbury, 2014. Print.
Locke, John and James Augustus. The Works of John Locke. Stanford University Library: Digitalized by Google, 2013. Web.
Plato. The Allegory of the Cave. New York: P&L Publishing, 2010. Print.