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Second Thoughts About Bluffing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Thomas Carson
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Abstract

It is common for people to misstate their bargaining positions during business negotiations. This paper will focus on cases of the following sort: I am selling a house and tell a prospective buyer that $90,000 is absolutely the lowest price that I will accept, when I know that I would be willing to accept as little as $80, 000 for the house. This is a lie according to standard definitions of lying—it is a deliberate false statement which is intended to deceive others. I will defend the following two theses:

a. Appearances to the contrary, this kind of bluffing typically does not constitute lying. (I will argue that standard dictionary definitions of lying are untenable and defend an alternative definition hinted at, but never clearly formulated by, W. D. Ross. On my definition, deliberate false statements about one’s negotiating position would rarely constitute lies in this society.)

b. It is usually permissible to misstate one’s bargaining position when one has good reason to think that one’s negotiating partner is doing the same and it is usually impermissible to misstate one’s negotiating bargaining if one does not have good reason to think that the other party is misstating her position.

Type
Articles
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , October 1993 , pp. 317 - 342
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1993 

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References

Notes

I would like to thank Loyola University for a summer research grant in 1989 which enabled me to write the initial draft of this paper. An anonymous referee from this journal made many extremely helpful criticisms and suggestions. I am also indebted to Mark Johnson.

1 This example is taken from “Shrewd Bargaining on the Moral Frontier: Towards a Theory of Morality in Practice,” Dees, J. Gregory and Crampton, Peter C., Business Ethics Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 1991, p. 143 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 An earlier paper, “Bluffing in Labor Negotiations: Legal and Ethical Issues,” (which I co-authored with Richard Wokutch and Kent Murrmann) Journal of Business Ethics, Volume 1, Number 1, 1982, pp. 13-22, also discusses the issues addressed in the present paper. The earlier paper has been reprinted in the following anthologies: Ethical Theory and Business, second edition, Tom Beauchamp and Norman Bowie, eds. (Prentice Hall, 1983), Business Ethics in Canada, Deborah Poff and Wilfred Waluchow, eds., (Prentice Hall, 1987), The Structure of the Legal Environment, Bill Shaw and Art Wolfe, eds., (PWS Kent, 1987), Contemporary Moral Controversies in Business, A. Pablo Iannone ed., (Oxford, 1989). A shorter version of the earlier paper (co-authored with Wokutch alone) was reprinted in the following books: Business Ethics, Michael Hoffman, and Jennifer Mills Moore eds. (McGraw Hill, 1984) and Ethical Issues in Business, third edition, Tom Donaldson, and Patricia Werhane, eds., (Prentice Hall, 1988). The present paper represents my own rethinking of these issues over the past ten years. The earlier paper defends a modified version of the standard definition of lying and argues that deliberately misstating one’s negotiating position constitutes lying. Here, I argue that such misstatements are not lies. I still think that misstating one’s position is (usually) morally permissible when the other party is misstating her position and (usually) impermissible when the other party is not misstating her position. However, the arguments of the earlier paper now seem to me to be weak and inconclusive. I will offer new (and hopefully stronger) arguments here. I have not consulted with either Wokutch or Murrmann in the writing of this paper.

3 I make this qualification because a person’s bargaining position often changes over time. For example, if I have tried without success to sell my house for a long period of time, then I will probably be willing to accept a lower offer than I was willing to accept earlier. My example is also over-simplified in that I assume that the price of the house is the only thing being negotiated and that the price at which either party is willing to buy or sell the house is independent of any other factors which might be negotiated. In the case of the sale of a house such factors as the date of closing and whether or not the buyer needs to obtain a mortgage are also subject to negotiation and can affect the price of the house.

4 Successful bargainers must withhold or conceal their bargaining position (intentions) from others. I know of no serious argument for thinking it wrong to withhold (or fail to reveal) such information. The present paper is concerned with the morality of actively deceiving others (or lying to others) about one’s intentions or settlement preferences.

5 Here one might argue for a stronger condition. Consider the following:

In order to tell a lie it is necessary that one make a false statement that one believes is false (or believes is probably false).

I’m not sure whether we should opt for the stronger condition. The strong and weak conditions yield different results in the following sort of case. I make a statement when I don’t have the slightest idea of whether or not it is true. Such statements are characteristic of bullshit. According to the strong condition (above) this statement cannot possibly be a lie (no matter what other conditions it satisfies), because I lack the belief that the statement is false or probably false. The weaker condition allows for the possibility that statements of this sort are lies.

6 As the words “intentional” and “intended” are used in ordinary language and by philosophers in discussions of questions of ethics and action-theory, the intended consequences of an action are those which the agent either i) aims at for their own sake, or ii) foresees and regards as necessary links in a causal chain leading to consequences which she aims at as ends. Cf.Goldman, Alvin, A Theory of Human Action, (Prentice-Hall, 1970)Google Scholar, Chapter 3 and Walzer, Michael, Just and Unjust Wars, (Harper and Row, 1977), pp. 153–156 Google Scholar. Traditional “just war theory” makes much of the distinction between what is intended and what is merely foreseen. This distinction also has a very important place in scholastic ethics and is central to the “doctrine of the double effect.”

7 The foregoing objection to the standard definition was proposed in my original paper on bluffing (co-authored with Wokutch and Murrmann), “Bluffing in Labor Negotiations: Moral and Legal Issues.” In that paper Wokutch, Murrmann and I also proposed a slightly modified version of the standard definition:

A lie is a deliberate false statement which is either intended to deceive others or foreseen to be likely to deceive others (p. 17).

Gary Jones claims that, with slight modification, our counter-example can be made to apply to the modified definition presented above (“Lying and Intentions,” Journal of Business Ethics 1986, pp. 247-249). Jones’ criticisms are well-founded. This can be seen by considering the following variation on my earlier counter-example. I make false statements under oath in court but do not intend to deceive anyone by them. I foresee that no one will be deceived by my statements, because I know that the crime and my presence at the scene of the crime were recorded on a video camera so that there is almost no chance that the jury will be deceived by my false testimony. In that case, I neither intend nor foresee that my false statements will deceive others. Surely my false statements in court are lies, but they do not count as such on the revised version of the standard definition. (This example is taken from my paper “On the Definition of Lying: A Reply to Jones and Revisions,” Journal of Business Ethics, 7, pp. 509-514.) One might attempt to add further conditions to the standard definition so as to avoid this counter-example. But such moves seem to me to be ad hoc. The standard definition is, I believe, fundamentally flawed.

8 “On the Definition of Lying: A Reply to Jones and Revisions,” op. cit.

9 Ross, W. D., The Right and the Good, (Oxford, 1930), p. 21 Google Scholar. Hartman, Nicolai Cf., Ethics, trans. Stanton, Coit, (Humanities, 1975), p. 286.Google Scholar

It might seem implausible to claim that we are constantly making implicit promises (to be truthful) whenever we communicate with others. However, the following reflection persuades me otherwise. The expression “it’s true that” is redundant in the context of ordinary statements and adds nothing to their meaning. Consider the following:

i) The sky is blue.

ii) It’s true that the sky is blue.

i) and ii) mean exactly the same. In ordinary contexts, the expression “it’s true that” adds nothing to the meaning of a statement. This is so because, in ordinary contexts, when one makes a statement one is understood to be guaranteeing its truth.

The view that I am defending here is what philosophers of language call the “transparency thesis.” The classic statements of the transparency thesis are found in Frege, “My Basic Logical Insights,” in Posthumous Writings, R Long and R. White, trans., (Blackwell, 1959), p. 151, and Ramsey, Frank P., “Facts and Propositions,” The Foundations of Mathematics, (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1931) pp. 142–143 Google Scholar. Ramsey writes:

“It is true that Caeser was murdered” means no more than that Caeser was murdered, and “It is false that Caeser was murdered means no more than that Caeser was not murdered (p. 142).

Strawson offers a noteworthy criticism of the transparency thesis in “Truth,” Analysis, 1949. Strawson argues that we are not (and should not) always be willing to allow “x” and “its true that x” to be used interchangeably. “It’s true that x” can sometimes be used for purposes for which “x” is unsuitable. For example, suppose that I say that Ingrid is having an extra-marital affair and you deny it. My responding with “But it’s true that she is having an affair,” can constitute a stronger more emphatic response than simply repeating “she is having an affair.” It would be foolish for me to try to resolve this exceedingly deep and difficult controversy in the present paper. I will take a safer course. I will try to show how my view (that in ordinary contexts asserting a statement involves warranting its truth) can accommodate Strawson’s criticisms of the transparency thesis. My view about the default warranty of truth is compatible with Strawson’s view that “x” and “it’s true that x” cannot always be used interchangeably. My view is consistent with the following two possibilities. 1) In some situations, asserting that x differs from asserting that x is true because the latter involves making a stronger warranty of truth than the former. 2) In some borderline cases, it is unclear whether or not making a statement involves warranting its truth. In such cases, saying that x is true warrants the truth of x, but merely saying that x does not. For example, suppose that I know of a humorous and improbable truth about Judy. I wish to assert this fact and warrant its truth in the context of a humorous “bull-session.” Simply stating the fact in this situation may not (probably does not) constitute warranting its truth. In order to accomplish this it may be necessary for me to say something like “It’s true that _________; I’m not kidding.”

10 This repreents a modification of the defintion which I defended in “On the Definition of Lying…” There I defended the following definition:

A lie is a deliberate false statement made in a context in which the speaker warrants the truth of what he says.

11 For a further defense of Z and arguments against other alternative solutions to the present problem see “On the Definition of Lying…” pp. 512-513.

12 See Searle, John, “How to Derive Ought’ From ‘Is,’” in Theories of Ethics, Foot, Philippa, ed. (Oxford, 1968), pp. 103–104 Google Scholar.

13 It might be suggested that the notion of warranting makes implicit appeal to the notion of intention. It has been suggested to me that “to warrant the truth of a statement is to make an utterance under conditions where normally the speaker intends that others believe him.” This suggests that I have removed the notion of intention or the intent to deceive from the concept of lying only to smuggle it back in under the rubric of the concept of warranting. Normally we do intend that others believe our statements. It is difficult to imagine how it could be the case that the use of language involves the default warranty of truth if this were not the case. There would be no point in warranting the truth of what we say unless we sometimes intended that others believe what we say. There would be no point in having a default presumption that any given statement is warranted to be true unless we usually intended that others believe what we say. (The purpose of having such a warranty is to make it more likely that what we say will be believed.) I accept all of this, but it leaves untouched my earlier objection to the standard dictionary definition of lying. According to the OED, a particular statement on a particular occasion cannot constitute a lie unless the person who makes it intends that others believe that particular statement. I believe that I have shown this to be untenable. But my own definition of lying leaves open the question of what background conditions are necessary for it to be the case that using language to make statements carries a default warranty of truth.

14 To say that deliberate false statements about one’s intentions as a player in a game of “Risk” are not lies might strike some people as counter-intuitive. Most people, however, do not have strong preanalytic intuitions as to whether or not such statements should count as lies. (I didn’t have strong intuitions about this when I began to play “Risk.” I played “Risk” before I began to work on the concept of lying.) This kind of case should not be considered a test for the adequacy of definitions of lying. It is not clear prior to philosophical reflection whether such statements should be considered lies. We should test definitions of lying by reference to cases in which our intuitions are clear and (nearly) unanimous and then use the most plausible definitions which meet those tests to settle the difficult cases.

15 Dees and Crampton distinguish between 1) deceiving another person about one’s settlement preferences, e.g., misstating the lowest price one is willing to sell something for or misstating the strength of one’s desire to reach a settlement quickly, and 2) deception about matters of empirical fact, e.g., lying about the condition of things for sale, or lying about the extent of one’s injuries in a negotiation to determine damages to be paid in an accident case. Dess and Crampton marshall considerable evidence (including the American Bar Association’s “Model Rules for Professional Conduct”) to show that deception of type 1 is generally approved of or condoned and that deception of type 2 is not generally approved of. Their work provides support for my claim that misstatements of type 1 are not warranted to be true.

16 Dees and Crampton do not consider this kind of case, but it seems to be a case of deceiving others about material facts rather than deceiving them about one’s state of mind.

17 R. M. Hare is very critical of those who make frequent appeal to moral intuitions in applied ethics. See “Comments on Critics,” in Hare and Critics, D. Seanor and N. Fotion, eds., (Oxford, 1988), p. 206-207. If we had the kind of well-grounded decision procedure or test for moral judgments that Hare claims to give us, then it would be a mistake to do applied ethics by direct appeal to moral intuitions. It seems to be an implication of Hare’s view that those of us who have not defended full-blown theories of right and wrong or full-blown tests for the correctness of moral judgments should not do applied ethics. (It would follow that the great majority of those who write on issues of applied ethics should not do so.) This is a serious possibility and should not be lightly dismissed. In response to Hare, I would argue that issues of applied ethics are of practical urgency and should be addressed by moral philosophers whether or not they can defend any full blown ethical theories of the sort that Hare proposes. For my own part, I don’t think that Hare’s theory or any other theory has been adequately grounded. The fairly weak intuitions to which I appeal seem to me to be at least as well grounded as Hare’s methodological principles. It is also worth noting that, even if I had done the kind of theoretical work which Hare would demand of me, I could not presuppose, as Hare can, familiarity with my theory or the reader’s willingness to concede it sufficient importance or plausibility to merit paying attention to its detailed application to concrete issues.

18 For an excellent discussion of the importance of trust between individuals and the indirect bad consequences of lying see Sissela Bok, Lying, (Vintage, 1978), pp. 28-29.

19 Late in life Kant came to hold the view that lying is always wrong. See “On the Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives,” in Moral Rules and Particular Circumstances, B. Brody ed. (Prentice Hall, 1970), pp 32-33. (This essay was written in 1797.) In this work he defines a lie as an intentional false statement and claims that any deliberate false statement is morally wrong. In his earlier Lectures on Ethics (Harper and Row, 1963, Louis Infield, trans.) Kant takes a very different view. (The Lectures on Ethics are based on lectures delivered by Kant during the period 1775-1781.) In the Lectures on Ethics he claims that a false statement is not a lie unless the speaker explicitly gives others to think that he intends to tell the truth. He also says that there is one (and only one) situation in which lying can be justified:

The forcing of a statement from me under conditions which convince me that improper use would be made of it is the only case in which I can be justified in telling a white lie (p. 228).

It seriously understates the extent to which Kant changed his views if we say that when Kant presented his Lectures on Ethics he thought that lying was wrong in all but one kind of case and then he later came to hold that lying was always wrong. This way of characterizing the changes in Kant’s views overlooks the fact that Kant also changed his definition of lying. He moved from a narrow definition (“a lie is a deliberate false statement made in a context in which one has explicitly given others to think that one will speak the truth”) to a much broader definition (“a lie is any deliberate false statement”). Many (most?) deliberate false statements are not made in contexts in which one explicitly gives others to think that one will tell the truth. In the Lectures on Ethics Kant gives no indication that he thinks that there is anything wrong with deliberate false statements made in contexts in which one has not explicitly given others to think that one intends to tell the truth. Many (most??) of the statements which Kant calls lies and claims to be wrong in “On the Supposed Right…” are not claimed to be wrong in the Lectures on Ethics.

I think it quite implausible to hold that lying is always wrong. (It is curious that views expressed by Kant in his dotage should have so much influence.) Further, the categorical imperative does not commit one to an absolute prohibition against lying. I can only sketch the argument for this contention. Kant proposes the “categorical imperative” (CI) as a criterion or test for the Tightness or wrongness of actions. He states the CI as follows:

Act only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law (Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, (Harper and Row, 1964), Paton Trans., p. 88). Kant gives two other formulations of the Cl: i) “always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but at the same time as an end” (p. 96), and “A rational being must always regard himself as making laws in a kingdom of ends” (p. 101). For the purposes of my argument, I will use the “universal law” formulation of the Cl. Kant claims that the three formulations of the CI are “merely so many formulations of the same law…” (p. 103). Note the following passage:

It is, however, better if in moral judgment we proceed always in accordance with the strict method and take as our basis the universal formula of the categorical imperative:

“Act on the maxim which at the same time can be made a universal law” (p. 104).

In the next paragraph on pp. 105 Kant restates the CI as follows:

“Act on that maxim which can at the same time have for its object itself as a universal law of nature.”

The universal law formulation of the CI is equivalent to the following:

An act is morally right if, and only if, the person who performed it would be willing to have everyone else follow the same principles which he employed in performing the act.

Kant argues that it is always wrong to make a promise in bad faith. His argument for this is his most well-known illustration of the notion of a “perfect duty.” I will argue that this argument cannot be modified to show that the CI commits us to the view that lying is always wrong. [With modifications, my arguments can also be used to counter Kant’s arguments about making promises in bad faith, but that is not my concern here.]

According to Kant, the CI commits us to an absolute prohibition against making promises in bad faith. The duty not to make promises in bad faith is a perfect duty. Not only are we unwilling to have everyone else follow maxims which permit making promises in bad faith, but such a state of affairs [everyone’s following maxims which permit them to make promises in bad faith] is impossible. For universal adherence to such maxims would destroy the background of honesty and trust necessary for the existence of the institution of promise-keeping. An analogous argument to show that lying is always wrong would go something like the following:

Not only are we unwilling to have everyone else follow maxims which permit lying, but such a state of affairs is impossible. For universal adherence to such maxims would destroy the background of honesty and trust necessary for the institution of language, and without language lying itself would be impossible.

Universal adherence to maxims such as “let me tell a lie whenever doing so would be to my advantage” might destroy the background of trust necessary for the institution of language to be viable. But this doesn’t show that the CI commits us to an absolute prohibition against lying. Many cases of lying can be described by maxims universal adherence to which would not so greatly undermine trust between individuals as threaten the institution of language. Consider the following maxim:

M. Let me lie when (and only when) lying is necessary in order to save the life of an innocent person.

Universal adherence to M. would not threaten the institution of language. At the present time lying is far more prevalent than it would be if M were universally adopted and adhered to. But the institution of language is not threatened. Further, it is clear that most of us would be willing to have everyone else follow the policy of lying when it is necessary in order to save lives.

20 Carr, Albert, “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?” in Ethical Issues in Business, third edition, Donaldson, Thomas and Werhane, Patricia, eds., (Prentice Hall, 1988)Google Scholar.

21 Carr, pp. 72-73; see also pp. 69 and 70.

22 Carr’s analogy is misleading in that the kind of bluffing common in poker is non-verbal or non-linguistic. It involves such things as raising the pot in spite of having a weak hand, displaying calm and confidence, and feigning pleasure when drawing a bad card. Bluffing of this sort clearly does not involve lying. Bluffing in business, on the other hand, usually involves the use of language and often involves making deliberate false statements.

23 Carr, p. 70.

24 Carr, p. 72.

25 Carr, p. 73; also see p. 75.

26 I don’t think that this statement is a lie. However, as I indicated earlier, my definition of lying might be taken to imply that it is a lie. It all turns on the question of whether she can be plausibly said to have warranted the truth of this statement.

27 I take this distinction from Greg Kavka’s paper “When Two ‘Wrongs’ Make a Right: An Essay in Business Ethics,” Journal of Business Ethics, 2, 1983, pp. 61-66.

28 Kavka cites this passage from Hobbes in “When Two Wrongs Make a Right…”

29 Ross at least implicitly recognizes defeasibility conditions for some prima facie duties. He recognizes conditions which are necessary in order for a promise to be morally binding, e.g., that it was not made on the basis of false testimony on the part of the promisee, The Foundations of Ethics, (Oxford, 1939), pp. 94-98. Ross never discusses self-defense.

30 I am not endorsing SD per se. I am simply saying that it is a plausible principle to account for our convictions about “self-defense” given a rossian ethical theory with i) multiple prima facie duties, ii) a commitment to common-sense as the ultimate ground or justification for moral judgments.

31 For something more nearly approximating necessary and sufficient conditions for being justified in acting in self-defense see Kavka and Dees and Crampton, op. cit.

32 Cf.Brandt, Richard, Ethical Theory, (Prentice Hall, 1959), p. 394.Google Scholar Ross never attempts to formulate necessary and sufficient conditions for right action or general criteria for resolving conflicts of duties. He apparently thinks that this cannot be done. I will now point to two considerations which strongly support (but do not prove) my claim that any plausible principles for resolving conflicts of duties would have to be so complex as to be impossible to formulate. First, it seems impossible to rank generic obligations in order of importance or weight. To take just one example, the duty not to lie cannot be ranked as always more (or less) important than the duty to keep promises. Even if we could formulate a plausible rank ordering of the generic duties, such an order would not be capable of resolving all conflicts of duties. Sometimes conflicts of duties involve conflicts between duties of a single general sort, e.g., a case in which one must choose between breaking a promise to one person and breaking a promise to another person. Further, conflicts of duties often involve conflicts between different sets of generic duties, e.g., a person might have to choose between a) performing an act which involves telling a lie, breaking a promise, and fulfilling an obligation of gratitude, and b) an act which involves helping two people and harming one person.

33 My concern in this paper is with the morality of individual conduct (individual acts of bluffing or deception) rather than the morality or desirability of the practice itself. The pervasiveness of the practice of misstating one’s settlement preferences is relevant to the application of SD. In negotiations one is justified in assuming that the other party’s statements about her negotiating position or intentions are false or deceptive in the absence of special evidence to the contrary. (Note that one cannot make this assumption if the other person does not make any claims about her negotiating position.) The rossian theory as I have elaborated and extended it implies that there is a moral presumption against deceiving those whom one knows are not deceiving one. This result is consistent with the spirit of Ross’s theory. Deceiving others about one’s negotiating position violates a number of Ross’s prima facie duties. In this sort of case, no considerations (such as self-defense) nullify or greatly reduce this presumption. We can also view the case from the perspective or Ross’s commitment to common-sense. The common-sense views of most people would hold that it is wrong to “take advantage of’ an unusually honest or naive negotiating partner. I believe that his conclusion is defensible in its own right apart from any appeal to Ross. There is a strong moral presumption against deceiving others. The presumption remains in force in the absence of defeasability conditions such as those spelled out in SD. See the section on utilitarianism where the same conclusion is defended.

34 The line of thought just presented is important for another reason. It enables one to avoid the following apparent dilemma:

If I believe another person’s claims about his negotiating position I can’t say that he is misrepresenting his position, and if I don’t believe his claims about his position, then he cannot profit from them. It follows that I could never have reason to believe both that someone is misrepresenting his position to me and that he is profiting from those misrepresentations. Therefore, it would be impossible for me to be in a position in which I could give a presumptive justification for misstating my own negotiating position by appeal to SD. The line of argument in the paragraph which precedes this footnote shows that we must reject the second horn of the dilemma; it is possible for someone to benefit from false representations of his negotiating position, even if the other person does not believe what he says. There are other ways in which one could benefit from such false statements even if they are not believed by others. Some people are likely to be initially very trusting of what other people say (I am such a person). One might give false reports about the other person’s position considerable credence for a few minutes. This might cause one to panic and make an imprudent offer. Even if one is not caused to panic and make an imprudent offer in light of these reports, one might in one’s initial response to such statements give the other party valuable information about one’s own position, one’s financial constraints and the strength of one’s desire or desperation to reach a settlement.

35 In the case of The National Labor Relations Board vs. Truitt Manufacturing Company (1956) the U.S. Supreme Court established what is known as the “honest claims doctrine.” This doctrine requires that all parties to labor negotiations be honest in all claims and representations relevant to the negotiations, e.g., the company’s profitability and ability to pay higher wages. However, the doctrine only applies to “objectively verifiable” statements. Statements about one’s intentions or negotiating position are specifically exempted by the “honest claims doctrine.” The distinction drawn by the court in this case is very similar to the distinction which Dees and Crampton draw between deceiving others about one’s “settlement preferences” and deceiving them about matters of empirical fact.

36 I am a bit hesitant about this point. It is plausible to hold that we should adopt the following policy: discharge all of our duties of financial beneficence by making contributions to charities and then act in a self-interested manner in the marketplace, making no further financial sacrifices and no attempt to determine which businesses most need our patronage.

37 See “Some Merits of One Form of Rule-Utilitarianism,” in Readings in Contemporary Ethical Theory, Pahel, K. and Schiller, Marvin eds., (Prentice Hall, 1970) pp. 282–307 and A Theory of the Good and the Right (Oxford, 1979), Chapter 15Google Scholar.

38 Is it permissible for a woman to kill a man, if that is the only way in which she can prevent him from raping her? SDU says nothing about this question. Note that SDU gives sufficient conditions for being justified in harming someone else, but it does not purport to give necessary conditions. SDU needs to be supplemented by other principles. What those principles are and how they would answer questions like the one which I raised above matters of considerable controversy. But that something like SDU is part of (or entailed by) optimal moral principles for “self-defense” is reasonably clear.

39 Here I am assuming that AU means roughly “act-welfarist-consequentialism,” or the view that the Tightness or wrongness of an individual act is determined solely by the goodness or badness of the states of affairs which result from it and that the only intrinsically good or bad states of affairs are those which are constitutive of the welfare (or illfare) of human beings (and/or other sentient creatures). Versions of act-consequentialism which attach intrinsic value or disvalue to actions in virtue of their being of certain types, e.g., being an instance of lying or being an instance of breaking or fulfilling a promise, might be extentionally equivalent to Rossian theories. For a defense of such a version of consequentialism and defense of the claim that it is extentionally equivalent to a Rossian theory see Ewing, A. C., The Definition of Good, (New York: Macmillan, 1947), Chapter 6Google Scholar.

40 Something like this once happened to me in a used car lot. My wife and I needed to purchase a used car within a week and the urgency of our situation was evident to the salesmen with whom we dealt. We were very interested in a particular car on the lot and made a low bid on the car. The salesman was haggling with us over the price in a very large and nearly empty showroom. He went across the room to talk with another salesman. The other salesman picked up a telephone and dialed a number. The phone at our salesman’s desk rang immediately. Our salesman picked up his phone and we heard him say something like “Mr. Smith! Hello. You are still interested in the green Mercury. It’s a very good car, best deal on the lot. Are you willing to make an offer? [pause] $3500! It just happens that I’m talking to a couple here who are also interested in the car….”

41 Dees and Crampton do not consider cases like #1 or #2. On their view, the deception involved in #1 and #2 counts as deception about matters of material fact rather deception about one’s preferences or intentions. Thus, the actions described in cases #1 and #2 would not be permitted by “the mutual trust perspective.”