本文探讨了“诚实”的多重含义，超越了简单的“不故意传递虚假信息”。作者区分了坦率（不隐瞒相关真实信息）、谨慎（在有充分理由时保留信息）、策略（避免可能引起问题的言语行为）以及“准确信号”（即使在非明确交流时也试图传递准确信息）。此外，还提到了深度诚实（详见Aletheophile的博文）和主动诚实（主动避免被误解）。文章旨在更全面地理解诚实的复杂性，以及在不同情境下如何权衡各种诚实相关的行为准则。

🗣️坦率：指的是一种不倾向于隐瞒相关真实信息的态度。坦率使人们能够合理地推断，如果你没有反对某事，那么你很可能对此表示赞同；如果你没有表达对某事的兴趣，那么你可能对此不感兴趣。

🎭策略：认识到你说的不仅仅是信息的传递，而是一种言语行为，并避免可能引起问题的言语行为。策略似乎很容易与此处描述的其他美德相悖，尤其是坦率和深度诚实，但当然可以同时拥有两者。

🤔准确信号：即使在没有明确沟通的情况下，也试图传递准确的信号。例如，如果人们对穿西装的人有广泛的、真实的、合理的假设，而你并不符合这些假设，那么最好不要穿西装，否则会给人留下错误的印象。

💡主动诚实：不仅是不故意传递虚假信息，而且是刻意避免传递虚假信息，主动避免被误解。即使致力于不故意传递虚假信息，你仍然可能被误解。在某些情况下，你可以预先预测到误解的可能性，利用这一点并故意被误解是不诚实的。

Published on May 30, 2025 2:11 PM GMT

Status: musings. I wanted to write up a more fleshed-out and rigorous version of this, but realistically wasn't likely to every get around to it, so here's the half-baked version.

Related posts: Firming Up Honesty Around Its Edge-Cases, Deep honesty

What I mean by 'honesty'

There are nuances to this, but I think a good summary is 'Not intentionally communicating false information'.

This is the only one here that I follow near-absolutely and see as an important standard that people can reasonably be expected to follow in most situations. Everything else here I'd see as either supererogatory, or good-on-balance but with serious tradeoffs that one can reasonably choose to sometimes not make, or good in some circumstances but not appropriate in others, or good in moderation but not in excess.

Forthrightness

...or perhaps frankness?

I was originally inspired to write this up due to a conversation in which I wanted to emphasize the distinction between honesty and forthrightness: where honesty is about not giving false information, what I mean by forthrightness is a tendency not to hold back relevant true information.

Being forthright enables people to justly assume that if you haven't spoken out against something you're likely okay with it, that if you haven't expressed an interest in something you're likely not interested in it, and so on.

Personally, I follow a policy of near-absolute honesty, but am not particularly forthright; I think it's good not to hold back relevant true information without a good reason, but good reasons are not all that uncommon.

Circumspection

I'd describe circumspection as the virtue of holding back information when there is a good reason to do so; the counterpart to forthrightness..

Tact

I don't have as confident a concise description of what I think of tact as meaning, but my best attempt would be something like... recognizing that whatever you say isn't just a transfer of information, it's also a speech act, and avoiding speech acts that would cause problems.

It seems particularly easy for this to run counter to some of the other virtues here described, especially forthrightness and deep honesty, but it's certainly possible to have both at once.

'Accurate signalling'?

I don't have a good term for this one, but I think there's a concept related to honesty wherein one attempts to give accurate signals even when not explicitly communicating.

Perhaps, for example, there's reason not to, say, wear a suit, if there are widely understood assumptions about suit-wearers that are broadly true and reasonable (and that you're therefore not deliberately challenging) but that are not true of you - you'd be giving the wrong impression.

I don't know of anyone who takes this idea very seriously. I don't think I'd even endorse taking it very seriously. But I also don't know anyone who's mentioned giving it any thought at all, and I do think it bears some consideration.

Deep honesty

The main point of this post as originally conceived was to frame a description of this concept, which I didn't have a term for at the time. But before I got around to attempting to write this up, Aletheophile did a much more thorough job of describing a very similar idea, so I'll just refer you to that post.

(Although maybe I'm making a conceptual rounding error here and the version I had in mind was slightly but significantly different, in which case I might ought actually write it.)

'Proactive honesty'

Even when committed to not intentionally communicating false information, you can still be misunderstood. In some situations you can predict in advance that misunderstanding is likely, and I would say that it would be dishonest to take advantage of that and deliberately be misunderstood, but it's not dishonest to just shrug and decide it's not worth clearing up the misunderstanding.

One might then consider the virtue that I'd dub proactive honesty, for lack of a better term: not just not deliberately giving false information, but deliberately not giving false information; going out of one's way to not be misunderstood.

Meta-honesty

Again, I refer you to a previous post that describes this more thoroughly than I could.

Discuss