Conflicts
Conflict, in psychology, the arousal of two or more strong motives that cannot be solved together. A youngster, for example, may want to go to a dance to feel that he belongs to a group and does what his friends do. For an adolescent in Western culture, that is a strong motive. But the youth may be a clumsy dancer and sensitive to the real or imagined ridicule of his fellows. Therefore, he also has a motive to avoid the dance to escape humiliation. He is in a dilemma; whether he goes or stays he will experience distress. This type of situation is termed an approach-avoidance conflict. Psychologically, a conflict exists when the reduction of one motivating stimulus involves an increase in another, so that a new adjustment is demanded.
Conflicts are not all equally severe. A conflict between two desired gratifications (approach-approach conflict), as when a youth has to choose between two attractive and practicable careers, may lead to some vacillation but rarely to great distress. A conflict between two dangers or threats (avoidance-avoidance conflict) is usually more disturbing. A man may dislike his job intensely but fear the threat of unemployment if he quits. A conflict between a need and a fear may also be intense. A child may be dependent on his mother but fear her because she is rejecting and punitive. The conflicts that involve intense threat or fear are not solved readily but make the person feel helpless and anxious. Subsequent adjustments may then be directed more to the relief of anxiety than to the solution of real problems.
Conflicts are often unconscious, in the sense that the person cannot clearly identify the source of his distress. Many strong impulses—such as fear and hostility—are so much disapproved by the culture that a child soon learns not to acknowledge them, even to himself. When such impulses are involved in a conflict, the person is anxious but does not know why. He is then less able to bring rational thinking to bear on the problem.
reason
Reason, in philosophy, the faculty or process of drawing logical inferences. The term “reason” is also used in several other, narrower senses. Reason is in opposition to sensation, perception, feeling, desire, as the faculty (the existence of which is denied by empiricists) by which fundamental truths are intuitively apprehended. These fundamental truths are the causes or “reasons” of all derivative facts. According to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, reason is the power of synthesizing into unity, by means of comprehensive principles, the concepts that are provided by the intellect. That reason which gives a priori principles Kant calls “pure reason,” as distinguished from the “practical reason,” which is specially concerned with the performance of actions. In formal logic the drawing of inferences (frequently called “ratiocination,” from Latin ratiocinari, “to use the reasoning faculty”) is classified from Aristotle on as deductive (from generals to particulars) and inductive (from particulars to generals).
(Read Steven Pinker’s Britannica entry on rationality.)
In theology, reason, as distinguished from faith, is the human intelligence exercised upon religious truth whether by way of discovery or by way of explanation. The limits within which the reason may be used have been laid down differently in different churches and periods of thought: on the whole, modern Christianity, especially in the Protestant churches, tends to allow to reason a wide field, reserving, however, as the sphere of faith the ultimate (supernatural) truths of theology.
competition
Competition, in ecology, utilization of the same resources by organisms of the same or of different species living together in a community, when the resources are not sufficient to fill the needs of all the organisms.
Within a species, either all members obtain part of a necessary resource such as food or space, or some individuals obtain enough for their needs while other members, cut off from the resource, die or are forced to inhabit a less suitable or marginal area. Young members of a population are most often adversely affected.
The closer the requirements of two different species, the less likely is it that they can exist in the same area. Species with similar requirements can sometimes exist in the same area if they differ in behavioral ways such as feeding patterns, nesting habits, or activity periods, although they may be forced into direct competition when resources are scarce. Often small populations of two species coexist, but their members have smaller than average bodies or a low reproductive rate.
lying
Lying, any communicative act that aims to cause receivers of the communication to adopt, or persist in, a false belief. However, because of its generality, this definition invites questions about its key terms. There is no universally accepted definition of lying. Rather, there exists a spectrum of views ranging from those that exclude most forms of deception from the category of lying to those that treat lying and deception as different words for the same phenomena.
Defining lying
Lying has been of interest for thousands of years, as is evidenced by its role in literature, theology, philosophy, and, more recently, psychology and popular culture. Philosophers from Plato (c. 428/427–c. 348/347 BCE) onward have been concerned with the nature of lying—what it is that distinguishes lying from other forms of deceptive behaviour—as well as questions concerning the morality or immorality of telling lies. In contrast, psychologists have been primarily concerned with the development of the capacity for lying during childhood, our motives for lying, the incidence of lying in everyday life, and the means by which lies can be detected.
According to a paradigmatic analysis of lying, as set out by philosophers such as St. Augustine (354–430 CE), lies are statements that the speaker believes to be false and that are intended to cause the person toward whom they are directed to accept them as true. In this view, lies must be assertoric. That is, lies must be in the form of a statement, it must be the intention of the liar to cause the target to believe the content of the assertion, and it must be the case that only persons can lie or be lied to. In this view, it is not necessary that the content of the assertion really be false, only that the liar believes it to be false. Suppose that Person A falsely believes that x is true and that y is untrue but wants to convince Person B that y is true and therefore emphatically tells Person B that y is true. Person A’s claim that y is true is a lie even though y is factually true. Some theorists regard this condition as excessively strong and replace it with the weaker claim that the liar must not believe the deceptive utterance to be true—a condition that is subtly different from believing it to be untrue—in which view Person A might be agnostic about the truth of x or y and still be lying when telling Person B that y is true.
A further complication is presented by examples in which the deceptive communicator utters what is believed to be true with the intention of causing the listener to disbelieve it. Suppose that Person A knows very well that x is true and tells Person B that x is true in an ironic tone of voice in order to cause Person B to falsely believe that y or z is true. Some philosophers hold that this sort of communication—sometimes described as “paltering”—ought to be considered lying, even though it does not conform to the paradigmatic definition of the latter.
Other philosophers do not believe that lying is confined to the verbal sphere. They contend that we lie when we engage in any communication (verbal or nonverbal) that is intended to induce a false belief in the person toward whom the communication is directed. This more liberal approach allows for lies of omission—misleading by refraining from asserting something—and also allows that misleading nonverbal behaviours can count as lies provided that they are deliberately undertaken with the intent to deceive. Removing one’s wedding ring so as to give the impression that one is not married would be an example of such a lie.
Expanding the definition of lying even further, other philosophers drop the requirement that lying can only be performed by persons and extend it to other living things. Biologists have known for well over a century that nonhuman organisms deceive one another. Many kinds of animals engage in deception, as do plants and even microorganisms. The mirror orchid (Ophrys speculum) produces blossoms that mimic the form and scent of the female of a species of wasp. This induces male wasps of the species to engage in pseudo-copulations with the blossoms and thereby transport pollen from flower to flower. If it is legitimate to say that mirror orchids lie to wasps, then one must dispense with the requirement that lying must be intentional as well as the requirement that lies are necessarily attempts to induce false beliefs. An orchid possesses sensory receptive capabilities far more primitive than those of a mammal, such as a human, and it is doubtful that wasps are able to form beliefs. To address these problems, an account of lying that extends to all living things posits that lies have the function—rather than intentional aim—of inducing other organisms to misinterpret—rather than form false beliefs about—some feature or features of their world.
The morality of lying
Philosophical opinion is divided as to whether lying is morally wrong. Plato claimed in the Republic that rulers of a just society must promulgate “noble” lies to promote social harmony among the masses, but he also condemned the Sophists’ cavalier attitude toward truth. He apparently thought that the moral valence of lying depends upon the context in which the lie is told.
In contrast, St. Augustine—whose De mendacio, in the Reconsiderations, was the first systematic discussion of lying—argued that lying is always impermissible, although he granted as sometimes allowable that one may avoid telling the truth, a view that was later endorsed by Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224/25–1274 CE) in the Summa theologiae.
Centuries later, Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) argued that the notion of moral wrongness is built into the notion of lying. For Grotius, a harmless falsehood is by definition not a lie, so saying that lying is immoral is tautological.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) proposed that there are no conceivable circumstances in which lying is morally acceptable. He argued that morality is rooted in our capacity to make free, rational choices and that lying is, in effect, an assault on morality because it aims to undermine this capacity. Kant also affirmed that the moral law demands that we treat others as ends-in-themselves, whereas lying involves treating others merely as means. The Kantian perspective contrasts sharply with that of consequentialists, who hold that the moral value of an act lies entirely in the degree to which it maximizes some nonmoral good.
According to John Stuart Mill (1806–73), an act is morally obligatory only if it creates the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, relative to its alternatives. Because there are circumstances in which lying serves the general good more effectively than truth telling does, we sometimes have a moral obligation to behave dishonestly.
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