Moral debate and semantic sleight of hand.

Abstract

If there is to be any meaningful discussion concerning public policy, it must begin with the most basic moral value—truth. So fundamental is truth that no moral system, and indeed no cognitive discipline, would be conceivable without the basic premise that truth be assumed as a meta-principle. The term “truth” is used in this context, not in the sense of truth-telling, but in the sense of truth-recognition. Every moral system that recognizes that, under certain conditions, communication of a falsehood is not only devoid of odium but constitutes a moral imperative. A maniac wishes to know which button, when depressed, will release a nuclear device. In that case, the morally mandated response is self-evident; in other situations the same clarity may not obtain. Truth-telling in the physician-patient relationship is a case in point. Curiously, or perhaps not so curiously, it is usually the physician who advocates full disclosure, while the ethicist may be quite prepared to clothe the lie with moral sanction. Although communication of a falsehood to another individual may be justifiable or even commendable at times, self-deception ought never be condoned. Consequently, recognition and acknowledgment of factual verities must constitute the first step in the formulation of public policy. Organ transplants and fetal tissue research designed to preserve human life are themselves entirely unobjectionable. Yet each involves an ancillary issue posing a significant moral problem which, in current debate, has become obfuscated by confusion with regard to matters that are entirely factual in nature.