Book
Harris S. Lying. Four Elephants Press; 2013. 108 p.
Why we cite it
A concise philosophical argument that all lying — including white lies and self-deception — carries greater costs than commonly recognized. Harris argues that honesty is “an engine of simplicity”: knowing you told the truth leaves nothing to keep track of and allows accurate self-assessment. This directly supports the honesty companion (360): self-deception about eating behavior (underreporting intake, maintaining comfortable narratives like “I eat pretty healthy”) prevents the accurate self-assessment that is a prerequisite for change. You can only fix what you can see, and lying to yourself keeps you from seeing.
About the author
Sam Harris, PhD, holds a BA in Philosophy from Stanford University (2000) and a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from UCLA (2009, dissertation on the neural basis of belief using fMRI, advisor: Mark S. Cohen). Five-time New York Times bestselling author. His books include The End of Faith (2004, PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction), The Moral Landscape (2010), Free Will (2012), and Waking Up (2014). Host of the Making Sense podcast (~477 episodes). Creator of the Waking Up meditation app. One of the “Four Horsemen” of New Atheism alongside Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens. Academic publications in Annals of Neurology, PLoS ONE, and PNAS. Approximately 9,058–32,352 citations depending on source.
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