Ricerc@Sapienza

The temptation to deceive others compares to a moral dilemma: it involves a conflict between the temptation to obtain some benefit and the desire to conform to personal and social moral norms or avoid aversive social consequences. Thus, people might feel different levels of emotional and moral conflict depending on the target of the deception. Here we explored, in a morally relevant setting, how social judgements based on two fundamental dimensions of human social cognition – ‘warmth’ and ‘competence’ – impact on the decision to deceive others.

It is well known, that the in text On a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy Kant holds that lying is always morally wrong. In this essay I try to demonstrate the paradoxical thesis that it is possible and maybe even necessary to contest this view by arguing exactly from the main premises of Kantʼs moral philosophy: In Kantian terms, the thesis of the text On a Supposed Right… is false. The so-called Kantian formalism relies on the criterium of the universalization of the maxim, but this criterium implies the need to always consider circumstances.