We normally value honesty and typically think it is morally wrong to lie. There might be some exceptions to this – if the consequences of truth-telling are likely to be very harmful, if it the lie is particularly trivial, for instance.
The ‘Santa Claus lie’ is, however, often thought to be harmless and even positively valuable. People are actively encouraged to repeat this lie to their children and might be admonished for revealing the lie.
In this session we will discuss the ethics of lying, specifically to children. We will consider the difference between paradigmatic lies and other ways of misleading without lying. We will then discuss the special case of the Santa Claus lie: what value it brings and whether this justifies its telling.