The question of whether a fictitious story is a type of lie has been bothering me for some time. I love stories. I love telling stories, writing stories, and reading stories of many types. I also have a great appreciation for the truth, and a general disrespect for those who know something is true, but tell me a lie for purposes other than my entertainment. The lines between truth and fiction are often blurred.
Lies are fictions passed off as truths. Usually people lie because making something up is easier than being honest about their experience or intentions. The truth can hurt. But the truth gets complicated when one recognizes the limits of their own absolute understanding.
Socrates, in Plato's dialogues, was famous for indicating that wisdom lies in recognizing how little truth one actually knows. I can tell you it will rain soon because the density of the humidity in the clouds has reached a point of saturation. Really I am telling you a type of story I received second hand about how clouds work, but because it has a causal twist, and all the authority of scientific consensus, this seems honest. I do not know how to measure humidity in clouds, nor could I do much better than look to the sky and say clouds are on their way, they look like clouds that have rained on me in the past, and it might rain. This might be an even more honest story, but most people would prefer my tale about relative humidity. If I was as honest as Socrates, I would admit I do not know the truth but I trust the weather channel, as they seem to generally be on the ball, and make predictions based on observations. I am making inferences about many steps that I do not take on my own, and I would be severely limited if I only accepted truth I fully understood.
So I swap stories about the weather and medicine with people, under the umbrella of science, and I like them. Often I am wrong. I used to tell people that the dopamine reuptake inhibitors I take improve my mental functioning. This turns out to be overly simplistic according to other current stories I have read, because glutamate, a different kind of neurotransmitter, is more involved and responsible for my troubles. It's an important story, one I respect, because it led to me taking a medication that works very well. I don't need to understand all the science, but I prefer the story to less scientific stories about magic or religion. In these stories the medication is an illusion, and faith healing is considered more compelling. My experience matches up to the scientific story. So I prefer it, and I should. But could I be wrong again?
The question is still one of intent and correspondence with what I actually experienced. I was ill, I took a medicine, no faith healing transpired, and I got better. When faith healing was attempted, and it was, no improvements were evident. It seems like the pill story is the truth. I try to improve my health and maintain good health, so the next time someone tells me about a pill I will probably believe their story. The intention is to find the truth. This is why scientists call their stories theories. People misunderstand this often, like when they say evolution is "only" a theory, equal to something with no correspondence to reality, that their theories are just fictions. Scientific theories are not the same as the "theory" that sock monsters eat one of your matched pair in the dryer. Scientific theories seem like stories, but there is correspondence with experience, a causal chain, and a series of collected facts, leading me to believe they are closer to the truth.
Fiction has a different intention. Fictional stories do not meet the same standards as scientific theories, usually they are a way to kill some time, an entertainment with the implied suspension of disbelief we rarely talk about. When someone tells me a fiction, it is like they preceded it with the statement: "this never happened but I thought I might entertain you for a moment, so bare with me." It is not a lie, because they believe I know this fiction has no correspondence with any reality, and I am in on the deal we have made to be entertained together in the retelling.
When someone confuses a fiction with a scientific theory, trouble is in the wind. All theories are not created equal. Why we have this agreement to tell stories, or fictions, is a larger question, but it can be boiled down to intention. Knowing the difference between a theory, a story, and a lie is important, but I have chosen to entertain people with my stories and sometimes I need to clarify the rules of this game we call fiction. I do this mostly for my own sanity, but also to entertain you here with some truth.
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