The Deceiving Game

The moral comparison of the three venues of deception - lying, falsely implicating, and nonverbal deception - is a central, ongoing debate in the ethics of deception. To date there has been no attempt to advance in the debate through experimental philosophy. Using methods of experimental economics, we devised a strategic game to test positions in the debate. Our article presents the experimental results and shows how philosophical analysis of the results allows drawing valid normative conclusions. Our conclusions testify against the dominant position in the debate - that lying is morally worse than all non-lying deceptions. They offer prima facie support to the view that the venue of deception makes no moral difference.