Sherlock Holmes and The Many Faces of Deception

Why are they lying, and what is the truth which they are trying so hard to conceal? Let us try, Watson, you and I, if we can get behind the lie and reconstruct the truth.

– Sherlock Holmes, Esq.

Sherlock Holmes is renowned for observing several minute details and then being able to draw amazingly accurate inferences about what has happened. For instance, at their first meeting, Holmes quickly notices that Dr. John Watson has a military bearing, that his face is darker than the skin on his wrists, and that he holds his left arm in “a stiff and unnatural manner.” From these clues (together with his knowledge of the recent Anglo-Afghan War), Holmes famously concludes, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive”.

However, the sorts of “deductions” (more precisely, abductions or inferences to the best explanation) that Holmes regularly makes in order to solve crimes are even more impressive. In these cases, Holmes manages to uncover something that (unlike Watson’s military service) someone else is actively trying to keep hidden. In other words, he is dealing with liars and deceivers who attempt to make the world appear to be one way when the reality is actually quite different. And in order to see through their ruses to the truth, Holmes has to understand the various ways in which people try to deceive other people.

Philosophers from Plato and Saint Augustine to Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche have been primarily interested in moral questions about lying and deception, such as whether it is always wrong to lie and whether lying is worse than other forms of deception. But philosophers are also concerned with the purely epistemological questions of how people can be deceived and how deception can be detected. In other words, how can we acquire knowledge in a world of liars and deceivers?

All instances of deception involve manipulating people’s beliefs by altering how the world appears to be. However, as we see from reading the Canon, deceit comes in a wealth of different varieties. And this diversity is key to understanding the epistemology of deception. Thus, philosophers, such as Augustine, Roderick Chisholm and Thomas Feehan, J. Bowyer Bell and Barton Whaley, Jonathan Adler (no relation to Irene), and, most recently, Thomas Carson, have attempted to classify the different possible types of deception.

In addition to the many deceptions that criminals employed to carry out and/or cover-up their crimes, Holmes himself regularly used deceit in order to solve these mysteries. For instance, he frequently disguised himself, usually as a member of the working class, to conduct his investigations with greater anonymity and he often kept Watson in the dark about what was going on. He even went so far as to fake his own death at the Reichenbach Fall.

Holmes was well aware of the value of such taxonomies. For example, he categorized the various types of crime and he even wrote a technical monograph enumerating the various types of tobacco ash.

By contrast, Jonas Oldacre merely planted false evidence to suggest that he had been murdered by the unhappy John Hector McFarlane. He did not actually say anything false. And this distinction is important to how people are deceived and how the deception can be detected. For example, if it becomes known that evidence has been placed somewhere intentionally, it is immediately suspect. But it is always clear that testimony is an intentional act; some other indication is needed to cast doubt on its veracity.

Several philosophers also draw a distinction between misleading someone and simply “keeping someone in the dark.” In other words, is the goal that someone acquire a false belief or is the goal just to prevent someone from acquiring a true belief? And Bell and Whaley have gone further and categorized the various techniques for “showing the false” and “hiding the true.” For instance, when Jack Stapleton painted The Hound of the Baskervilles with phosphorus to make it appear to be a “hound of hell”, it is an example of inventing (i.e., creating a new reality). And when Silas Brown dyed the distinctive white forehead of Silver Blaze so that the horse could be hidden in plain sight, it is an example of repackaging (i.e., hiding something by making it look like something else). Other techniques include masking, mimicking, and dazzling.

Although Watson claims that Holmes knew “next to nothing” about philosophy, he was certainly well-versed in the study of deceit. In this essay, I will look at what Holmes can teach us about the epistemology of deception, and at what it can teach us about Holmes. In particular, I plan to use the existing philosophical work on deception to analyze the various ruses that Holmes confronted during his career. For instance, can all of these ruses be classified using the taxonomies created by philosophers? Also, are there important types of deception that Holmes might have faced, but never did?

References

• Adler, Jonathan E. 1997. 'Lying, Deceiving, or Falsely Implicating.' Journal of Philosophy 94:435-52.
• Augustine. 1952 [395]. 'Lying.' Pp. 53-120 in Treatises on Various Subjects, ed. R. J. Deferrari. New York: Catholic University of America.
• Bell, J. B. and Barton Whaley. 1991. Cheating and Deception. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.
• Carson, Thomas L. 2010. Lying and Deception. New York: Oxford.
• Chisholm, Roderick M. and Thomas D. Feehan. 1977. 'The Intent to Deceive.' Journal of Philosophy 74:143-59.
• Doyle, Arthur C. 1930 [1887-1927]. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. New York: Doubleday.