When I was a child, I had the tendency to prevaricate and make misleading statements, where what I had said was not false, but left out an important portion of the truth and deceived the listener into believing a falsehood. I used to pride myself on this as a rhetorical skill; it had proved especially useful in games, but I also used it for real life purposes.
However, I recently began to consider how this is any different from lying in practicality; in both cases, the objective is to establish a false belief in the target, or to otherwise keep them away from the truth. The Wikipedia Article on Lies says:
A misleading statement is one where there is no outright lie, but still retains the purpose of getting someone to believe in an untruth.
I hope this is not too open-ended, but what philosophers have considered prevarication and lying, and what were their conclusions? Do any/most systems of ethics consider the two morally equivalent?
In short, would I have been considered a liar in my childhood by any philosopher, although I never spoke falsehoods?
