Can acting be considered morally as lying?

Question

Lately I've been binge-watching the awesome show "The Good Place" (if you haven't, check it out), and as the whole show is talking about ethics, the episode in season 2 when (and I'll try to be as spoiler-free as I can) Chidi has to lie in order to act as someone else, he says he cannot do it, he cannot lie as it's always mortally wrong (according to Kant).

So that got me thinking, maybe the whole concept of acting is to be considered ethically as lying? Now I'm not talking about if this is a "good lie" or a "bad lie" (if that distinction even exists, obviously not for Kant), I'm talking about whether acting is to be considered lying or is it something else entirely, unrelated to the ability to lie. Maybe it's to be considered as playing a game (not the best distinction, as we can also play a game based on lying, but that's just off the top of my head).

I think this question could be expanded to more realms of ethics, but I can't gather my thoughts clearly on this yet so I'll edit when I do.

Answer 1

This is a thought-provoking question. The essence of lying is an intention to deceive, though not all intentions to deceive involves lying : if I deceive you by impersonating someone, I have not lied to you. For the sake of a little more rigour one might define lying like this :

A person S tells a lie iff: 1. S makes a false statement x, 2. S believes that x is false or probably false (or, alternatively, S doesn't believe that x is true), and 3. S intends to deceive another person by means of stating x (by stating x, S intends to cause another person to have false beliefs). ( Thomas L. Carson, 'The Definition of Lying', Noûs, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Jun., 2006), p.287.)

'Iff' = 'if and only if'. We can work with this definition and if we do, we see that lying is not lying. The definition is a bit tangled but is about right.

In no sense of lying that we've looked at so far is acting, or does it involve, lying. But your question is not to be so quickly terminated. After all, lying does involve simulation. It is not a game but it is a form of pretending. The situation and the characters represented on stage or on film or in street theatre are, as Plato might say, a step or degree removed from reality. The actors are real but their stage or film characters are only representations of reality - the actors in the 1997 movie, 'Titanic', simulate reality.

The degree of removal from reality is greater when the situations or characters represented are fantasy figures - as in a film or stage production of 'Gulliver's Travels'.

There's another point, too. 'Titanic' - and this is true of any number of other movies - is not only not reality but a simulation of representation of it, there are degrees of accuracy of representation. 'Titanic' is not close history; it contains factual errors. See : https://www.moviemistakes.com/film1299/factual/pageall

So I'd say that though acting is not lying it resembles lying in involving an element of pretending and simulation and, in some cases, misrepresentation.

Answer 2

Acting is something entirely different.

Acting as a method of entertainment is not lying as it is a mutual deception of sorts. There is usually no malevolent intent.

Fraudulent behavior as in scams or masking truth for personal gain, protection of one's image, or to intentionally put harm to another's wellbeing is malevolent and is considered morally wrong.

In regards to espionage and acting as part of an adversaries forces while malevolent, it can generally be morally acceptable in times of war.