INFERENCE

3.6.3 This makes it apparent that if we talk about the second kind of principle as being
loose, we are being seriously misleading. Looseness in conduct is generally reckoned a
bad thing, and it would be dangerous if philosophers were to put about the idea that
principles of conduct are loose; for the ordinary person cannot be expected to
distinguish readily in what sense they are being called loose. He will naturally take it
that they are like the first kind of principle, and that because they are loose he need not
trouble to observe them always, provided that he does it often enough to keep up
appearances. But in this sense our principles of conduct, as indeed most principles of
skill also, are not loose at all. The fact that exceptions are made to them is a sign, not of
any essential looseness, but of our desire to make them as rigorous as we can. For what
we are doing in allowing classes of exceptions is to make the principle, not looser, but
more rigorous. Suppose that we start off with a principle never to say what is false, but
regard this principle as provisional, and recognize that there may be exceptions.
Suppose, then, that we decide to make an exception in the case of lies told in war-time
to deceive the enemy. The rule has now become 'Never say what is false, except in wartime to deceive the enemy'. This principle, once the exception has been made explicit
and included in the wording of the principle, is not looser than it was before, but
tighter. In one large class of cases, where previously the possibility of exceptions was
left open and we had to decide for ourselves, the position is now regulated; the
principle lays down that in these circumstances we may say what is false.
This simplified statement of the way in which we modify principles by admitting
classes of exceptions covers only those cases where the principle itself is stated in words
which leave no doubt as to how to recognize the cases which fall under it. 'Never say
what is false' is an example of such a principle. Often, however, principles are stated in
such a way as makes it impossible to treat the question, whether a case falls under
them, as a mere question of fact. Often, though not always, this is because the principle
itself contains, in addition to such imperative verbs or value-words as are necessary for
stating a principle of action, other value-words occupying the place that in a normal
case would be occupied by purely descriptive terms. For example, we might put our
principle about falsehood in a different way: 'Do not tell lies.' We might subsequently
admit an exception in the case of falsehoods told, not with the intention of deceiving,
but for other purposes, for example in order to amuse. Then we might say that to tell a
story about someone, which everyone knows is ben trovato, is not lying. We can say
this, because 'lying' does not mean simply telling falsehoods, but telling falsehoods
which are reprehensible. Thus we might, and sometimes do, make a distinction
between lies proper and white lies; lies proper are all reprehensible; a white lie on the
other hand is, in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary, 'a consciously untrue
statement which is not considered criminal: a falsehood rendered venial or
praiseworthy by its motive'. In all such cases, the modification of the principle takes the
form of an alteration, not of its actual wording, but of the conditions under which the
principle is held to apply, that is, an alteration of the extension of the crucial word, or as
we shall later call it its descriptive meaning, with the retention of its evaluative
meaning. This, as has been pointed out to me by Professor H. L. A. Hart, is how legal
principles are often modified by judicial decisions, as, for example, by the decision
whether or not the occasional cricket ball landing in a public street is properly to be
called a 'nuisance'.