Hi Maxat!

You have a point, but... Ethically, this discussion could get a bit convoluted.

I think my comment conceded that not all broken promises amount to lies. If I read you rightly, however, you’re asserting that, in the absence of actual prior intention to state a falsehood, it’s impossible to lie. I’m not convinced that’s a tenable position.

Suppose I borrow $1000 from you, and promise to pay back $100 every week for ten weeks. If, after three weeks, I call you up and say I can’t pay you back, you’ll want to know why. If I explain that my house burned down, you might be sympathetic, you might be upset, but you wouldn’t say I lied. If I tell you spent the money I owed you on a holiday in Phuket, you’d likely say my promise was not serious. You’d say I’d lied, and ethically, you’d be right. So also if I refused to pay, and gave no reason. It wouldn’t be a defence to argue that I just ‘changed my mind’.

I can know nothing of Gillard’s mental state when she promised ‘Not under any government I lead’. Motive can only be inferred a priori: what I cannot observe or experience, I must deduce. That’s why it’s vital for her to be up front about her reasoning. She promised there’d be no Carbon Tax because it was politically astute to do so. If she later broke her promise for political gain (e.g. Bob Brown’s cooperation), then she lied.

Ethically, Gillard can no more refuse to discuss her reasons for breaking her promise than I could refuse to discuss why I won’t pay the debt I owe you. Silence, in such cases, amounts to disdain, or fear; what else can a rational being deduce a priori? It’s no good asserting that she may have intended to live up to her promise, but ‘changed her mind’. I can forgive a broken promise if I can infer good motive. I think your reasoning is backwards; you want me to infer good motive, given only a broken promise.