Are Vulcans really incapable of telling a lie?

Question

There were various episodes where Vulcans did lie. For example, Spock did lie in episode The Menagerie and Vulcans from Enterprise series were often deceitful, like in The Andorian Incident.

Now, Spock is half human, so really isn't the best example. But, Vulcans from Enterprise era are entirely Vulcan and they did lie.

Is the question of truthfulness just like with their emotions - not a physiological condition, but rather a result of their cultural conditioning? Such conditioning which was not widespread in Enterprise era, but already is in TOS era. Are they really incapable of telling a lie or is it that they usually don't lie?

Answer 1

In my opinion Star Trek does a rather poor job of keeping this part of Vulcan philosophy consistent.

Proof of Vulcan verbal deception

The Vulcans are unafraid of using deception and in the Enterprise episode The Andorian Incident, they are shown to have a hidden spy base underneath a monastery. The Vulcans could have only kept that monastery a secret from the Andorians by verbal deception. Also, in the episode of Enterprise called, Carbon Creek, T'Mir claims that she cremated her subordinate, Mestral, in order to trick the vulcan high command in to letting him stay on earth for further "study".

Isn't a lie of omission, still a lie?

You can argue that lies of omission are not lies, but there is only so far you can stretch that idea without lying to yourself. The Andorians, the Vulcans' greatest enemies, would have known if the Vulcans could not tell lies, and therefore should have been able to force the Vulcans into telling the Andorians the location of the hidden spy base.

So either Vulcans can and do lie, or what is considered a lie to Vulcans is completely different from human definition.

An advanced culture would not necessarily frown on lying

The Vulcan perspective on lying may also be misguided, while it may seem simple to regard lies as both evil and the mark on an un-advanced society. In fact the opposite maybe true, that without deception a society becomes stagnant and totalitarian. Many times throughout the Star Trek series, main characters use verbal deception to avoid violence and bloodshed. I believe that narrative idea of Vulcan honesty comes from the dubious belief that all lying is wrong. Not only is it not always wrong to lie, but it is often necessary for survival as Tuvok can tell you (if he were an honest man :) ).

Maybe the TOS writers just threw the idea out there without thinking much about it.

On a Star Trek forum a user mentions that Vulcan honesty maybe in jest:

I believe the line in "Court Martial" went:

Vulcanians do not speculate.

Elsewhere, (in "The Doomsday Machine") we hear:

Vulcans never bluff.

which may, in fact, have been a bluff.

Answer 2

From Memory Alpha:

Vulcans are known for their high degree of honesty. They are extremely reluctant to tell a lie, and indeed it is said that "Vulcans cannot lie". However, they will do so for what they perceive as logical reasons, though they rarely refer to their dishonesty as "lying." (TOS: "The Enterprise Incident"; Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) On at least one occasion, Spock lies without any apparent logical reason (and, in fact, for a reason apparently consisting of nothing more than humor), when he claims to not have seen Kirk's last orders to himself and Doctor McCoy (TOS: "The Tholian Web"). However, this may, in fact, be a result of those orders themselves, as Kirk had, in the orders, instructed Spock to follow McCoy's lead on intuitive and emotional matters, and McCoy had just refused to admit to seeing the orders.

In other words, yes and no. We could say they can lie, when logic dictates that it would serve towards the greater good. The Vulcan's would say they never lie because they don't consider bending the truth when logic calls for it as a lie.

Answer 3

Tuvok said that he remained true to his own convictions, when questioned by Chakotay about his time as a Maquis. It is possible to be both honest and dishonest simultaneously.

Answer 4

Star Trek, The Wrath of Kahn.

KIRK: By the book! Regulation forty-six A, 'If transmissions are being monitored during battle...'

SAAVIK: '...no uncoded messages on an open channel.' ...You lied.

SPOCK: I exaggerated.

KIRK: Hours instead of days, Saavik, now we have minutes instead of hours.

Answer 5

In S3E09 TOS.final scene: Both Bones and Spock tell a blatant lie to kirk's face that neither had seen the "last orders tape" that kirk had left behind.

Answer 6

If a lie is defined to be as an statement in contradiction to a reality ( logic in Vulcan's case ) then a statement can only be considered a lie by those who are aware of the contradiction. In the episode Gambit a Vulcan isolationist infiltrator did not tell the truth, the explanation being that their logic to force Vulcan away from Federation differed from the logic of others, so within their logic it was not a lie.

PS: All the above rests on memory of that episode from 12 years ago, if anyone has seen it more recently and can point out the mistakes in the above statement that would be great.

Answer 7

Yes, they must be. Vulcans are supposed to be 100% driven by logic and especially probability. Sometimes, the best action, or the one with the highest probability of succeeding is to lie. In poker, that's called bluffing. Spock saying that Vulcans never bluff allowed him to further increase the probability his desired result would be achieved. Now, we don't find out if it was a real bluff or not because, as expected the highest probability action taken by Spock caused the desired results.

Answer 8

Vulcans can and do misrepresent and in the British legal system misrepresenting is the same as lying. Perhaps the human concept of lying is different from the Vulcan concept either that or the ST writers could not keep their own canon consistent.

Answer 9

Vulcans are a peace-loving race, not the sort to impose their will or exploit others for their own gain. They might fairly be described as honest. They also inhabit a galaxy full of other races and cultures - people who see their honest character and conflate honesty with "inability to lie". Thus the characterization gets distorted and becomes part of the galactic mythos about Vulcans.

Answer 10

In the TOS episode, Journey To Babel, Sarek tells a bold faced lie when initially being questioned by Kirk about his whereabouts. He claims to have been privately meditating during the period of time when another Ambassador had been murdered, but later tells the truth. His illness debilitated him for hours. He lied to hide his illness, which he had also kept a secret from his wife. I believe we can categorize that as a deception by omission, compounded by the outright lie that was his alibi.

Answer 11

Lies are what is not true. Humans see lying as "no, mom, it was the little brother who spilled the water. He should clean it up", or my personal favorite, "the window screen is broken because it's crappy. I wasnt sneaking out."

So basically, if lying is saying something you believe not to be true, then would it not be telling the truth to say something that goes along with your belief, or your logic? I see this in politics all the time. Conservatives say liberals are lying tree huggers, liberals say conservatives are lying money launderers. Both opinions are true as far as i can tell, because they are true to the opinions (logic) of the individual saying them.

Now apply this to vulcans. A vulcan thinks in facts. Their minds store information, and snobby kiss offs. So the definition of a lie to a vulcan would be saying something illogical. Ive not seen that yet. They may twist and bend the human version of truth in a way that we see as lies or deception, but really what they are doing, in their minds, is not lying at all. Its logical.