Concealment

Although concealment and deception sometimes overlap, they are not interchangeable. Concealment is not inherently deceptive. If I position a flowerpot on a counter to conceal a stain on the wall, that’s not ipso facto deceptive. 

By the same token, while withholding information is sometimes a form of concealment, that’s not intrinsically the case.

Suppose I go to a restaurant. I order the short rib rather than the catfish because I’m allergic to seafood. If I don’t tell the waiter why I ordered the short rib, is that concealment?

Likewise, suppose I go to the hardware store to buy something for a project I’m working on. I ask the employee for advice. Suppose I don’t tell him why I want the materials. I don’t explain what I plan to do with them. Is that concealment?

We withhold information all the time. There’s no general obligation to spell out our intentions. You’d have to have a police-state mentality to think everyone ought to explain his actions or divulge his motives. (Of course, many liberals do have a police-state mentality.)

One basic job of an ethicist is to draw these elementary distinctions. To present hypothetical cases which illustrate these distinctions. To attempt to delineate when withholding information is licit or illicit.

I see a lot of grandstanding about ethics by Hector Avalos and his ilk. But there’s no real concern for ethics, for if he really cared about ethics, he’d make a good faith effort to draw basic ethical distinctions. Indeed, to draw subtle ethical distinctions. But for all the ostentatious moralizing, no such effort is put forward. It’s just for show.