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I have a preference for honesty/literality but I also feel it's impossible to tell the whole truth, since it's impossible to include every detail of the truth which might conceivably be salient in some eventuality. Another problem here: there needs to be a "real reality", a something-referred-to about which claims can be true or false, for there to be truth and lies. Does one always "lie" when using language because "the map is not the territory" and language is always incomplete, or (on, say, a Buddhist reading) differs fundamentally from what "really exists"? Does someone's capacity to tell the truth depend on meanings common between themselves and the listener - when does a misunderstanding because of lingusitic differences become a lie? Is a lie the same thing as a confabulation? Can one lie to oneself? Can one come to believe one's own lies? Also, are there statements of such a kind that their truth-status is irrelevant? Is there a difference between a lie, a joke, a sarcastic remark, a dramatic performance, and a work of fiction?

My impression is that the most frequent liars fall in two groups: 1) people who believe the "real reality" is simply a struggle to survive or succeed at the expense of others, and whose statements are thus created as "strategic" manipulations within this presumed background field, and 2) people with a moralised but relativistic epistemology (such as idpols, cognitivists and poststructuralists) who believe that one can really create or change realities through words or that "reality" is simply a series of multiple truths each reflecting particular interests. Both groups will assume everyone is in a sense lying, that truth is nothing more than an effective lie, and that their own confabulations "in a good cause" (themselves, their group) are utterly justified, even moral.

The possibility of untrue statements is built into language. I very much doubt lying is a "survival tactic" and I wonder what theory of hunter-gatherers underlies this... there aren't many occasions where lying has self-preservation benefits for individual or society in hunter-gatherer contexts. Rather, it would seem that general honesty among a codependent band, and reduction of intragroup conflict and distrust, would be survival-beneficial. The examples I'm aware of (such as humility or boasting about hunting successes: Bushmen "lie" by downplaying success apparently to avoid any perceived slight to less-successful hunters, Yanomami make exaggerated claims about their prowess during ritualised singing contests, Ilongot claim all to have caught the same amount to save face for older/less capable hunters) seem mostly to be face-saving.

Interesting question: do animals lie? Animal "speech" generally seems to be functionally expressive and/or illocutionary, and any truth-content thus relates to the intent or internal state of the animal (a snarl means "I am angry" or "fuck off before I bite you"). Can a dog, say, snarl if it isn't feeling anger? A domestic dog can be "conditioned" to snarl to manipulate humans, which seems to be lying, but it's not clear whether the dog is just being "conditioned" to feel anger in these cirucmstances, at which point the snarl is not a lie. In exceptions where there's some kind of representational communication (prairie dogs, bees), there does not seem to be any possibility of lying: a bee will follow a route in the hive analogous to the route it just flew, informing other bees whether this route is nectar-rich or not; AFAIK a bee cannot decide to show a false route so as to keep the nectar for itself (nor an ant with pheromones). In principle a junior female prairie-dog might have an interest in not correctly reporting the passage of a dangerous animal towards the queen, thus increasing her own breeding chances, but it's not something I've ever seen reported.