Eh, I still think it's wrong. I'll address the non-consequentialist section.
I'm not convinced by the David Blaine case, because stage magic seems basically like acting in that magicians don't typically intend to actually deceive people. If they did, then they would be perpetrating a fraud (e.g., Uri Geller), not doing stage magic. So, the magician who says, "This tablecloth is perfectly normal" or "I'm about to saw this woman in half and put her back together" is not really lying, but simply engaging in a fiction together with the audience and invoking the widely understood tropes and conventions of said fiction.
I agree with the moderate deontologist that lying is probably only pro tanto wrong, but it still seems obvious to me that the deontological reasons against lying are pretty strong, even though not as strong as Kant/Aquinas thought. Your view commits you to thinking that it may be permissible to lie for utterly trivial reasons, like making someone a little bit happier. But it just seems obvious to me that if something is pro tanto wrong, you cannot just do it for trivial reasons. So, for example, you cannot harm, kill, steal, etc. for trivial reasons. It would be very weird if lying was somehow an exception to this, and it would probably open a Pandora's box and permit lying in way too many cases. It's not clear how you would avoid that, because you only attempt to raise puzzles for the stricter views on lying without offering a clear alternative.
The appeal to hypothetical consent also doesn't seem to work by my lights. Typically, one only invokes hypothetical consent in cases where the person is incapable of giving consent, e.g., an accident victim who is taken unconscious to a hospital. If a doctor is deciding whether to treat that person, it seems reasonable for them to defer to hypothetical consent because the person is incapable of giving their actual consent. But that doesn't apply in the present case. Presumably, children are not so incompetent that they cannot consent to know the truth about Santa, and actual dissent trumps hypothetical consent. So, it still doesn't seem like you should lie to them about it.
“According to J.P.—or as I like to call him, the Grinch” 🤣 10/10
Eh, I still think it's wrong. I'll address the non-consequentialist section.
I'm not convinced by the David Blaine case, because stage magic seems basically like acting in that magicians don't typically intend to actually deceive people. If they did, then they would be perpetrating a fraud (e.g., Uri Geller), not doing stage magic. So, the magician who says, "This tablecloth is perfectly normal" or "I'm about to saw this woman in half and put her back together" is not really lying, but simply engaging in a fiction together with the audience and invoking the widely understood tropes and conventions of said fiction.
I agree with the moderate deontologist that lying is probably only pro tanto wrong, but it still seems obvious to me that the deontological reasons against lying are pretty strong, even though not as strong as Kant/Aquinas thought. Your view commits you to thinking that it may be permissible to lie for utterly trivial reasons, like making someone a little bit happier. But it just seems obvious to me that if something is pro tanto wrong, you cannot just do it for trivial reasons. So, for example, you cannot harm, kill, steal, etc. for trivial reasons. It would be very weird if lying was somehow an exception to this, and it would probably open a Pandora's box and permit lying in way too many cases. It's not clear how you would avoid that, because you only attempt to raise puzzles for the stricter views on lying without offering a clear alternative.
The appeal to hypothetical consent also doesn't seem to work by my lights. Typically, one only invokes hypothetical consent in cases where the person is incapable of giving consent, e.g., an accident victim who is taken unconscious to a hospital. If a doctor is deciding whether to treat that person, it seems reasonable for them to defer to hypothetical consent because the person is incapable of giving their actual consent. But that doesn't apply in the present case. Presumably, children are not so incompetent that they cannot consent to know the truth about Santa, and actual dissent trumps hypothetical consent. So, it still doesn't seem like you should lie to them about it.