It is widely held that all lies are assertions: the traditional definition of lying entails that, in order to lie, speakers have to assert something they believe to be false. It is also widely held that assertion contrasts with presupposition and, in particular, that one cannot assert something by presupposing it. Together, these views imply that speakers cannot lie with presuppositions—a view that Andreas Stokke has recently explicitly defended. The aim of this paper is to argue that speakers can lie (...) with presuppositions, and to discuss some of the implications this outcome has for current research on lying, assertion and presupposition. (shrink)

The distinction between lying and mere misleading is commonly tied to the distinction between saying and conversationally implicating. Many definitions of lying are based on the idea that liars say something they believe to be false, while misleaders put forward a believed-false conversational implicature. The aim of this paper is to motivate, spell out, and defend an alternative approach, on which lying and misleading differ in terms of commitment: liars, but not misleaders, commit themselves to something they believe to be (...) false. This approach entails that lying and misleading involve speech-acts of different force. While lying requires the committal speech-act of asserting, misleading involves the non-committal speech-act of suggesting. The approach leads to a broader definition of lying that can account for lies that are told while speaking non-literally or with the help of presuppositions, and it allows for a parallel definition of misleading, which so far is lacking in the debate. (shrink)

Many recent definitions of lying are based on the notion of what is said. This paper argues that says-based definitions of lying cannot account for lies involving non-literal speech, such as metaphor, hyperbole, loose use or irony. It proposes that lies should instead be defined in terms of assertion, where what is asserted need not coincide with what is said. And it points to possible implications this outcome might have for the ethics of lying.

In arguing against a supposed ambiguity, philosophers often rely on the zeugma test. In an application of the zeugma test, a supposedly ambiguous expression is placed in a sentence in which several of its supposed meanings are forced together. If the resulting sentence sounds zeugmatic, that is taken as evidence for ambiguity; if it does not sound zeugmatic, that is taken as evidence against ambiguity. The aim of this article is to show that arguments based on the second direction of (...) the test are misguided: ambiguous expressions, and in particular philosophically contested ones, do not reliably lead to zeugmaticity, so an absence of zeugmaticity provides no meaningful evidence for an absence of ambiguity. (shrink)

Pictures are notably absent from the current debate about how to define lying. Theorists in this debate tend to focus on linguistic means of communication and do not consider the possibility of lying with photographs, drawings and other kinds of pictures. The aim of this paper is to show that such a narrow focus is misguided: there is a strong case to be made for the possibility of lying with pictures and this possibility allows for insights concerning the question of (...) how lying should be defined. (shrink)

Intentionalism is the view that demonstratives, gradable adjectives, quantifiers, modals and other context‐sensitive expressions are intention‐sensitive: their semantic value on a given use is fixed by speaker intentions. The first aim of this paper is to defend Intentionalism against three recent objections, according to which speakers at least sometimes do not have suitable intentions when using supposedly intention‐sensitive expressions. Its second aim is to thereby shed light on the so far little‐explored question of which kinds of intentions can be semantically (...) relevant. (shrink)

Lying requires asserting a disbelieved proposition, that much is widely accepted in the debate on how to define lying. But what else is required? Does lying require a particular linguistic manner of expression, such as saying? Does the proposition asserted have to be false (and not merely disbelieved)? And does lying require an intention to deceive? The aim of this chapter is to provide an opinionated introduction to the debates on these questions that takes into account both theoretical considerations and (...) empirical data. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Copredication, as exhibited by sentences such as ‘That book is heavy but informative,’ is commonly seen as a phenomenon that is tied to sentences featuring polysemous expressions. David Liebesman and Ofra Magidor have recently attacked this view by arguing that ‘book’ has a single context-sensitive sense. The first aim of the present paper is to show that Liebesman and Magidor are wrong to claim that ‘book’ is univocal, but that they may nonetheless be right to question that copredication requires (...) polysemy. Its second aim is to consider implications of this result for the debates on copredication and on semantic variability. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to argue that lying differs from mere misleading in a way that can be morally relevant: liars commit themselves to something they believe to be false, while misleaders avoid such commitment, and this difference can make a moral difference. Even holding all else fixed, a lie can therefore be morally worse than a corresponding misleading utterance. But, we argue, there are also cases in which the difference in commitment makes lying morally better than misleading, (...) as well as cases in which the difference is not morally relevant. This view conflicts with the two main positions philosophers have defended in the ethics of lying and misleading, which entail either that lying is in virtue of its nature worse than misleading or that there is no morally relevant difference between lying and misleading. (shrink)

Sam Berstler defends a general moral advantage for misleading over lying by arguing that liars, but not misleaders, act unfairly toward the other members of their linguistic community. This article spells out three difficulties for Berstler’s account. First, though Berstler aims to avoid an error theory, it is dubitable that her account fits with intuitions on the matter. Second, there are some lies that do not exhibit the unfairness Berstler identifies. Third, fairness is not the only morally relevant difference between (...) lying and misleading. (shrink)

This paper defends stage theory against the argument from diachronic counting. It argues that stage theorists can appeal to quantifier domain restriction in order to accommodate intuitions about diachronic counting sentences. Two approaches involving domain restriction are discussed. According to the first, domains of counting are usually restricted to stages at the time of utterance. This approach explains intuitions in many cases, but is theoretically costly and delivers wrong counts if diachronic counting is combined with fission or fusion. On the (...) second approach, domains of counting are usually restricted in an indeterminate way, so as to include at most one member of any maximal class of counterpart-interrelated stages (with respect to a certain utterance). This view can accommodate all the relevant intuitions about counting sentences, and it fits well with a new stage-theoretic view of reference that allows speakers to refer to both present and past stages. (shrink)

What is the content of a sentence in context? A proposition, says the standard propositional view accepted in much of semantics. A set of propositions, says the hitherto little-explored view of Semantic Pluralism. The aim of this book is to motivate, develop and defend Semantic Pluralism. To achieve this aim, the book puts forward two arguments against Contextualism, the most popular propositional theory. It spells out two versions of Semantic Pluralism: Flexible Pluralism, which takes many expressions to be context-sensitive, and (...) Strong Pluralism, which denies that context-sensitivity is widespread. And it shows how Pluralists can reply to several objections that have been lodged against non-propositional semantic theories. (shrink)

In several recent papers and a monograph, Andreas Stokke argues that questions can be misleading, but that they cannot be lies. The aim of this paper is to show that ordinary speakers disagree. We show that ordinary speakers judge certain kinds of insincere questions to be lies, namely questions carrying a believed-false presupposition the speaker intends to convey. These judgements are robust and remain so when the participants are given the possibility of classifying the utterances as misleading or as deceiving. (...) The judgements contrast with judgements participants give about cases of misleading or deceptive behaviour, and they pattern with judgements participants make about declarative lies. Finally, the possibility of lying with non-declaratives is not confined to questions: ordinary speakers also judge utterances of imperative, exclamative and optative sentences carrying believed-false presuppositions to be lies. (shrink)

According to the subjective view of lying, speakers can lie by asserting a true proposition, as long as they believe this proposition to be false. This view contrasts with the objective view, according to which lying requires the actual falsity of the proposition asserted. The aim of this paper is to draw attention to pairs of assertions that differ only in intuitively redundant content and to show that such pairs of assertions are a reason to favour the subjective view of (...) lying over the objective one. (shrink)

In several recent papers, Daniel Deasy has argued that the presentism–eternalism debate is unclear and should be abandoned. According to Deasy, there is no way of spelling out the predicate ‘is present’ that leads to a satisfactory definition of presentism: on some interpretations, presentism turns out to be compatible with eternalism, on others, it is clearly false or unacceptable for other reasons. The aim of this paper is to show that this line of argument should be resisted: if the predicate (...) ‘is present’ is spelled out in terms of where things are located, the result is a definition of presentism that is neither compatible with eternalism nor clearly false. There is thus no need to abandon the debate between presentists and eternalists. (shrink)

Theorists in the debate on how to define lying disagree whether it is possible to lie with pictures. At the same time, they agree that definitions of lying should be consistent with how laypersons use the term ‘lie’. This calls for an empirical perspective on whether ordinary usage allows for pictorial lies. The present paper provides some initial data on this question by reporting an experiment with 623 participants investigating layperson judgements about cases of insincere linguistic and pictorial communication. The (...) results indicate that ordinary usage of ‘lie’ does permit pictorial lies. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that tests for semantic context-sensitivity are of no help in the debate between semantic contextualists and minimalists. Two kinds of context-sensitivity tests are discussed: Cappelen & Lepore's says-that tests and Cappelen & Hawthorne's agreement-based tests. It is shown that Cappelen & Lepore's tests are unreliable because they are based on unstable data. Then it is argued that although the data of Cappelen & Hawthorne's tests is more reliable, contextualists and minimalists alike can (...) explain this data. The paper ends by pointing to ways in which the debate might be moved forward without context-sensitivity tests. (shrink)

Modern AI systems have shown the capacity to produce remarkably fluent language, prompting debates both about their semantic understanding and, less prominently, about whether they can perform speech acts. This paper addresses the latter question, focusing on assertion. We argue that to be capable of assertion, an entity must meet two requirements: it must produce outputs with descriptive functions, and it must be capable of being sanctioned by agents with which it interacts. The second requirement arises from the nature of (...) assertion as a norm-governed social practice. Pre-trained large language models which have not been subject to fine-tuning fail to meet the first requirement. Language models which have been fine-tuned for ‘groundedness’ or ‘correctness’ may meet the first requirement, but fail the second. We also consider the significance of the point that AI systems can be used to generate proxy assertions on behalf of human agents. (shrink)

Krisen, heißt es manchmal, erfordern klare Ansagen: Bei Behauptungen wissen wir, woran wir sind. Vermutungen hingegen sind unklar und stehen der Übernahme von Ver­ant­wor­tung entgegen. In diesem Essay wird mit den Mitteln der Sprachphilosophie ge­zeigt, dass vermutende Sprechakte für die Krisenkommunikation in der Corona-Pandemie richtig und wichtig sind. Weder sind Vermutungen anfälliger für Unklarheit als andere Sprechakte noch sind sie besser dazu geeignet, Verantwortung abzuweisen. Im Gegen­teil: In einer Situation, die durch Unsicherheit geprägt ist, sind Vermutungen besonders wertvoll für das (...) Kommunizieren ungesicherter Hypothesen. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of accuracy and truth in pictorial assertion. It argues that there are two ways in which pictorial assertions can be indirect: with respect to their content and with respect to their target. This twofold indirectness explains how accurate, unedited pictures can be used to make false pictorial assertions. It captures the fishiness of true pictorial assertions involving target-indirectness, such as true pictorial assertions involving outdated pictures. And it raises the question whether target-indirectness may also arise (...) in linguistic assertion. (shrink)

The standard Kratzerian analysis of modal auxiliaries, such as ‘may’ and ‘can’, takes them to be univocal and context-sensitive. Our first aim is to argue for an alternative view, on which such expressions are polysemous. Our second aim is to thereby shed light on the distinction between semantic context-sensitivity and polysemy. To achieve these aims, we examine the mechanisms of polysemy and context-sensitivity and provide criteria with which they can be held apart. We apply the criteria to modal auxiliaries and (...) show that the default hypothesis should be that they are polysemous, and not merely context-sensitive. We then respond to arguments against modal ambiguity. Finally, we show why modal polysemy has significant philosophical implications. (shrink)

Stories, in pictorial format, orally narrated, and later on as narrative texts, have played a key role in human evolution and to this day continue to surreptitiously teach us things and skills. In recent decades, psychologists and cognitive scientists have begun documenting the role of stories, and particularly fiction, in refining our sociocognitive skills. In this essay, I focus specifically on how stories, particularly written fiction, hone our emotion recognition skills. I present a brief overview of existing theorizing and research (...) findings, and propose the less-is-more hypothesis, according to which emotion recognition skills are sharpened by stories that do not tell us, but rather show us the emotional life of fictional characters. (shrink)

To understand the endogenous components of the event-related brain potential (ERP), we must use data about the components' antecedent conditions to form hypotheses about the information-processing function of the underlying brain activity. These hypotheses, in turn, generate testable predictions about the consequences of the component. We review the application of this approach to the analysis of the P300 component. The amplitude of the P300 is controlled multiplicatively by the subjective probability and the task relevance of the eliciting events, whereas its (...) latency depends on the duration of stimulus evaluation. These and other factors suggest that the P300 is a manifestation of activity occurring whenever one's model of the environment must be revised. Tests of three predictions based on this “context updating” model are reviewed. Verleger's critique is based on a misconstrual of the model as well as a partial and misleading reading of the relevant literature. (shrink)

Comprehensive in scope and research, this book will be a crucial resource for researchers in the medical sciences, as well as teachers and students alike.

We claim that in contemporary studies in molecular biology and biomedicine, the nature of ‘manipulation’ and ‘intervention’ has changed. Traditionally, molecular biology and molecular studies in medicine are considered experimental sciences, whereas experiments take the form of material manipulation and intervention. On the contrary “big science” projects in biology focus on the practice of data mining of biological databases. We argue that the practice of data mining is a form of intervention although it does not require material manipulation. We also (...) suggest that material manipulation, although still present in in the practice of data mining, fulfill a different epistemic role. (shrink)

A groundbreaking classic of contemporary philosophy for the first time in English translation Between 1961 and 1970, Emanuele Severino was subjected to a thorough investigation by the Vatican Inquisition. The “fundamental incompatibility” identified between his thought and Christian doctrine ejected him from his position as Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University in Milan. The Essence of Nihilism, published in 1972, was the first book to follow his expulsion, and it established Severino’s preeminent position within the the constellation of contemporary (...) philosophy. In this groundbreaking and classic book—now for the first time available in English—Severino reinterprets the history of Western philosophy as the unfolding of “the greatest folly,” that is, of the belief that “things come out of nothing and fall back into nothing.” According to Severino, such a typically Western understanding of reality has resulted in a conviction that there is a radical “nothingness” to existence. In turn, this justifies the treatment of the world as an object of exploitation, degradation and destruction. To move beyond Western nihilism, suggests Severino, we must first of all “return to Parmenides.” Joining forces with the most venerable of Greek philosophers, Severino confutes nihilism’s “path of night”, and develops a new philosophy grounded on the principle of the eternity of reality and of every single existent thing. (shrink)

Nous en parlons à peine et leur nom nous échappe. La philosophie les a toujours négligées ; même la biologie les considère comme une simple décoration de l'arbre de la vie. Et pourtant, les plantes donnent vie à la Terre : elles fabriquent l'atmosphère qui nous enveloppe, elles sont à l'origine du souffle qui nous anime. Les végétaux incarnent le lien le plus étroit et élémentaire que la vie puisse établir avec le monde. Sous le soleil et les nuages, en (...) se mêlant à l'eau et au vent, leur existence est une interminable contemplation cosmique. Ce livre part de leur point de vue - celui des feuilles, des racines et des fleurs - pour comprendre le monde non plus comme une simple collection d'objets, ou un espace universel contenant toute chose, mais bien comme l'atmosphère générale, le climat, un lieu de véritable mélange métaphysique. (shrink)

Girard’s attempts to present his main ideas have been numerous and, according to himself, never fully satisfying: many problems arise when looking for the best way to explain what Mimetic Theory is about, mainly because the order of the discourse and the logic of the underlying long argument, just as the micro level of the analysis and the macro one, are twisted with one another in a hermeneutical circle that can easily be misinterpreted as vicious. A thorough work of analysis (...) of the essential logical features of Mimetic Theory main hypotheses has been done by Jean–Pierre Dupuy. In what follows, we are going to use a few of his concepts in order to set the analysis of secularization and modernity and their consequences both at a micro level, dealing with modern pathologies, and at the macro one, investigating the displacement of the sacred. (shrink)

In this chapter, I examine the metaphysics elaborated by Viscountess Anne Finch Conway in the effort of determining the meaning she assigned to the notions of transcendence and immanence. In the Early Modern period, her philosophy is one of the most original attempts towards an integration of notions deriving from Lurianic Kabbalah and Sufism into debates stemming from the confrontation of mainstream Protestantism with its most heterodox cognates, such as Quakerism. Responding to these variegated influences, Conway elaborated a unique response (...) to the problem of immanence, and the presence of God in the world. (shrink)

Die aufgabe der grundlegung.--Das problem der wirklichkeit.--Das problem der ursachlichkeit.--Das problem der freiheit.--Die metaphysik des natürlischen gegenstandes.--Paradoxien.--Kritik des logismus.--Erlebnis und geltung.--Die methode der spychologie.--Die gegenstānde der psychologie.--Gesetze der allgemeinen psychologie.--Beschuss.

Book reviewed in this article: Principles of Biomedical Ethics. By Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress.

Spinoza's writing style has been judged, by various commentators, alternatively as excessively dry or lavishly rich, depending on the precise text that these scholars had in mind when making such judgments. This chapter offers an overview of a selected list of Scholastic debates intersecting the CM. It highlights how Spinoza consciously intervenes in them, showing a certain awareness of the intricacies of Scholastic discourse. Spinoza opens the CM with a discussion of the term “being,” claiming that “being is badly divided (...) into real being and being of reason”. The chapter focuses on how Spinoza can be interpreted as responding to the canonical thought of Francisco Suárez, since the Leiden Scholastics interacted especially with the Escuela de Salamanca. One of Spinoza's main piéces de résistance is the doctrine of the inseparability between the will and intellect of God. Spinoza has a much stronger thesis regarding the “external” identity of God's intellect, power, and will. (shrink)

Provides a comprehensive introduction to ethical frameworks and of many of the modern issues arising in technology ethics including computing, privacy, artificial intelligence, and more.