Honesty

Nietzsche commits himself to a practice of honesty (Ehrlichkeit) in Schopenhauer as Educator. I argue that this practice is an adaptation of Diogenes’ parrhēsia, the Cynic virtue of outspokenness, and that Nietzsche’s commitment to Ehrlichkeit increases from 1874–1888. I emphasize the interpersonal dimensions of Ehrlichkeit and parrhēsia, and I resist the widespread tendency to conflate Nietzsche and Diogenes in terms of shamelessness. I demonstrate how, using Diogenes as an exemplar, Nietzsche gradually renounces the scholarly pretence of hiding the personal significance (...) of his opinions behind needlessly theoretical language. This development culminates in his explosive autobiography, Ecce Homo, which I interpret against the grain of Nietzsche scholarship as the book of Ehrlichkeit, not Redlichkeit, par excellence. (shrink)

This paper argues that bullshit is a practical resource for self-deceiving individuals, or those who merely prefer to avoid self-examination, insofar as it is able to provide a mask for poor doxastic hygiene. While self-deception and bullshit are distinct phenomena, and bullshit does not cause self-deception, bullshit disrupts the capacity to interrogate the motivational biasses that fuel deception. The communicative misdirection engaged in by ordinary social bullshitters is applied reflexively by the self-deceiver to distort, evade, and obfuscate the self-deceiver's self-accounting. (...) This discussion presupposes a broadly narrative approach to self-awareness and discusses how a motivated susceptibility to bullshit offers an explanation how our reports about ourselves can be frequently at odds with reality, and suggests that a complacency about rational validation of belief outside of self-certainty, i.e., the prevalence of bullshit, is even more of a threat than Frankfurt thought it to be. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with situations in which a speaker issues many speech acts at the same time. A common example is the publication of a large text such as a book containing many distinct assertions. It is argued that these cases present a challenge for speech act theory related to how we are to understand sincerity. With reference to the well known paradox of the preface, it is argued that sincerity of such bulk speech cannot be understood as a (...) simple conjunction of the sincerity of the encoded acts. A proposal is given according to which sincere bulk speech requires the speaker explicitly and as precisely as possible mark any subsets of her communication about which she has doubts. (shrink)

Arguably, the existence of bald-faced (i.e. knowingly undisguised) lies entails that not all lies are intended to deceive. Two kinds of bald-faced lies exist in the literature: those based on some common knowledge that implies that you are lying and those that involve tell-tale signs (e.g. blushing) that show that you are lying. I designed the tell-tale sign bald-faced lies to avoid objections raised against the common knowledge bald-faced lies but I now see that they are more problematic than what (...) I initially thought. Therefore, I will discuss these lies in more detail, refine the existing cases, and resolve some anticipated objections. I conclude that tell-tale sign bald-faced lies are genuine lies not intended to deceive. (shrink)

Philosophers have been thinking about lying for several thousand years, yet this topic has only recently become a central area of academic interest for philosophers of language, epistemologists, ethicists, and political philosophers. Lying: Language, Knowledge, Ethics, Politics provides the first dedicated collection of philosophical essays on the emerging topic of lying. Adopting an inter-subdisciplinary approach, this volume breaks new methodological ground in exploring the ways that a better understanding of language can inform the study of knowledge, ethics, or politics - (...) and vice-versa. How can we lie when it is unclear what exactly we believe, or when we have contradictory beliefs? Can corporations lie, and if so how? Is lying always wrong, or always at least prima facie wrong? What can one learn from a liar? Can we lie to mindless machines? These engaging questions and many more are explored at length in this accessible reference text. (shrink)

This handbook brings together past and current research on all aspects of lying and deception, with chapters contributed by leading international experts in the field. We are confronted daily with cases of lying, deception, bullshitting, and 'fake news', making it imperative to understand how lying works, how it can be defined, and whether it can be detected. A further important issue is whether lying should always be considered a bad thing or if, in some cases, it is simply a useful (...) instrument of human cognition. This volume is the first to offer a comprehensive and up-to-date exploration of these and other issues from the combined perspectives of linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. Chapters offer precise definitions of lying and its subtypes, and outline the range of fields in which lying and deception play a role, from empirical lie detection and the acquisition of lying to its role in fiction, metaphor, and humour. They also describe the tools and approaches that are used by scholars researching lying and deception, such as questionnaire studies, EEG, neuroimaging, and the polygraph. The volume will be an essential reference for students and researchers in a range of fields who are looking to deepen their understanding of all aspects of lying and deception, and will contribute to establishing the vibrant new field of interdisciplinary lying research. (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)

We argue that the main results of scientific papers may appropriately be published even if they are false, unjustified, and not believed to be true or justified by their author. To defend this claim we draw upon the literature studying the norms of assertion, and consider how they would apply if one attempted to hold claims made in scientific papers to their strictures, as assertions and discovery claims in scientific papers seem naturally analogous. We first use a case study of (...) William H. Bragg’s early 20th century work in physics to demonstrate that successful science has in fact violated these norms. We then argue that features of the social epistemic arrangement of science which are necessary for its long run success require that we do not hold claims of scientific results to their standards. We end by making a suggestion about the norms that it would be appropriate to hold scientific claims to, along with an explanation of why the social epistemology of science—considered as an instance of collective inquiry—would require such apparently lax norms for claims to be put forward. (shrink)

The past few years have seen a dramatic backlash against identity politics from academics such as Michael Sandel, Kwame Appiah, Mark Lilla, and Francis Fukuyama. In the vocabulary of identity conceptions, we can classify this as a reaction to a growing dissatisfaction with the perceived hollowness and ineffectiveness of “authenticity” that calls for a return to “sincerity”—or a “Political New Sincerity.” We argue that a third identity paradigm is in play as well, namely “profilicity.” This profile-based approach to understanding oneself, (...) others, and the world has had a major impact on social and political life, and yet has gone largely unnoticed or otherwise been mis-diagnosed. Our analysis provides a critical reflection on the emergence of profilicity to pave the way for developing insights into our changing sociopolitical and inter-personal landscapes. (shrink)

In a recent book (Lying and insincerity, Oxford University Press, 2018), Andreas Stokke argues that one lies iff one says something one believes to be false, thereby proposing that it becomes common ground. This paper shows that Stokke’s proposal is unable to draw the right distinctions about insincere performative utterances. The objection also has repercussions on theories of assertion, because it poses a novel challenge to any attempt to define assertion as a proposal to update the common ground.

It is natural to think that the badness of false belief explains the badness of lying. In this paper, I argue against this: I argue that the badness of false belief does not explain the badness of lying and that, given a popular account of the badness of lying, the badness of false belief is orthogonal to the badness of lying.

Our life with art is suffused with trust. We don’t just trust one another’s aesthetic testimony; we trust one another’s aesthetic actions. Audiences trust artists to have made it worth their while; artists trust audiences to put in the effort. Without trust, audiences would have little reason to put in the effort to understand difficult and unfamiliar art. I offer a theory of aesthetic trust, which highlights the importance of trust in aesthetic sincerity. We trust in another’s aesthetic sincerity when (...) we rely on them to fulfill their commitments to act for aesthetic reasons — rather than for, say, financial, social, or political reasons. We feel most thoroughly betrayed by an artist, not when they make bad art, but when they sell out. This teaches us something about the nature of trust in general. According to many standard theories, trust involves thinking the trusted to be cooperative or good-natured. But trust in aesthetic sincerity is different. We trust artists to be true to their own aesthetic sensibility, which might involve selfishly ignoring their audience’s needs. Why do we care so much about an artist’s sincerity, rather than merely trusting them to make good art? We emphasize sincerity when wish to encourage originality, rather than to demand success along predictable lines. And we ask for sincerity when our goal is to discover a shared sensibility. In moral life, we often try to force convergence through coordinated effort. But in aesthetic life, we often hope for the lovely discovery that our sensibilities were similar all along. And for that we need to ask for sincerity, rather than overt coordination. (shrink)

Is there anything wrong with publishing philosophical work which one does not believe (publishing without belief, henceforth referred to as ‘PWB’)? I argue that there is not: the practice isn’t intrinsically wrong, nor is there a compelling consequentialist argument against it. Therefore, the philosophical community should neither proscribe nor sanction it. The paper proceeds as follows. First, I’ll clarify and motivate the problem, using both hypothetical examples and a recent real-world case. Next, I’ll look at arguments that there is something (...) wrong with PWB, and show that none is sound. Then, I’ll give some reasons for thinking a norm against PWB is detrimental to the profession. Do I believe these arguments? If I’m right, it shouldn’t matter. (shrink)

Sometimes agents sincerely profess to believe a claim and yet act inconsistently with it in some contexts. In this paper, I focus on mismatch cases in the domain of religion. I distinguish between two kinds of representations: prompts and default states. Prompts are representations that must be salient to agents in order for them to play their belief-appropriate roles, whereas default states play these roles automatically. The need for access characteristic of prompts is explained by their vehicles: prompts are realized (...) in symbolic systems or even artifacts that make them inapt for automatic regulation of inference and behavior. I argue that some mismatch cases are explained by the fact that agents often report the contents of prompts when they report their beliefs, but behavior is controlled by prompts only when they are made salient to agents. I show that a number of otherwise puzzling findings in the cognitive science of religion, concerning belief intuitiveness, are illuminated by the distinction. (shrink)

In the final chapter of Speech Matters, Seana Shiffrin argues that institutions have especially stringent duties to protect speech freedoms. In this article, I develop a few lines of criticism. First, I question whether Shiffrin’s framework of justified suspended contexts is appropriate for institutional settings. Second, I challenge the presumption that the knowledge-gathering function performed by police is necessarily compromised by insincere practices. Third, I criticize Shiffrin’s characterization of the university as involving a complete repudiation of enforced consensus, and I (...) express doubts about the close connection between education and democratic legitimation that Shiffrin endorses. Finally, I raise a problem with the book’s overall argument: even if one agrees that speech freedoms are necessary for moral development, they also may be threatening to moral development. The upshot is that the protection of speech should be modulated in order to account for the potential conflicts between sincerity and other valuable ends, rather than being oriented above all to sincerity. (shrink)

In this essay I offer a new interpretation of Wang Yangming's 王陽明 well-known doctrine of zhi xing he yi 知行合一 by contextualizing it in his endeavor to seek an alternative way of Confucian learning other than Zhu Xi's 朱熹. Both Wang and Zhu Xi understand the ideal of a Confucian sage as cheng 誠, but propose different ways to attain it. To some extent, Wang's original concern has long been neglected. The recent scholarship on Wang's unity of knowing and doing (...) focuses on whether Wang's notion of zhi is restricted to moral knowledge, and whether the dictum makes sense when facing the challenge of weakness of will. Frisina takes Wang's notion of... (shrink)

If I were to say, “Agnes does not know that it is raining, but it is,” this seems like a perfectly coherent way of describing Agnes’s epistemic position. If I were to add, “And I don’t know if it is, either,” this seems quite strange. In this chapter, we shall look at some statements that seem, in some sense, contradictory, even though it seems that these statements can express propositions that are contingently true or false. Moore thought it was paradoxical (...) that statements that can express true propositions or contingently false propositions should nevertheless seem absurd like this. If we can account for the absurdity, we shall solve Moore’s Paradox. In this chapter, we shall look at Moore’s proposals and more recent discussions of Moorean absurd thought and speech. (shrink)

This work examines concept of sincerity in politics and international relations in order to discuss what we should expect of politicians, within what parameters should they work, and how their decisions and actions could be made consistent with morality. The collection features an international cast of authors who specialize in the topic of sincerity in politics and international relations. Each chapter will be focused on a contemporary issue in politics and international relations, including corruption, public hypocrisy, cynicism, trust, security, policy (...) formulation and decision-making, political apology, public reason, denial and self-deception,and will argue against the background of a Kantian view of sincerity as unconditional. Focusing on sincerity bearing on political actions, practices, and institutions at national and international level, the collection will include an introduction by the editors that will serve to place the contributions in the context of ongoing contemporary debates on sincerity in politics and international theory. Offering a significant comprehensive outlook on the practical limits of sincerity in political affairs, this work will be of great interest to students and scholars alike. (shrink)

Andreas Stokke presents a comprehensive study of lying and insincere language use. He investigates how lying relates to other forms of insincerity and explores the kinds of attitudes that go with insincere uses of language. -/- Part I develops an account of insincerity as a linguistic phenomenon. Stokke provides a detailed theory of the distinction between lying and speaking insincerely, and accounts for the relationship between lying and deceiving. A novel framework of assertion underpins the analysis of various kinds of (...) insincere speech, including false implicature and forms of misleading with presuppositions, prosodic focus, and semantic incompleteness. -/- Part II sets out the relationship between what is communicated and the speaker's attitudes. Stokke develops the view of insincerity as a shallow phenomenon that is dependent on conscious attitudes rather than deeper motivations. The various of ways of speaking while being indifferent toward what one communicates are covered, and the phenomenon of 'bullshitting' is distinguished from lying and other forms of insincerity. Finally, an account of insincere uses of interrogative, imperative, and exclamative utterances is also given. (shrink)

This book offers fresh perspectives on untruthfulness entailed in various forms of irony, deception and humour, which have so far constituted independent foci of linguistic and philosophical investigation. These three distinct notions are brought together within a neo-Gricean framework and consistently discussed as representing overt or covert untruthfulness. The postulates that represent the interface between language philosophy and pragmatics are illustrated with scripted interactions culled from the series House, which help appreciate the complexities of the three concepts at hand. Apart (...) from affording new insights into the nature of irony, deception and humour, this book critically examines previous literature on these notions, as well as relevant aspects of Grice's philosophy of language. Giving a state-of-theart picture of untruthfulness, this publication will be of interest to both experienced and inexperienced researchers studying Grice?s philosophy, irony, deception and/or humour. (shrink)

In much recent cultural theory there has been a noticeable turn to testimonial discourse, perhaps especially in the context of finding ways of bearing witness to human suffering, tragedy and trauma.While this shift toward allowing others to speak ‘in the first person’ provides an important and powerful methodological tool, appealing to first-person testimony is also a hazardous enterprise. Drawing on a number of disparate philosophers and writers, in this article I explore some of the central epistemological and ethical problems surrounding (...) testimony. More specifically, I argue that the distinction between truth and sincerity is of fundamental importance here, and as such any unreflective methodological reliance on testimonial discourse is at best misconceived, at worst irresponsible. (shrink)

Moore’s paradox, the infamous felt bizarreness of sincerely uttering something of the form “I believe grass is green, but it ain’t”—has attracted a lot of attention since its original discovery (Moore 1942). It is often taken to be a paradox of belief—in the sense that the locus of the inconsistency is the beliefs of someone who so sincerely utters. This claim has been labeled as the priority thesis: If you have an explanation of why a putative content could not be (...) coherently believed, you thereby have an explanation of why it cannot be coherently asserted. (Shoemaker 1995). The priority thesis, however, is insufficient to give a general explanation of Moore-paradoxical phenomena and, moreover, it’s false. I demonstrate this, then show how to give a commitment-theoretic account of Moore Paradoxicality, drawing on work by Bach and Harnish. The resulting account has the virtue of explaining not only cases of pragmatic incoherence involving assertions, but also cases of cognate incoherence arising for other speech acts, such as promising, guaranteeing, ordering, and the like. (shrink)

Kant suggests in The Metaphysics of Morals that we may sometimes say something untrue or insincere since others are free to interpret our statements as they wish. (1996, 6:238) Yet he also argues that even in conflict situations we should be truthful so as to not eliminate trust and to make it possible for a rightful condition to arise. My paper considers the conditions Kant believes essential to maintain basic trust so that in better times peace is possible. It also (...) considers their relation to sincerity. I argue that Kant’s view can provide a model for building political trust after wars and other forms of conflict. Furthermore, I consider the need for the possibility of help as also necessary for trust, through the work of Jean Améry. In certain situations, sincerity is not the most important thing. More important are truthfulness and the willingness to act as if we were sincere and thought others and the world worthy of our trust. (shrink)

This thesis addresses philosophical problems concerning improper assertions. The first part considers the issue of defining lying: here, against a standard view, I argue that a lie need not intend to deceive the hearer. I define lying as an insincere assertion, and then resort to speech act theory to develop a detailed account of what an assertion is, and what can make it insincere. Even a sincere assertion, however, can be improper (e.g., it can be false, or unwarranted): in the (...) second part of the thesis, I consider these kinds of impropriety. An influential hypothesis maintains that proper assertions must meet a precise epistemic standard, and several philosophers have tried to identify this standard. After reviewing some difficulties for this approach, I provide an innovative solution to some known puzzles concerning the permissibility of false assertions. In my view, assertions purport to aim at truth, but they are not subject to a norm that requires speakers to assert a proposition only if it is true. (shrink)

Voting lies at the center of collective decision-making in corporate law. While scholars have identified various problems with the voting mechanism, insincere voting—in the forms of strategic voting and conflict of interests voting—is perhaps the most fundamental. This article shows that insincere voting distorts the voting mechanism at its core, undermining its ability to determine transaction efficiency. As further demonstrated, strategic and conflict of interests problems frequently coincide with one another: voting strategically often means being in conflict, and many fact (...) patterns present aspects of both problems. Finally, this article claims that although the two problems have seemingly different solutions, these solutions are essentially similar in nature: all solutions to insincere voting are variations on two basic rules, namely, property rules and liability rules. (shrink)

It is undeniable that the assumption of sincerity is important to assertion, and that assertion is central to the transmission of beliefs through human testimony. Discussions of testimony, however, often assume that the epistemic importance of sincerity to testimony is that of a guarantee of access to the actual beliefs of the speaker. Other things being equal, we would do as well or better if we had some kind of unmediated access to the beliefs of the other person, without the (...) risks involved in the overt act of speaking, and the assumption of sincerity in speech is the closest we can come to this access. Contrary to this picture, I argue that sincerity has a quite different epistemic role to play in testimony than that of an indicator of the speaker’s beliefs. The epistemology of testimony requires reference to the speaker as agent, and not just the speaker’s beliefs, as well as a sense of ‘expression of belief’ that links it to the specifically addressive relation to another person. (shrink)

This philosophical-pragmatic paper discusses several forms of irony which rest on other figures of speech contingent on overt untruthfulness, namely the figures arising as a result of flouting the first maxim of Quality. It is argued that an ironic implicature may be piggybacked on another implicature, called “as if implicature”, originating from flouting the first maxim of Quality occasioned by metaphor. Metaphorical irony, which is subject to the irony-after-metaphor order of interpretation, exhibits a number of manifestations depending on the nature (...) and scope of irony, and the scope of the subordinate metaphor. On the other hand, rather than giving rise to an as if implicature distinct from the irony-based one, hyperbole and meiosis, which are inherently evaluative, most typically overlap with ironically evaluative expressions, promoting meiotic and hyperbolic irony, frequently considered by researchers to rely on flouting Quantity maxims. However, cases of independent use of hyperbole or meiosis in ironic environment are also possible. Such invite two levels of untruthfulness and two implicatures. (shrink)

According to the Acceptance Principle, a person is entitled to accept a proposition that is presented as true (asserted) and that is intelligible to him or her, unless there are stronger reasons not to. Burge assumes this Principle and then argues that it has an apriori justification, basis or rationale. This paper expounds Burge's teleological reliability framework and the details of his a priori justification for the Principle. It then raises three significant doubts.

Someone asked ‘What time is it?' when her watch reads 3:08 is likely to answer ‘It is 3:10.' We argue that a fundamental factor that explains such rounding is a psychological disposition to give an answer that, while not necessarily strictly truthful or accurate, is an optimally relevant one (in the sense of relevance theory) i.e. an answer from which hearers can derive the consequences they care about with minimal effort. A rounded answer is easier to process and may carry (...) the same consequences as one that is accurate to the minute. Hence rounding is often a way of optimising relevance. Three simple experiments give support and greater precision to the view that relevance is more important than strict truthfulness in verbal communication. (shrink)

According to the expression account, assertion is the linguistic expression of belief. Given the knowledge rule of belief, this entails that knowledge is a normative requirement of sincere assertions. On this account, which is defended in Hindriks, knowledge can be a normative requirement of sincere assertions even though there is no knowledge rule that is constitutive of assertion. Ball criticizes this claim arguing that the derivation of the knowledge rule equivocates between epistemic and moral senses of obligation. In response, we (...) resist the charge of equivocation. Ball does not, after all, demonstrate that the distinction matters in the context at issue. In addition to this, we argue that it is a virtue of the account that the knowledge rule is restricted in application to sincere assertions. The case we present to illustrate this is that of the virtuous liar who knows what he believes, and is insincere because that is the right thing to do in the situation. It makes no sense, we suggest, to criticize the liar for not knowing that which he asserts. After all, it is his moral duty to assert what he knows to be false. Furthermore, his epistemic standing is impeccable, as he knows what he believes. (shrink)

This introductory paper aims to demystify the concept of untruthfulness. Drawing on the scholarship on deception, the author reports on a distinction between the truth and truthfulness, as well as their respective opposites: falsehood and untruthfulness. An attempt is made to discriminate between truthfulness and sincerity, to notions which capture similar phenomena but have originated in distinct scholarly traditions. Further, the author depicts untruthfulness as an internally diversified construct and teases out its main subtypes. Some light is shed on overt (...) untruthfulness and covert untruthfulness, as approached in philosophical, cognitive and pragmatic literature. The paper closes with a description of the scope of the present Special Issue entitled “New theoretical insights into untruthfulness”. (shrink)

This paper aims to differentiate between lying and irony, typically addressed independently by philosophers and linguists, as well as to discuss the cases when deception co-occurs with, and capitalises on, irony or metaphor. It is argued that the focal distinction can be made with reference to Grice’s first maxim of Quality, whose floutings lead to overt untruthfulness, and whose violations result in covert untruthfulness. Both types of untruthfulness are divided into explicit and implicit subtypes depending on the level of meaning (...) on which they are manifest. Further, it is shown that deception may be based on irony or metaphor, which either promote deceptive implicatures or are deployed covertly. Finally, some argumentation is provided in favour of why these cases of deceiving can be conceptualised as lying. (shrink)

This paper is divided into two parts. In the first part, I extend the traditional definition of lying to illocutionary acts executed by means of explicit performatives, focusing on promising. This is achieved in two steps. First, I discuss how the utterance of a sentence containing an explicit performative such as “I promise that Φ ” can count as an assertion of its content Φ . Second, I develop a general account of insincerity meant to explain under which conditions a (...) given illocutionary act can be insincere, and show how this applies to promises. I conclude that a promise to Φ is insincere (and consequently a lie) only if the speaker intends not to Φ , or believes that he will not Φ , or both. In the second part, I test the proposed definition of lying by promising against the intuitions of ordinary language speakers. The results show that, unlike alternative accounts, the proposed definition makes the correct predictions in the cases tested. Furthermore, these results challenge the following necessary conditions for telling a lie with content p: that you have to assert p directly; that you have to believe that p be false; that p must be false; that you must aim to deceive the addressee into believing that p. (shrink)

Jane Heal; XII*—Insincerity and Commands, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 77, Issue 1, 1 June 1977, Pages 183–202, https://doi.org/10.1093/arist.

In the philosophical literature on the definition of lying, the analysis is generally restricted to cases of flat-out belief. This chapter considers the complex phenomenon of lies involving partial beliefs – beliefs ranging from mere uncertainty to absolute certainty. The first section analyses lies uttered while holding a graded belief in the falsity of the assertion, and presents a revised insincerity condition, requiring that the liar believes the assertion to be more likely to be false than true. The second section (...) analyses assertions that express graded beliefs, exploring how mitigation and reinforcement can alter the insincerity conditions for lying. The last section considers the case of lies that attack certainty (knowledge-lies), understood as attempt to alter the hearer's graded beliefs. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article engages with a recent view that the Daoist Classic Zhuangzi advances an alternative to the Confucian role-ethics. According to this view, Zhuangzi opposes the Confucian idea that we should play our social roles with sincerity and instead argues that we should take the liberty to detach ourselves from the roles we play and ‘pretend’ them. It is argued in this article that Zhuangzi’s ideal of role-playing is based neither on sincerity nor on pretense. Instead, it is akin to (...) the excellence of theatre actors when they enact a role: they are able, for a limited time, to restructure their personality into a particular role, but de-structure it again when the performance is over. The prerequisite for this ability is to keep one’s self fundamentally unstructured, or, as Zhuangzi puts it, ‘empty’. This reading of Zhuangzian role-playing provides a fresh perspectives on ‘playing’ or ‘rambling’ as the central philosophical concept in the Zhuangzi. (shrink)

What is it for a speech-act to be sincere? A very tempting answer, defended by John Searle and others, is that a speech-act is sincere just in case the speaker has the state of mind it expresses. I argue that we should instead hold that a speech-act is sincere just in case the speaker believes that she has the state of mind she believes it expresses (Sections 1 and 2). Scenarios in which speakers are deluded about their own states of (...) mind play an important role in arguing for this account. In the course of developing this account I also explore how it might make good use of the often neglected distinction between insincerity and mere non-sincerity (Section 2). After defending and developing my positive proposal, I explore its implications for debates over expressivism in meta-ethics (Sections 3 and 4). (shrink)