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.

I argue that what speakers mean or express can be determined by their implicit or unconscious states, rather than explicit or conscious states. Further, on this basis, I show that the sincerity conditions for utterances can also be fixed by implicit states. This is a surprising result which goes against common assumptions about speech acts and sincerity. Roughly, I argue that the result is implied by two plausible and independent theories of the metaphysics of speaker meaning and, further, that this (...) is a robust basis on which to make an inference, with a fair degree of confidence, about the relationship between expression and implicit attitudes. (shrink)

Many theorists assume that a request is sincere if the speaker wants the addressee to perform the act requested. I argue that this assumption predicts an implausible mismatch between sincere assertions and sincere directives and needs to be revised. I present an alternative view, according to which directive utterances can only be sincere if they are self-directed. Other-directed directives, however, can be genuine or fake, depending on whether the speaker wants the addressee to perform the act in question. Finally, I (...) argue that this new perspective opens the door to a satisfying theory of authentic expression, for both assertive and directive utterances. Authenticity consists in the combination of genuine and sincere speech, for example, in the case of assertion, when speakers assert something which they both believe (sincerity) and want the addressee to believe (genuineness). (shrink)

This article discusses recent work on lying and its relation to deceiving and misleading. Two new developments in this area are considered: first, the acknowledgment of the phenomenon of lying without the intent to deceive , and second, recent work on the distinction between lying and merely misleading. Both are discussed in relation to topics in philosophy of language, the epistemology of testimony, and ethics. Critical surveys of recent theories are offered and challenges and open questions for further research are (...) indicated. (shrink)

This essay argues that the distinction between lying and misleading while not lying is sensitive to discourse structure. It shows that whether an utterance is a lie or is merely misleading sometimes depends on the topic of conversation, represented by so-called questions under discussion. It argues that to mislead is to disrupt the pursuit of the goal of inquiry—that is, to discover how things are. Lying is seen as a special case requiring assertion of disbelieved information, where assertion is characterized (...) as a mode of contributing information to a discourse that is sensitive to the state of the discourse itself. The resulting account is applied to a number of ways of exploiting the lying-misleading distinction, involving conversational implicature, incompleteness, presuppositions, and prosodic focus. The essay shows that assertion, and hence lying, is preserved from subquestion to superquestion under a strict entailment relation between questions, and it discusses ways of lying and misleading in relation to multiple questions. (shrink)

Shills are people who endorse products and companies for pay, while pretending that their endorsements are ingenuous. Here we argue that there is something objectionable about shilling that is not reducible to its bad consequences, the lack of epistemic conscientiousness it often relies upon, or to the shill’s insincerity. Indeed, we take it as a premise of our inquiry that shilling can sometimes be sincere, and that its wrongfulness is not mitigated by the shill’s sincerity, in cases where the shill (...) is sincere. Our proposal is that the shill’s defining characteristic is their knowingly engaging in a kind of speech that obscures a certain aspect of its social status – most commonly, by pretending to speak on their own personal behalf, while in fact speaking as an employee – and that this sort of behaviour is objectionable irrespective of any other features of the shill’s conduct. This sort of obfuscation undermines a socially beneficial communicative custom, in which we conscientiously mark the distinction between personal speech and speech-for-hire. (shrink)

The term "fake news" ascended rapidly to prominence in 2016 and has become a fixture in academic and public discussions, as well as in political mud-slinging. In the flurry of discussion, the term has been applied so broadly as to threaten to render it meaningless. In an effort to rescue our ability to discuss—and combat—the underlying phenomenon that triggered the present use of the term, some philosophers have tried to characterize it more precisely. A common theme in this nascent philosophical (...) discussion is that contemporary fake news is not a new kind of phenomenon, but just the latest iteration of a broader kind of phenomenon that has played out in different ways across the history of human information-dissemination technologies. While we agree with this, we argue that newer sorts of fake news reveal substantial flaws in earlier understandings of this notion. In particular, we argue that no deceptive intentions are necessary for fake news to arise; rather, fake news arises when stories which were not produced via standard journalistic practice are treated as though they had been. Importantly, this revisionary understanding of fake news allows us to accommodate and understand the way that fake news is plausibly generated and spread in a contemporary setting, as much by non-human actors as by ordinary human beings. (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)

1. One of Aesop's fables tells of a speech act gone awry: A shepherd-boy, who watched a flock of sheep near a village, brought out the villagers three or four times by crying out, ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ and...

What determines the meaning of a context-sensitive expression in a context? It is standardly assumed that, for a given expression type, there will be a unitary answer to this question; most of the literature on the subject involves arguments designed to show that one particular metasemantic proposal is superior to a specific set of alternatives. The task of the present essay will be to explore whether this is a warranted assumption, or whether the quest for the one true metasemantics might (...) be a Quixotic one. We argue that there are good reasons—much better than are commonly appreciated—for thinking the latter, but that there nevertheless remains significant scope for metasemantic theorizing. We conclude by outlining our preferred option, metasemantic pluralism. (shrink)

According to unconditional motivational internalism, there is an a priori constraint on an agent's forming a sincere moral judgement, namely that she is, at least to some minimal extent, motivated to act as it dictates. In order to undermine this internalist position, proponents of motivational externalism typically appeal to the possibility of the amoralist—i.e. an individual who makes sincere moral judgements, but who is completely unmoved to act accordingly. This strategy is known as the challenge of amoralism. Against this strategy, (...) I will argue that in order to represent a genuine case of amoralism, and a credible counterexample to unconditional motivational internalism, an agent would have to simultaneously satisfy an epistemically inconsistent set of conditions. Thus, the conclusion I will attempt to defend in this paper is that the challenge of amoralism does not succeed in posing a legitimate threat to unconditional motivational internalism. (shrink)

G. E. Moore famously pointed out that all sincere assertions of the form ‘p, but I don’t believe that p’ are inherently absurd. John Turri strongly disagrees with the consensus evaluation of such assertions as inherently absurd and offers a counterexample according to which it is possible to say ‘Eliminativism is true, but of course I don’t believe it’s true’ sincerely and without any absurdity. I argue in this paper that Turri’s attempt misses the point entirely, for the most natural (...) interpretations of his counterexample are either absurd or do not represent genuinely Moorean assertions. The critical analysis of Turri’s counterexample will enable me to reach the general conclusion that precludes the possibility of omissive Moorean assertions that are inherently non-absurd, at least if we hold that our assertions ought to have some normative function. (shrink)

The target of this paper is the ‘simple’ knowledge account of assertion, according to which assertion is constituted by a single epistemic rule of the form ‘One must: assert p only if one knows p’. My aim is to argue that those who are attracted to a knowledge account of assertion should prefer what I call the ‘complex’ knowledge account, according to which assertion is constituted by a system of rules all of which are, taken together, constitutive of assertion. One (...) of those rules—which, following John Searle, I call the ‘preparatory condition’—is of the form ‘One must: assert p only if one knows p.’ All else being equal, simple accounts are preferable to complex accounts. I argue in this paper that all else isn't equal. While the simple knowledge account provides an elegant explanation of certain data, it is hard to see how to integrate the simple knowledge account into a more general theory of illocutionary acts. Because the complex knowledge account avoids this objection whil.. (shrink)

Groups, like individuals, can communicate. They can issue statements, make promises, give advice. Sometimes, in doing so, they lie and deceive. The goal of this paper is to offer a precise characterisation of what it means for a group to make an assertion and to lie. I begin by showing that Lackey’s influential account of group assertion is unable to distinguish assertions from other speech acts, explicit statements from implicatures, and lying from misleading. I propose an alternative view, according to (...) which a group asserts a proposition only if it explicitly presents that proposition as true, thereby committing to its truth. This proposal is then put to work to define group lying. While scholars typically assume that group lying requires (i) a deceptive intent and (ii) a belief in the falsity of the asserted proposition, I offer a definition that drops condition (i) and significantly broadens condition (ii). (shrink)

In this paper, I argue (1) that the contents of some delusions are believed with sufficient confidence; (2) that a delusional subject could have a conscious belief in the content of his delusion (p), and concurrently judge a contradictory content (not-p) – his delusion could be transparent (Krstić 2020), and (3) that the existence of even one such case reveals a problem with pretty much all existing accounts of lying, since it suggests that one can lie by asserting what one (...) consciously and confidently believes is true, and (4) sincerity, since it suggests that asserting a proposition you believe is true is neither sufficient nor necessary for sincerity. If I am right about (1) and (2), then (3) and (4) follow easily. Therefore, the paper is mainly devoted to an analysis of transparent delusion and defending (1) and (2). (shrink)

In a Jewish context, it seems, it is a naïve consensus view that in praying liturgically one aims to express to God, in the manner of ordinary, interpersonal conversation, those thoughts stated by the text. But on this ordinary conversation model (OCM), a problem of insincerity arises when, as commonly happens, the text states a claim the practitioner does not believe. The idea of redeeming one's prayer by reinterpretation is, I argue, incompatible with OCM. Another strategy, which finds some encouragement (...) in Jewish tradition, is to try inducing the missing belief. I further argue, however, that for one's expression of a belief to be proper, in the sense of being authentic, this belief must be corroborated by the evolving, diachronically largely‐coherent understanding distinctive of one's person—a requirement which an induced, otherwise‐missing belief cannot fulfill. This, I suggest, provides some reason to seek a model of liturgical prayer different from OCM. (shrink)

Some arguments include imperative clauses. For example: ‘Buy me a drink; you can’t buy me that drink unless you go to the bar; so, go to the bar!’ How should we build a logic that predicts which of these arguments are good? Because imperatives aren’t truth apt and so don’t stand in relations of truth preservation, this technical question gives rise to a foundational one: What would be the subject matter of this logic? I argue that declaratives are used to (...) produce beliefs, imperatives are used to produce intentions, and beliefs and intentions are subject to rational requirements. An argument will strike us as valid when anyone whose mental state satisfies the premises is rationally required to satisfy the conclusion. For example, the above argument reflects the principle that it is irrational not to intend what one takes to be the necessary means to one’s intended ends. I argue that all intuitively good patterns of imperative inference can be explained using off-the-shelf formulations of our rational requirements. I then develop a formal-semantic theory embodying this view that predicts a range of data, including free-choice effects and Ross’s paradox. The resulting theory shows one way that our aspirations to rational agency can be discerned in the patterns of our speech, and is a case study in how the philosophy of language and the philosophy of action can be mutually illuminating. (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 introductory paper aims to demystify the concept of untruthfulness. Drawing on the scholarship on deception, the author reports on a distinction between the (objective) truth and (subjective) 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)

I argue that we can reason not only to new beliefs but to basically any change in attitude we can think of, including the abandonment of belief (contra John Broome), the acquisition of non-belief attitudes like relief and admiration, and the elimination of the same. To argue for this position, which I call generalism, I defend a sufficient condition on reasoning, roughly that we can reason to any change in attitude that is expressed by the conclusion of an argument we (...) can be convinced by. I then produce examples of such arguments, and argue that they are indeed arguments. To produce such examples of the elimination of non-doxastic attitudes, I develop the idea of a state of attitudinal constraint acceptance, and show how it is useful for solving this problem, and useful in other parts of philosophy as well. (shrink)

I give a new argument for the moral difference between lying and misleading. First, following David Lewis, I hold that conventions of truthfulness and trust fix the meanings of our language. These conventions generate fair play obligations. Thus, to fail to conform to the conventions of truthfulness and trust is unfair. Second, I argue that the liar, but not the misleader, fails to conform to truthfulness. So the liar, but not the misleader, does something unfair. This account entails that bald-faced (...) lies are wrong, that we can lie nonlinguistically, and that linguistic innovation is morally significant. (shrink)

I make a proposal about what wondering is and how it differs from other mental phenomena like curiosity. I argue that, though it's tempting to analyze wondering as a desire to know the answer to the question one wonders about, that would be wrong, since wondering is an activity rather than a state, i.e., something we do. I also argue that wondering about a question needn't even essentially involve a desire to know the answer to that question, even as a (...) necessary part of what rationalizes the wondering. Instead, on my account, to wonder about a question is to consider various possible answers as possible answers, guided by mechanisms whose function is to make the subject epistemically better off with respect to those answers, and which considering ceases at least when a person is consciously certain of the answer to their question. This allows wondering to not be objectionably metacognitive, and allows us to make sense of cases in which the motivating desire isn't to know an answer but just to wonder itself. (shrink)

Survey of different definitions of lying and deceiving, with an emphasis on the contemporary debate between Thomas Carson, Roy Sorensen, Don Fallis, Jennifer Saul, Paul Faulkner, Jennifer Lackey, David Simpson, Andreas Stokke, Jorg Meibauer, Seana Shiffrin, and James Mahon, among others, over whether lies always aim to deceive. Related questions include whether lies must be assertions, whether lies always breach trust, whether it is possible to lie without using spoken or written language, whether lies must always be false, whether lies (...) that are unsuccessful are still lies, and whether deception must aim at creating false beliefs as opposed to preventing people from acquiring true beliefs. (shrink)

This chapter investigates the conflict between thought and speech that is inherent in lying. This is the conflict of saying what you think is false. The chapter shows how stubbornly saying what you think is false resists analysis. In traditional analyses of lying, saying what you think is false is analyzed in terms of saying something and believing that it is false. But standard cases of unconscious or divided belief challenge these analyses. Classic puzzles about belief from Gottlob Frege and (...) Saul Kripke show that suggested amendments involving assent instead of belief do not fare better. I argue that attempts to save these analyses by appeal to guises or Fregean modes of presentation will also run into trouble. I then consider alternative approaches to untruthfulness that focus on (a) expectations for one’s act of saying/asserting and (b) the intentions involved in one’s act of saying/asserting. Here I introduce two new kinds of case, which I call “truth serum” and “liar serum” cases. Consideration of these cases reveals structural problems with intention- and expectation-based approaches as well. Taken together, the string of cases presented suggests that saying what you think is false, or being untruthful, is no less difficult and interesting a subject for analysis than lying itself. Tackling the question of what it is to say what you think is false illuminates ways in which the study of lying is intertwined with fundamental issues in the nature of intentional action. (shrink)

In the philosophical debate on lying, there has generally been agreement that either the speaker believes that his statement is false, or he believes that his statement is true. This article challenges this assumption, and argues that lying is a scalar phenomenon that allows for a number of intermediate cases – the most obvious being cases of uncertainty. The first section shows that lying can involve beliefs about graded truth values (fuzzy lies) and graded beliefs (graded-belief lies). It puts forward (...) a new definition to deal with these scalar parameters, that requires that the speaker asserts what he believes more likely to be false than true. The second section shows that statements are scalar in the same way beliefs are, and accounts for a further element of scalarity, illocutionary force. (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)