This chapter explores the prospects for justifying the somewhat widespread, somewhat firmly held sense that there is some moral advantage to untruthfully implicating over lying. I call this the "Difference Intuition." I define lying in terms of asserting, but remain open about what precise definition best captures our ordinary notion. I define implicating as one way of meaning something without asserting it. I narrow down the kind of untruthful implicating that should be compared with lying for purposes of evaluating whether (...) there is a moral difference between them. Just as lying requires a robust form of assertion, so the kind of untruthful implicating to be compared with lying requires a robust form of implicating. Next, I set out various ways of sharpening the Difference Intuition and survey a range of approaches to justifying one class of sharpenings. I finish by sketching an approach to justifying an alternative sharpening of the Difference Intuition, which is inspired by John Stuart Mill's discussion of lying. (shrink)

Almost all philosophers agree that a necessary condition on lying is that one says what one believes to be false. But, philosophers haven’t considered the possibility that the true requirement on lying concerns, rather, one’s degree-of-belief. Liars impose a risk on their audience. The greater the liar’s confidence that what she asserts is false, the greater the risk she’ll think she’s imposing on the dupe, and, therefore, the greater her blameworthiness. From this, I arrive at a dilemma: either the belief (...) requirement is wrong, or lying isn’t interesting. I suggest an alternative necessary condition for lying on a degree-of-belief framework. (shrink)

What distinguishes deception from manipulation? Cohen (Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 96, 483 and 2018) proposes a new answer and explores its ethical implications. Appealing to new cases of “non‐deceptive manipulation” that involve intentionally causing a false belief, he offers a new definition of deception in terms of communication that rules out these counterexamples to the traditional definition. And, he leverages this definition in support of the claim that deception “carries heavier moral weight” than manipulation. In this paper, I argue that (...) these cases of “non‐deceptive manipulation” are even more prevalent than Cohen suggests—especially in the digital world. Thus, if his moral claim were correct, a lot of what is happening on the internet these days would constitute moral improvement over old‐fashioned deception. Fortunately, we are not forced to accept this counterintuitive conclusion. Cohen's definition must be rejected because it incorrectly rules out clear instances of deception. In this paper, I defend a definition of deception in terms of evidence that does correctly distinguish between deception and non‐deceptive manipulation. Moreover, it does not support Cohen's claim that deception is morally worse than other forms of manipulation. (shrink)

The moral comparison of the three venues of deception—lying, falsely implicating, and nonverbal deception—is a central, ongoing debate in the ethics of deception. To date there has been no attempt to advance in the debate through experimental philosophy. Using methods of experimental economics, we devised a strategic game to test positions in the debate. Our article presents the experimental results and shows how philosophical analysis of the results allows drawing valid normative conclusions. Our conclusions testify against the dominant position in (...) the debate—that lying is morally worse than all non-lying deceptions. They offer prima facie support to the view that the venue of deception makes no moral difference. (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)

This paper offers a brief survey of the philosophical literature on assertion, presenting each contribution to the RIFL special issue "Assertion and its social significance" within the context of the contemporary debate in which it intervenes. The discussion is organised into three thematic sections. The first one concerns the nature of assertion and its relation with assertoric commitment – the distinctive responsibility that the speaker undertakes in virtue of making a statement. The second section considers the epistemic significance of assertion, (...) exploring the role that assertion plays in the transmission of knowledge, the epistemic constraints that regulate it, and its relation with truth. The third section deals with communicative content that goes beyond what is literally asserted: implicatures, metaphors and expressive meaning. (shrink)

There is a clear intuitive difference between lying and attempting to mislead. Recent efforts to analyse this difference, and to define lying in ways that respect it, are motivated by the conviction that the difference is important or significant in some way. Traditionally, the importance of the lying-misleading distinction has been cashed out in moral terms, but this approach faces a number of challenges. The purpose of this paper is to suggest and develop a different way in which the lying-misleading (...) distinction might be important: it might matter aesthetically. I propose that the aesthetic significance of the distinction inheres in a more prominent experienced disharmony in lying as compared with attempting to mislead. (shrink)

This paper discusses a novel kind of argument for assessing the moral significance of acts of lying and misleading. It is based on considerations about valuable social norms that might be eroded by these actions, because these actions function as signals. Given that social norms can play an important role in supporting morality, individuals have a responsibility to preserve such norms and to prevent ‘cultural slopes’ that erode them. Depending on whether there are norms against lying, misleading, or both, and (...) how likely it is that they might be eroded, these actions can thus have different moral significance. In cases in which the rule ‘do not lie’, as a relatively simple rule, functions as a ‘focal point’, acts of misleading are often morally preferable. In other words, in such cases the possibility of ‘cultural slopes’ can ground a context-dependent slippery slope argument for a moral difference between lying and misleading. (shrink)

A central debate in the ethics of deception concerns the moral comparison among the three media through which deception is executed: lying, falsely implicating, or nonlinguistic deception. The two prominent views are that lying is morally worse or that the choice of medium is morally insignificant. This article refutes both and argues for a new position. The article first presents a theory on the moral significance of the medium of deception as such: it argues that the medium of communication affects (...) the reliability of beliefs formed through it, which amounts to gradations in the warrant of truth of different media. Breach of lower warrant of truth is a lesser breach of trust; it therefore deserves lighter condemnation. Consequently, the article shows that, morally speaking, lying is either worse than or equal to falsely implicating and that there is no a priori gradation between nonlinguistic deception and the two linguistic media. (shrink)

Einer weit verbreiteten Auffassung zufolge ist es moralisch besser, eine andere Person in die Irre zu führen als sie anzulügen. Diese Auffassung ist in neuerer Zeit jedoch ausführlich von Bernard Williams und Jennifer Saul kritisiert worden – ihnen zufolge verdankt sich unsere moralische Präferenz für Irreführungen einem Irrtum und lässt sich bei näherer Betrachtung nicht aufrechterhalten. Im ersten Teil des Aufsatzes versuche ich demgegenüber zu zeigen, dass es in manchen Fällen tatsächlich moralische Gründe gibt, statt zu lügen in die Irre (...) zu führen. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei eine expressive und beziehungsorientierte Analyse von Irreführungen: Wir können mit Irreführungen, so die zentrale These, im Unterschied zu Lügen zumindest in manchen Fällen zum Ausdruck bringen, dass wir die andere Person respektieren und uns die Fortführung einer vertrauensvollen Beziehung mit ihr am Herzen liegt. Im zweiten Teil weise ich dann allerdings nach, dass die moralische Präferenz für Irreführungen nicht in allen Fällen gerechtfertigt ist – zum einen, weil der mit Irreführungen zum Ausdruck gebrachte Respekt gegenüber anderen Personen nicht immer angemessen ist, und zum anderen, weil mit Irreführungen nicht in allen Situationen Respekt vor der anderen Person und ein Interesse an einer vertrauensvollen Beziehung mit ihr zum Ausdruck gebracht werden kann. (shrink)

This paper argues for a novel account of deceitful scientific communication, as “wishful speaking”. This concept is of relevance both to philosophy of science and to discussions of the ethics of lying and misleading. Section 1 outlines a case-study of “ghost-managed” research. Section 2 introduces the concept of “wishful speaking” and shows how it relates to other forms of misleading communication. Sections 3–5 consider some complications raised by the example of pharmaceutical research; concerning the ethics of silence; how research strategies—as (...) well as the communication of results—may be misleading; and questions of multiple authorship. The conclusion suggests some more general conclusions. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that deception of the enemy can be morally permissible in war. However, the question of the morally acceptable limits to deception in war has barely been explored in contemporary ethics. This paper defends the thesis that there are no moral limits on military deception per se, that is, no limits based on the ethics of truthfulness. Rather, all moral restriction against deception in war is based on another moral principle: military deception is morally unacceptable only when (...) it violates the principle of not harming those who do not intend to harm us. (shrink)

In “Deception and the Clinical Ethicist,” Christopher Meyers argues that clinical ethicists sometimes ought to actively help deceive patients or their families, all...