The ambiguity theory of “knows” is the view that knows and its cognates have more than one propositional sense—i.e., more than one sense that can properly be used in “knows that” etc. constructions. The ambiguity theory of “know” has received relatively little attention as an account of the truth-conditions for knowledge ascriptions and denials—especially compared to views like classical, moderate invariantism and epistemic contextualism. In this paper, it is argued that the ambiguity theory of knows has an advantage over both (...) classical, moderate invariantism and epistemic contextualism. This advantage is that it is the only one of these views that can account for “diverging knowledge responses without inconsistency” —i.e., cases in which, for the same subject S and proposition p, one and the same speaker says truly “S knows p” but instead could have truly said “S does not know p” and vice versa. This paper argues both for the existence of DRWI scenarios and the ability of the ambiguity theory of knows to best explain their existence. (shrink)

In his book Knowledge and Practical Interests Jason Stanley offers an argument for the conclusion that it is quite unlikely that an ambiguity theory of ‘knows’ can be “linguistically grounded”. His argument rests on two important assumptions: that linguistic grounding of ambiguity requires evidence of the purported different senses of a word being represented by different words in other languages and that such evidence is lacking in the case of ‘knows’. In this paper, I challenge the conclusion that there isn’t (...) a linguistic grounding for an ambiguity theory of ‘knows’ by making cases against both of Stanley’s major assumptions. I will do this by making a case for a prime facie linguistic grounding for a polysemy theory of ‘knows’ without appealing to word use in other languages. Given that a polysemy theory of ‘knows’ is a type of ambiguity theory of ‘knows’, if I succeed in linguistically grounding a polysemy theory of ‘knows’, then I have shown that at least one type of ambiguity theory of ‘knows’ can be linguistically grounded. (shrink)

In this article, I defend the idea that there are important differences between lying in politics and lying in general. My aim is to show that the issues with political lies do not have to do only with metaphysical or conceptual questions regarding what politics is or what the concept of the political means, or only with the validity of the excuses and justifications commonly offered in favor of political liars. I hold that the political lie is a special form (...) of lie due, first, to the peculiarity of the use of language in politics, and second, to the function that political lies play in political discussions: they undermine several epistemic conditions needed to impartially discuss social disagreements. In this work, however, I leave unanswered the question of what might be the best way to account for the epistemic conditions of democratic political discussion. (shrink)

This essay introduces a tension between the public Wittgenstein’s optimism about knowledge of other minds and the private Wittgenstein’s pessimism about understanding others. There are three related reasons which render the tension unproblematic. First, the barriers he sought to destroy were metaphysical ones, whereas those he struggled to overcome were psychological. Second, Wittgenstein’s official view is chiefly about knowledge while the unofficial one is about understanding. Last, Wittgenstein’s official remarks on understanding themselves fall into two distinct categories that don’t match (...) the focus of his unofficial ones. One is comprised of those remarks in the Investigations that challenge the thought that understanding is an inner mental process. The other consists primarily of those passages in PPF and On Certainty concerned with the difficulty of understanding others without immersing oneself into their form of life. In its unofficial counterpart, Wittgenstein focuses on individuals, rather than collectives. The official and the unofficial sets of remarks are united in assuming a distinction between understanding a person and understanding the meaning of their words. If to understand a language is to understand a form of life, then to understand a person is to understand a whole life. (shrink)

According to the traditional definition of lying, somebody lies if he or she makes a believed-false statement with the intention to deceive. The traditional definition has recently been challenged by non-deceptionists who use bald-faced lies to underpin their view that the intention to deceive is no necessary condition for lying. We conducted two experiments to test whether their assertions are true. First, we presented one of five scenarios that consisted of three different kinds of lies. Then we asked participants to (...) judge whether the scenario at hand was a lie, whether the speaker intended to deceive somebody, and how they would judge the behavior in terms of morality. As expected, our results indicate that the intention to deceive is not a necessary condition for lying. Participants rated indifferent lies to be lies and judged that no intention to deceive was involved in these cases. In addition, all bald-faced lies were evaluated as lies. However, participants widely ascribed an intention to deceive to bald-faced lies, which thus might not apply as counterexamples against the traditional definition of lying. Besides, lies are judged as morally wrong regardless of an intention to deceive. (shrink)

The traditional conception of lying, according to which to lie is to make an assertion with an intention to deceive the hearer, has recently been put under pressure by the phenomenon of bald-faced lies i.e. utterances that _prima facie_ look like lies but because of their blatancy allegedly lack the accompanying intention to deceive. In this paper we propose an intuitive way of reconciling the phenomenon of bald-faced lies with the traditional conception by suggesting that the existing analyses of the (...) phenomenon overlook a non-obvious category of hearers whom the speakers of bald-faced lies intend to deceive. Those hearers are institutions represented by the people involved, such as courts or secret police. We also criticize two recent rival accounts (Jessica Keiser’s and Daniel Harris’s) that attempt to save the traditional conception by saying that some bald-faced lies are not assertions, because they are conventional—rather than illocutionary—speech acts. (shrink)

The present study examines cross-cultural differences in people’s concept of lying with regard to the question of whether lying requires an agent to _say_ something they believe to be false. While prominent philosophical views maintain that lying entails that a person explicitly expresses a believed-false claim, recent research suggests that people’s concept of lying might also include certain kinds of deception that are communicated more indirectly. An important drawback of previous empirical work on this topic is that only few studies (...) have investigated people’s concept of lying in non-Western samples. In the present study, we compare people’s intuitions about lying with indirect deceptions (i.e., presuppositions, conversational implicatures, and non-verbal actions) in a sample of _N_ = 255 participants from Russia and _N_ = 300 participants from the United Kingdom. Our findings show a strong degree of similarity between lie ratings of participants from Russia and the United Kingdom, with both samples holding it possible for agents to lie with deceptive statements and actions that do not involve the agent _saying_ something they believe to be false. (shrink)

Lying is an important moral phenomenon that most people are affected by on a daily basis—be it in personal relationships, in political debates, or in the form of fake news. Nevertheless, surprisingly little is known about what actually constitutes a lie. According to the traditional definition of lying, a person lies if they explicitly express something they believe to be false. Consequently, it is often assumed that people cannot lie by more indirectly communicating believed‐false claims, for instance by merely conversationally (...) implicating them. In this paper, we subject this claim to an empirical test. In a preregistered study of 300 participants, we investigate how people judge cases of implicit deceptions that would usually be excluded by the traditional definition of lying (i.e., conversational implicatures, presuppositions, and nonverbal actions). Our results show that people do in fact consider it possible to lie by indirect means, suggesting that people have a broader concept of lying than is usually assumed. Moreover, our findings indicate that lie judgments are closely tied to the extent to which agents are perceived as having committed themselves to the believed‐false claims they have communicated. We discuss the implications of our results for the traditional definition of lying and propose a new commitment‐based definition of lying that can account for the findings of our experiment. (shrink)

RESUMEN Los estudios actuales sobre la mentira priman su lado epistémico y desatienden los aspectos morales. Tal distinción es clara en los intentos de diferenciar la mentira de la intención de engañar, y tienen como contrapartida una concepción de la verdad realista. Por ello, las interpretaciones que cuestionan o minimizan la existencia de la Verdad tienden a ser rechazadas, y parece que tampoco podrían abordar satisfactoriamente la mentira. En este artículo cuestionaremos dicha asunción, mostrando cómo un autor del Renacimiento, Michel (...) de Montaigne, sostiene una perspectiva "negadora" de la verdad y critica la mentira, precisamente destacando su dimensión moral. ABSTRACT Current studies on lying emphasize its epistemic side and neglect the moral aspects. Such a distinction is clear in the attempts to distinguish lying from the intention to deceive and has as a counterpart a realistic conception of truth. Therefore, interpretations that question the existence of truth, or that minimize it, tend to be rejected, and it seems that they could not satisfactorily address the lie either. In this article we will question this assumption, showing how a Renaissance author, Michel de Montaigne, maintains a "denying" perspective of truth while criticizing the lie, precisely by highlighting its moral dimension. (shrink)

This paper introduces and argues for the hypothesis that judgments of testimonial worth are central to our practice of normatively appraising speech. It is argued that judgments of testimonial worth are central both to the judgement that an agent has lied, and to the acceptance of testimony. The hypothesis that, in lying, an agent necessarily displays poor testimonial worth, is shown to resolve a new puzzle about lying, and the recalcitrant problem raised by the existence of bald faced lies, and (...) selfless assertions. It is then shown that the notion of testimonial worth allows us to capture the distinction between taking a speaker at their word, and treating them as a mere indicator of the truth in a way other theories fail to do. (shrink)

In the epistemology of testimony it is often assumed that audiences are able to reliably recover asserted contents. In the philosophy of language this claim is contentious. This paper outlines one problem concerning the recovery of asserted contents, and argues that it prevents audiences from gaining testimonial knowledge in a range of cases. The recovery problem, in essence, is simply that due to the collective epistemic limitations of the speaker and audience speakers will, in certain cases, be insensitive to the (...) ways in which they may be misinterpreted. As a result audiences’ beliefs will often fail the safety and sensitivity conditions on knowledge. Once the problem has been outlined and distinguished from several related problems in the philosophy of language and the epistemology of testimony, a series of responses are considered. The first response holds that audiences possess defeaters in recovery problem cases, and thus wouldn’t form beliefs. The second response holds that the beliefs audiences form are very coarse grained, meaning they are not very vulnerable to failures of safety and sensitivity. The final response holds that the objects of speaker meaning are not propositional. All three responses are found to be unsatisfactory. (shrink)

W dniach 9–13 września 2016 roku na Uniwersytecie Humboldtów w Berlinie odbyła się konferencja „What is said – what is meant”. Konferencja miała dwie wyraźnie oddzielone części: pierwsza „What is said” odbywała się w dniach 9–10 września, a druga „What is meant” – w dniach 12–13 września. Odróżnienie tego, co powiedziane, od tego, co w inny sposób komunikowane, wywodzi się zwykle z filozofii Paula Grice’a...

W artykule krytycznie omawiam główne stanowiska filozoficzne dotyczące domniemanych niezdaniowych aktów mowy, takich jak „Ładna sukienka”, „Pod stołem”, „Gdzie?” itp. Filozofów zajmujących się takimi wypowiedziami można podzielić na dwie grupy: tych, którzy uważają, że albo są one zakamuflowanymi wypowiedziami zdaniowymi, albo nie są pełnoprawnymi aktami mowy, oraz tych, którzy uznają, że chociaż nie są to zdania ani w sensie syntaktycznym, ani w sensie semantycznym, to jednak można za ich pomocą dokonać aktu mowy. Opowiadam się za twierdzącą odpowiedzią na tytułowe pytanie (...) i proponuję analizę takich aktów w ramach relatywizmu umiarkowanego Recanatiego. Dziękuję anonimowym recenzentom „Studiów Semiotycznych”, których krytyczne uwagi pozwoliły mi ulepszyć tekst. (shrink)

As an empirical inquiry into the nature of meaning, semantics must rely on data. Unfortunately, the primary data to which philosophers and linguists have traditionally appealed—judgments on the truth and falsity of sentences—have long been known to vary widely between competent speakers in a number of interesting cases. The present article constitutes an experiment in how to obtain some more consistent data for the enterprise of semantics. Specifically, it argues from some widely accepted Gricean premises to the conclusion that judgments (...) on lying are semantically relevant. It then endeavors to show how, assuming the relevance of such judgments, we can use them to generate a useful, widely acceptable test for semantic content. (shrink)

According to what is perhaps the dominant picture of reference, what a referential term refers to in a context is determined by what the speaker intends for her audience to identify as the referent. I argue that this sort of broadly Gricean view entails, counterintuitively, that it is impossible to knowingly use referential terms in ways that one expects or intends to be misunderstood. Then I sketch an alternative which can better account for such opaque uses of language, or what (...) I call “sneaky reference.” I close by reflecting on the ramifications of these arguments for the theory of meaning more broadly. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question whetherbullshitis a reasonable pragmatic category. In the first part of the paper, drawing on the insights of Harry Frankfurt’s seminal essay, bullshit is defined as an act of insincere asserting where the speaker shows a loose concern for the truth, and does not want the addressee to become aware of condition. The author adds to this definition the condition requiring that the bullshitter expresses morecertaintythan is adequate with respect to condition. In the second part of (...) the paper, it is discussed whether the above definition can cope with special types of bullshit considered to be a challenge to Frankfurt’s definition. These areevasive bullshitting,bullshit lies, andbald-faced bullshitting. It is shown that there is hope for establishing a reasonable pragmatic category of bullshitting if it is related to certain levels of pragmatic description, e.g. conversational implicatures, that can explain the putative challenges. (shrink)

According to an influential view, asserting a proposition involves undertaking some “commitment” to the truth of that proposition. But accounts of what it is for someone to be committed to the truth of a proposition are often vague or imprecise, and are rarely put to work to define assertion. This paper aims to fill this gap. It offers a precise characterisation of assertoric commitment, and shows how it can be applied to define assertion. On the proposed view, acquiring commitment is (...) not sufficient for asserting. To assert, commitment must be acquired by explicitly presenting a proposition as true. (shrink)

This paper analyses the communicative and epistemic value of retweeting (and more generally of reposting content on social media). Against a naïve view, it argues that retweets are not acts of endorsement, motivating this diagnosis with linguistic data. Retweeting is instead modelled as a peculiar form of quotation, in which the reported content is indicated rather than reproduced. A relevance-theoretic account of the communicative import of retweeting is then developed, to spell out the complex mechanisms by which retweets achieve their (...) communicative goals. The last section outlines the epistemic threats posed by the increasing prevalence of retweeting on social media, linking them to the low reputational, cognitive and practical costs linked to this emerging form of communication. (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)

Can fictions make genuine assertions about the actual world? Proponents of the ‘Assertion View’ answer the question affirmatively: they hold that authors can assert, by means of explicit statements that are part of the work of fiction, that something is actually the case in the real world. The ‘Nonassertion’ View firmly denies this possibility. In this paper, I defend a nuanced version of the Nonassertion View. I argue that even if fictions cannot assert, they can indirectly communicate that what is (...) recounted as fictional is actually true. I show that this view is supported by independent linguistic data, and that it is able to defuse the objections that are typically raised against the Nonassertion View. I conclude by showing that this position has some interesting implications for testimonial cognitivism about fiction. (shrink)

How can we disagree with a bald-faced liar? Can we actively disagree if it is common ground that the speaker has no intent to deceive? And why do we disapprove of bald-faced liars so strongly? Bald-faced lies pose problems for accounts of lying and of assertion. Recent proposals try to defuse those problems by arguing that bald-faced lies are not really assertions, but rather performances of fiction-like scripts, or different types of language games. In this paper, I raise two objections (...) to the fictionalist view, and then offer an analysis of how we disagree with bald-faced liars. I conclude that bald-faced lies are assertions, and that in pronouncing a bald-faced lie, the speaker tries to make it common ground that the assertion was in good standing qua assertion. (shrink)

Bald-faced lies are on the uptick by political leaders in democracies worldwide. In the United States, for example, we are becoming numb not only to outrageous falsehoods, but to the bizarre self-assurance with which they are pronounced. We were told crowds were bigger than they were, that the sun shined when it didn’t, that Trump won in a landslide—and that was just in the first few days after his election. What has shocked so many is the fearlessness in the face (...) of the facts, the willingness to simply deny reality outright, and the apparent toleration—even joy—with which Trump’s followers greet the practice. Bald-faced lying by political leaders is an important phenomenon, but it is easy to misunderstand in ways that undermine our ability to combat its strange effectiveness. In this paper, I aim to first analyze political bald-faced lies and then examine the threat they pose to the norms of democratic discourse. My goal is not to answer the empirical question of how frequently denials of obvious facts occur in politics; it is the normative question of understanding what harms they cause — particularly when they are made by those — in political power. Nonetheless, I think it is important to resist the temptation to think that what we are talking about here are a few isolated and extreme examples. As Hannah Arendt noted, there are times in political life when truth, “if it happens to oppose a given group’s profit or pleasure, is greeted with greater hostility.” Arguably we are living in one of those times. (shrink)

According to intentionalism, a demonstrative d refers to an object o only if the speaker intends d to refer to o. Intentionalism is a popular view in metasemantics, but Gauker has recently argued that it is circular. We defend intentionalism against this objection, by showing that Gauker’s argument rests on a misconstrual of the aim of metasemantics. We then introduce two related, but distinct circularity objections: the worry that intentionalism is uninformative, and the problem of intentional bootstrapping, according to which (...) it is impossible to have referential intentions. We also show how intentionalists could respond to these new objections. (shrink)

We conducted two experiments to determine whether common folk think that so-called _tell-tale sign_ bald-faced lies are intended to deceive—since they have not been tested before. These lies involve tell-tale signs (e.g. blushing) that show that the speaker is lying. Our study was designed to avoid problems earlier studies raise (these studies focus on a kind of bald-faced lie in which supposedly everyone knows that what the speaker says is false). Our main hypothesis was that the participants will think that (...) the protagonists from our examples lied without intending to deceive, and the results of our surveys confirmed this hypothesis: most of our participants rated tell-tale sign lies as lies not intended to deceive. Therefore, our analysis suggests that common folk think that some lies are not intended to deceive. (shrink)

This paper examines the connection between lies, deception, and self-deception. Understanding this connection is important because the consensus is that you cannot deceive yourself by lying since you cannot make yourself believe as true a proposition you already believe is false – and, as a liar, you must assert a proposition you believe is false. My solution involves refining our analysis of lying: people can lie by asserting what they confidently believe is true. Thus, self-deceivers need not replace one belief (...) with another; rather, they may just increase existing credence in a proposition they already believe is true. (shrink)

The potential capacity for robots to deceive has received considerable attention recently. Many papers explore the technical possibility for a robot to engage in deception for beneficial purposes (e.g., in education or health). In this short experimental paper, I focus on a more paradigmatic case: robot lying (lying being the textbook example of deception) for nonbeneficial purposes as judged from the human point of view. More precisely, I present an empirical experiment that investigates the following three questions: (a) Are ordinary (...) people willing to ascribe deceptive intentions to artificial agents? (b) Are they as willing to judge a robot lie as a lie as they would be when human agents engage in verbal deception? (c) Do people blame a lying artificial agent to the same extent as a lying human agent? The response to all three questions is a resounding yes. This, I argue, implies that robot deception and its normative consequences deserve considerably more attention than they presently receive. (shrink)

According to the naïve, pre-theoretic conception, lying seems to be characterized by the intent to deceive. However, certain kinds of bald-faced lies appear to be counterexamples to this view, and many philosophers have abandoned it as a result. I argue that this criticism of the naïve view is misplaced; bald-faced lies are not genuine instances of lying because they are not genuine instances of assertion. I present an additional consideration in favor of the naïve view, which is that abandoning it (...) comes at an extremely high price; alternative accounts which eschew the intent-to-deceive condition on lying have difficulty distinguishing lies from non-literal speech. (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 uncontroversial that we sometimes have moral obligations to voice our disagreements, when, for example, the stakes are high and a wrong course of action will be pursued. But might we sometimes also have epistemic obligations to voice disagreements? In this paper, I will argue that we sometimes do. In other words, sometimes, to be behaving as we ought, qua epistemic agents, we must not only disagree with an interlocutor who has voiced some disagreed-with content but must also testify (...) to this disagreement. This is surprising given that norms on testimony are generally taken to be permissive, and epistemic obligations are usually taken to be negative. In this paper I will discuss some occasions in which epistemic obligations to testify may arise, and I will attempt to investigate the nature of these obligations. I'll briefly discuss the relationship between epistemic and moral norms. I'll offer an account of what it takes to discharge epistemic obligations to testify. Finally, I'll look at some accounts of epistemic obligation that might explain these obligations. (shrink)

This paper refines a number of theoretical distinctions relevant to deceptive play, in particular the difference between merely misleading actions and types of simulation commonly considered beyond the pale, such as diving. To do so, I rely on work in the philosophy of language about conversational convention and implicature, the distinction between lying and misleading, and their relation to concepts of seduction and bullshit. The paper works through a number of possible solutions to the question of what is wrong with (...) simulation and its difference from strategic fouling, including the argument that games and their rules operate like contracts. I conclude that the wrongness lies in the injustice of unfair advantage gained through actions that silence opposition by resort to unanswerable play. (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)

A group is lying when it makes a statement that it believes to be untrue but wants the addressee(s) to believe. But how can we distinguish statements that the group believes to be untrue from honest group statements based on mistaken beliefs or confusion within the group? I will suggest a narrative constraint for honest group statements, made up of two components. Narrative coherence requires that a new group statement should not conflict with group knowledge on the matter, or beliefs (...) of relevant operative subgroups, unless a coherent rationale is given. Narrative intention looks at the process of gathering new evidence on the area of expertise of the group and requires that the group position behind the statement is formed in good faith. The narrative constraint will help to distinguish group lies from more innocent erroneous statements of group beliefs when there is an internal disagreement within the group, including in cases involving spokespersons. (shrink)

Lepore and Stone seek to replace the rationality-based Gricean picture of coordination between speaker and hearer with one leaning more strongly on the roles of convention and speaker knowledge while doing away with conversational implicature. Focusing on the phenomena of indirect speech acts, asymmetric conjunction, and scalar inferencing, I argue that the case for abandoning implicature as an analytical tool is not ultimately compelling. I seek further to demonstrate the utility of the classical Gricean distinction between what is said and (...) what is implicated in the construction of an intuitively appealing approach to the perennial question of how to distinguish lying from misleading inside and outside the legal domain. (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)

Existing analyses of disinformation tend to embrace the view that disinformation is intended or otherwise functions to mislead its audience, that is, to produce false beliefs. I argue that this view is doubly mistaken. First, while paradigmatic disinformation campaigns aim to produce false beliefs in an audience, disinformation may in some cases be intended only to prevent its audience from forming true beliefs. Second, purveyors of disinformation need not intend to have any effect at all on their audience’s beliefs, aiming (...) instead to manipulate an audience’s behavior through alteration of sub-doxastic states. Ultimately, I argue that attention to such non-paradigmatic forms of disinformation is essential to understanding the threat disinformation poses and why this threat is so difficult to counter. (shrink)

Since 2016, there has been an explosion of academic work and journalism that fixes its subject matter using the terms ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’. In this paper, I argue that this terminology is not up to scratch, and that academics and journalists ought to completely stop using the terms ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’. I set out three arguments for abandonment. First, that ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ do not have stable public meanings, entailing that they are either nonsense, context-sensitive, or contested. (...) Secondly, that these terms are unnecessary, because we already have a rich vocabulary for thinking about epistemic dysfunction. Thirdly, I observe that ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ have propagandistic uses, meaning that using them legitimates anti-democratic propaganda, and runs the risk of smuggling bad ideology into conversations. (shrink)

The present study investigates and thematizes the interrelation between face masking, concealment, and deceit. It starts from the premise that the significance of disguise and deceit in the history of ideas should be reversed as these methods of the management of human appearance are not only regarded as coercive methods to manipulate and exert power over others but also as tactics skillfully used by the weak in order to outmaneuver those who are in a position of power. The study traces (...) the matrix of simulation and dissimulation as forming the structure of deceit, it reviews some of the main theories of disguise within the field of semiotics, and it singles out two main dimensions of disguise, one geared upon dynamism and the other based on the static features of the face. This study suggests that classifications of masks elaborated in semiotic theory hitherto are useful but insufficient to encompass the full scope of such phenomenon. For this reason, the study provides a new typology of masks. (shrink)

Politics is full of people who don’t care about the facts. Still, while not caring about the facts, they are often concerned to present themselves as caring about them. Politics, in other words, is full of bullshitters. But why? In this paper I develop an incentives-based analysis of bullshit in politics, arguing that it is often a rational response to the incentives facing different groups of agents. In a slogan: bullshit in politics pays, sometimes literally. After first outlining an account (...) of bullshit (Section 1), I discuss the incentives driving three different groups of agents to bullshit: politicians, the media, and voters (Section 2). I then examine several existing proposals to combat bullshit in politics, arguing that each will fail because they ignore the relevant underlying incentives (Section 3). I conclude somewhat pessimistically that a certain amount of bullshit in politics is inevitable (Section 4). (shrink)

What is the relationship between the epistemic norms of assertion and the epistemic norms of action/practical reasoning? Brown argues that the standards for practical reasoning and assertion are distinct (Brown 2012). In contrast, Montminy argues that practical reasoning and assertion must be governed by the same norm (Montminy 2012). Likewise, McKinnon has articulated an argument for a unified account from cases of isolated second-hand knowledge (McKinnon 2012). To clarify the issue, I articulate a distinction between Equivalence Commonality and Structural Commonality. (...) I then argue against the former by counterexamples that doubly dissociate the standards for assertion and action. Furthermore, I argue that such a double dissociation compromises knowledge accounts of both assertion and action/practical reasoning. To provide a more accurate diagnosis, I consider speech act theory and argue that principled differences between the norms of action and assertion compromise Equivalence Commonality. In contrast, a qualified version of Structural Commonality may be preserved. (shrink)

According to the normative approach, speech acts are governed by certain norms. Interestingly, the same is true for classes of speech acts. This paper considers the normative treatment of constatives, consisting of such classes as assertives, predictives, suggestives, and more. The classical approach is to treat these classes of illocutions as species of constatives. Recently, however, Simion (Shifty Speech and Independent Thought: Epistemic Normativity in Context, Oxford University Press, 2021) has proposed that all constatives (i) are species of assertion, and (...) (ii) are governed by the knowledge norm. I defend the classical treatment of constatives and show that Simion’s conclusion is untenable. No taxonomy of speech acts can accommodate such a view. More importantly, we can test whether a particular speech act is an assertion or not. I propose five tests of assertion, the passing of which is a necessary condition for being an assertion. Some constative speech acts fail these tests. Thus, contrary to Simion, not all constatives can be regarded as species of assertion. (shrink)

I propose an analysis of lying with uninformative speech acts. The orthodox view states that lying is restricted to assertions. However, the growing case for non-assertoric lies made by presuppositions or conventional implicatures challenges this orthodoxy. So far, the only presuppositions to have been considered as lies were informative presuppositions. In fact, uninformative lies were not discussed in the philosophical literature. However, limiting the possibility of lying to informative speech acts is too restrictive. Firstly, I show that standard, uninformative presuppositions (...) can also be lies. Secondly, I extend this picture into uninformative lies made by declarative statements. To implement my proposal, I do not need a new definition of lying. Recently popular commitment-based definitions of lying are able to properly handle uninformative lies. (shrink)

This paper offers a normative account of the speech act of explanation with understanding as its norm. The previous accounts of the speech act of explanation rely on the factive notion of understanding and maintain that proper explanations require knowledge. I argue, however, that such accounts are too demanding and do not reflect the everyday practice of explanation and the attribution of understanding. Instead, I argue that the non-factive, objectual attitude of understanding is sufficient for a proper explanation. On the (...) normative level, explanations are governed by an audience-centred norm, i.e., they are sensitive to the epistemic position of the audience. According to the proposed account, an explanation is a communicative act in which one puts the audience in a position to understand the explained phenomenon. This proposal fits into the recent wave of applications of the normative account and makes space for the pluralism of illocutionary acts. (shrink)

Some speech acts are made indirectly. It is thus natural to think that assertions could also be made indirectly. Grice’s conversational implicatures appear to be just a case of this, in which one indirectly makes an assertion or a related constative act by means of a declarative sentence. Several arguments, however, have been given against indirect assertions, by Davis (1999), Fricker (2012), Green (2007, 2015), Lepore & Stone (2010, 2015) and others. This paper confronts and rejects three considerations that have (...) been made: arguments based on the distinction between lying and misleading; arguments based on the ordinary concept of assertion; and arguments based on the testimonial knowledge that assertions provide. (shrink)

We intuitively make a distinction between _lying_ and _misleading_. On the explanation of this phenomenon favored here—the _adverbial_ account—the distinction tracks whether the content and its truth-committing force are literally conveyed. On an alternative _commitment_ account, the difference between lying and misleading is predicated instead on the strength of assertoric commitment. One lies when one presents with full assertoric commitment what one believes to be false; one merely misleads when one presents it without full assertoric commitment, by merely hinting or (...) otherwise implying it. Now, as predicted by the well-supported assumption that we can also assert with pictures, the lying/misleading distinction appears to intuitively show up there too. Here I’ll explain how the debate confronting the two accounts plays out both in general and in that case, aiming to provide support for the adverbial account. (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)

This paper is about some of the ways in which people sometimes speak while be- ing indifferent toward what they say. We argue that what Harry Frankfurt called ‘bullshitting’ is a mode of speech marked by indifference toward inquiry, the coop- erative project of reaching truth in discourse. On this view bullshitting is character- ized by indifference toward the project of advancing inquiry by making progress on specific subinquiries, represented by so-called questions under discussion. This ac- count preserves the central (...) insight of Frankfurt’s influential analysis of bullshitting in seeing the characteristic of bullshitting as indifference toward truth and falsity. Yet we show that speaking with indifference toward truth is a wider phenomenon than the one Frankfurt identified. The account offered in this paper thereby agrees with various critics of Frankfurt who argue that bullshitting is compatible with not being indifferent toward the truth-value of one’s assertions. Further, we argue that, while bullshitting and lying are not mutually exclusive, most lies are not instances of bullshitting. The account thereby avoids the problem that Frankfurt’s view ulti- mately is insufficient to adequately distinguish bullshitting and lying. (shrink)