Is Honesty Rational?

Abstract

According to the Maxim of Quality, rational agents tend to speak honestly. Due to the influence of Grice, a connection between linguistic rationality and honesty is often taken for granted. However, the connection is not obvious: structural rationality in language use does not require honesty, any more than it requires dishonesty. In particular, Quality does not follow from the Cooperative Principle and structural rationality. But then what is honest rational speech? I propose to move the discussion in the context of Stalnaker's theory of assertion. From this perspective, although there is no most rational way to behave, Quality follows from the structure of Stalnakerian conversations if interlocutors are sensitive to credibility. In this case, honesty is built on the expectation of reciprocity, and cooperativity is an outcome and not a precondition of rational communication. A benefit of my discussion is that the account of linguistic rationality falls under the more general view of interactive rationality familiar from theoretical economics.

Reconciling truthfulness and relevance as epistemic and decision-theoretic utility.

“…Various epistemic goals may then be derived from differing preferences over real-world actions. Persuasion (Barnett et al, 2022;Mercier & Sperber, 2011) or deception (Oey et al, 2022) could emerge as short-term strategies to achieve speaker-serving actions, while truthfulness (Sbardolini, 2022) or politeness (P. Brown & Levinson, 1987) could signal aligned interests (Yoon et al, 2018(Yoon et al, , 2020 to preserve long-term cooperation (Baxter, 1984). 18 Finally, humans use language to enforce social norms (Li & Tomasello, 2021;Vaish et al, 2011) and commitments (Kanngiesser et al, 2017;Ostrom et al, 1992).…”

Moral Values Representation through Speech Acts in Indonesian EFL Textbooks: A Critical Discourse Analysis

“…Examining the representation of the value of honesty through speech acts unveils a complex interplay between linguistic expressions and ethical considerations. Insights from (Sbardolini, 2022) provide a foundation for understanding how honesty is both explicitly and implicitly communicated in discourse. Speech acts such as assertions and declarations serve as direct manifestations of honesty.…”

The rejection game

“…Second, there is the study of bargaining in economics—recall the car sale example from the introduction. Several so‐called persuasion games have been developed to study the influence of signalling on consumer's choice (Kamenica, 2019; Kamenica & Gentzkow, 2011; Pitchik & Schotter, 1987), and some of these games bear a close similarity to the rejection game—see also Sbardolini (2022) for an application of the theory of persuasion to linguistics. This line of work includes mathematical analyses of equilibrium conditions for games and subgames, on a variety of modelling scenarios.…”

“…Indeed, S might assert “ p ” regardless. If so, her signal is not credible (Farrell & Rabin, 1996; Sbardolini, 2022; Sobel, 1985; Stalnaker, 2006): one cannot promise “Lowest Prices Today!” every single day of the year and hope to be believed. Suppose furthermore that S's unilateral preference is known by L. Then, L would do well to accept “ p ” at a fixed ratio : her prior subjective probability that .…”