On Deniability

Dinges, Alexander; Zakkou, Julia

doi:10.1093/mind/fzac056

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The account of deniability I present has much in common with several recent approaches. It is a close relative of the view of deniability recently advocated by Dinges and Zakkou (2023). It also has much in common with the views of Fricker (2012Fricker ( , 2023, Peet (2015), and Camp (2018).…”

mentioning

confidence: 72%

“…The view of deniability developed in the previous section holds that an agent maintains deniability with respect to their act of φing only when others are unable to know that they φed. Dinges and Zakkou (2023) argue that, at least on certain readings, the views of deniability advocated by Fricker (2012Fricker ( , 2023, Peet (2015), and Camp (2018) also have this consequence. They worry that any such view will entail an untenable testimonial skepticism.…”

Section: A Rival Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, it shares with these views the features that lead Dinges and Zakkou (2023) to reject them-features that, according to Dinges and Zakkou (2023), lead to an untenable skepticism about testimonial knowledge. Thus the following questions arise: (1) What are the advantages of the view advocated here over Dinges and Zakkou's (2023) account? (2) Can the skeptical result be avoided?…”

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confidence: 99%

“…It is controversial whether such situations really constitute cases of deniability Dinges and Zakkou (2023). deny the possibility of true implausible deniability, holding that all apparent cases of implausible deniability are really examples of what they call 'untouchability'.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…SeeCamp (2018) for discussion of implausible deniability. 2 For recent discussions of deniability seeLee and Pinker (2010),Fricker (2012),Peet (2015),Stanley (2015),Khoo (2017),Camp (2018),Saul (2018),Mazzarella (2021), andDinges and Zakkou (2023).…”

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confidence: 99%

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The puzzle of plausible deniability

Peet

2024

Synthese

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How is it that a speaker S can at once make it obvious to an audience A that she intends to communicate some proposition p, and yet at the same time retain plausible deniability with respect to this intention? The answer is that S can bring it about that A has a high justified credence that ‘S intended p’ without putting A in a position to know that ‘S intended p’. In order to achieve this S has to exploit a sense in which communication can be lottery-like. After defending this view of deniability I argue that it compares favorably to a rival account recently developed by Dinges and Zakkou (Mind, https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzac056, 2023).

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confidence: 72%

Section: A Rival Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The puzzle of plausible deniability

Peet

2024

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Fictions that don’t tell the truth

Marsili

2024

Philos Stud

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Can fictions lie? According to a classic conception, works of fiction can never contain lies, since their content is not presented as true, nor is it meant to deceive us. But this classic view can be challenged. Sometimes fictions appear to make claims about the actual world, and these claims can be designed to convey falsehoods, historical misconceptions, and even pernicious stereotypes. Should we conclude that some fictional statements are lies? This article introduces two views that support a positive answer, and two that support a negative one. After examining various ways in which fictions can deceive, it concludes in favour of the view that fictional statements can mislead, but never lie.

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Beyond the Implicit/Explicit Dichotomy: The Pragmatics of Plausible Deniability

Bonalumi,

Mahr,

Marie

et al. 2023

Rev.Phil.Psych.

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In everyday conversation, messages are often communicated indirectly, implicitly. Why do we seem to communicate so inefficiently? How speakers choose to express a message (modulating confidence, using less explicit formulations) has been proposed to impact how committed they will appear to be to its content. This commitment can be assessed in terms of accountability – is the speaker held accountable for what they communicated? – and deniability – can the speaker plausibly deny they intended to communicate it? We investigated two factors that may influence commitment to implicitly conveyed messages. In a preregistered online study, we tested the hypothesis that the degree of meaning strength (strongly or weakly communicated) and the level of meaning used by the speaker (an enrichment or a conversational implicature) modulate accountability and plausible deniability. Our results show that both meaning strength and level of meaning influence speaker accountability and plausible deniability. Participants perceived enrichments to be harder to deny than conversational implicatures, and strongly implied content as more difficult to deny than weakly implied content. Furthermore, participants held the speaker more accountable to content conveyed via an enrichment than to content conveyed via an implicature. These results corroborate previously found differences between levels of meaning (enrichment vs. implicature). They also highlight the largely understudied role of meaning strength as a cue to speaker commitment in communication.

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On Deniability

Cited by 8 publications

References 45 publications

The puzzle of plausible deniability

The puzzle of plausible deniability

Fictions that don’t tell the truth

Beyond the Implicit/Explicit Dichotomy: The Pragmatics of Plausible Deniability

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