Reply to Roy Sorensen, 'Knowledge-lies'

Staffel, Julia

doi:10.1093/analys/anr021

Cited by 22 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…The picture is complex: as Bazzanella (2009: 78) points out, "the different degrees of intensity in lying result from the complex interplay of various layers and parameters". Some philosophers (Chisholm & Feehan 1977;Fallis 2011;Staffel 2011) contend that the intention to deceive, as well as the effects of deception, can be graded. Several pragmatic parameters determinant for lying also have scalar features, such as relevance (Wilson & Sperber 2002;Van der Henst et al 2002), felicity, and the relations between the interactants (like social relations, and respective trust) (Bazzanella 2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lying as a scalar phenomenon

Marsili¹

2014

Studies in Language Companion Series

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Every species is vague, every term goes cloudy at its edges, and so in my way of thinking, relentless logic is only another name for stupidity -for a sort of intellectual pigheadedness.H.G. Wells, First and Last Things (1908) 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. The definition of lying and the insincerity conditionA number of philosophers have tried to define lying -i.e. to find the necessary and sufficient conditions for a statement to be a lie. According to the "classic" definition, first proposed in St.Augustine's De Mendacio (DM, 3.3) and later developed in several works (e.g. Mannison 1969: 132; Kupfer 1982: 134; Williams 2002: 96), "lying is to make a believed-false statement 1 to another * The author thanks Alberto Voltolini, Matteo Grasso, Carla Bazzanella, Jennifer Saul, Rosanna Keefe, Guido Bonino and Jörg Meibauer for their helpful comments, Igor Ž. Žagar for his support, Nina Black Simone for proofreading, and three anonymous reviewers.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lying as a scalar phenomenon

Marsili¹

2014

Studies in Language Companion Series

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“…Finally, according to Sorensen (), a knowledge‐lie is a statement intended to block knowledge that the very statement is false but which is not meant to convince the hearer that it is true. Sorensen's proposal is contentions and has quickly attracted strong challenges contesting both his conception and the examples that he offers (Fallis ; Staffel , forthcoming; Lackey ). I discuss knowledge‐lies and propose a novel account elsewhere (Krstić ) .…”

Section: Lying and Deceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can You Lie Without Intending to Deceive?

Krstic

2018

Pacific Philosophical Qtr

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This article defends the view that liars need not intend to deceive. I present common objections to this view in detail and then propose a case of a liar who can lie but who cannot deceive in any relevant sense. I then modify this case to get a situation in which this person lies intending to tell his hearer the truth and he does this by way of getting the hearer to recognize his intention to tell the truth by lying. This case, and further cases that I develop from it, demonstrate that lying without the intention to deceive is possible.

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“…Philosophers who think that all lies are aimed at deceiving quickly objected that knowledge‐lies are aimed at deceiving (Staffel, , forthcoming; Lackey, ) – for instance, they are intended to make the hearer more confident in a falsehood, which should rightly count as deception. I agree that Sorensen failed to provide an account of knowledge‐lies that can block knowledge while not being deceptive or aimed at deceiving.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge‐lies re‐examined

Krstic

2017

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Sorensen says that my assertion that p is a knowledge‐lie if it is meant to undermine your justification for believing truly that ∼p, not to make you believe that p and that, therefore, knowledge‐lies are not intended to deceive. It has been objected that they are meant to deceive because they are intended to make you more confident in a falsehood. In this paper, I propose a novel account according to which an assertion that p is a knowledge‐lie if it is intended not to provide evidence that p but to make you stop trusting all testimonies concerning whether p (in a room full of obvious liars, you will trust no one), which is how they undermine your testimonial knowledge. Because they are not intended to provide evidence that bears on the truth of p, they are not intended to make you more confident in a falsehood; therefore, knowledge‐lies are not intended to deceive. This makes them a problem for the traditional account, which takes the intention to deceive as necessary for lying, and an interesting example of Kant's idea that allowing lies whenever one feels like it would bring it about that statements in general are not believed.

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Reply to Roy Sorensen, 'Knowledge-lies'

Cited by 22 publications

References 2 publications

Lying as a scalar phenomenon

Lying as a scalar phenomenon

Can You Lie Without Intending to Deceive?

Knowledge‐lies re‐examined

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