Deception: a functional account

Artiga, Marc; Paternotte, Cédric

doi:10.1007/s11098-017-0883-8

Cited by 13 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…In other words, contrary to involuntary deceptive behaviours (e.g., mimicry in insects), flexible deceptive acts of primates, and young humans might rely on similar mechanisms. For this reason we put aside the current debate on deception in the animal kingdom as a whole and focus our consideration only on the deceptions of humans and their closest relatives (see Artiga & Paternotte, ; Birch, ; Fallis & Lewis, for recent broad definitions of “deception” in the animal kingdom). We believe that the definition of “tactical deception” describes humans’ deceptions appropriately, with one exception—older children and adults deceive not only for self‐benefit but also for other‐oriented purposes (Warneken & Orlins, ), even when the deception involves personal cost (Popliger, Talwar, & Crossman, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new model of the development of deception: Disentangling the role of false‐belief understanding in deceptive ability

Jakubowska

Białecka‐Pikul

2019

Social Development

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“Deception” is defined predominantly as the intentional attempt to create false‐beliefs in others. However, the intentionality behind early acts of deception and its relation to false‐belief understanding remain unresolved. In this article, we offer a three‐stage theoretical model of the development of deception in human ontogeny. We posit that at any age, human deception is an intentional action, but its form changes according to the level of the deceiver's intentionality. As the primary function of deception is to influence the behaviour of others, we argue that first‐stage deceptions‐in‐action involves only in the analysis of behaviours and perceptual access, not beliefs. In our view, the ability to deceive and false‐belief understanding are eventually inter‐connected, but false‐belief understanding is not essential for the earliest form of deception. Based on empirical findings, which suggest that by observing the results of early deceptions children build their knowledge of mental states as causes of human actions, we claim that the second stage of deception is representational deception. Further, as the understanding of beliefs becomes more advanced, the effectiveness of children's deception increases, and new forms of reflective deception (the third stage) emerge. Future directions for research are outlined, and limitations of the current model are discussed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new model of the development of deception: Disentangling the role of false‐belief understanding in deceptive ability

Jakubowska

Białecka‐Pikul

2019

Social Development

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“…Several authors have recently raised the possibility of altruistic deception in something like this sense (Fallis, 2015;Fallis & Lewis, 2017;Artiga & Paternotte, 2018). None, however, has been able to offer a plausible empirical example of altruistic deception in a non-human species.…”

Section: White Liesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Of course, all else may not be equal. But this consideration gives us reason to look for other ways of defining deception that allow us to talk about cooperative and altruistic deception as genuine empirical possibilities (a point also made by Artiga &Paternotte, 2018 andFallis &Lewis, 2017).…”

Section: A Synthesis: Strategic Exploitation Of Receivers By Sendersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, we need not require that the relevant payoffs are conferred on the sender as opposed to the receiver. Given a background theory of function that ties function to recent selection history, this amounts to saying that eliciting the performance of B in X must be part of the strategy's function (and this is a point of agreement with Artiga & Paternotte, 2018). But since such theories of function are not universally accepted, I prefer to formulate the relevant condition without using the word "function".…”

Section: A Synthesis: Strategic Exploitation Of Receivers By Sendersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…but I suspect that any adequate account of false propositional content in animal signals will vindicate the idea that it arises only in special circumstances. For example, Shea and colleagues' account only allows for propositional content when the population is at an equilibrium (see Section 2.1.4).3 We might also want the notion of biological deception to apply to states or processes that are not signals, because they don't play the right kind of mediating role between a sender and a receiver(Artiga and Paternotte 2018). Consider, for example, fixed camouflage that the sender is unable to alter flexibly.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Altruistic deception

Birch

2019

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in

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Altruistic deception (or the telling of "white lies") is common in humans. Does it also exist in non-human animals? On some definitions of deception, altruistic deception is impossible by definition, whereas others make it too easy by counting useful-but-ambiguous information as deceptive. I argue for a definition that makes altruistic deception possible in principle without trivializing it. On my proposal, deception requires the strategic exploitation of a receiver by a sender, where "exploitation" implies that the sender elicits a behaviour in the receiver that is beneficial in a different type of situation and is expressed only because the signal raises the probability, from the receiver's standpoint, of that type of situation. I then offer an example of a real signal that is deceptive in this sense, and yet potentially altruistic (and certainly cooperative): the purr call of the pied babbler. Fledglings associate purr calls with food, and adults exploit this learned association, in the absence of food, to lead fledglings away from predators following an alarm call. I conclude by considering why altruistic deception is apparently so rare in non-human animals.

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Problems for Predictive Information

Looney

2020

Erkenn

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Predictive information is a popular and promising family of information-based theories of biological communication. It is difficult to adjudicate between predictive information-based theories and influence-based theories of biological communication because the same acts seem to count as communicative on both theories. In this paper, I argue that predictive information theories and influence-based theories give importantly different descriptions of deceptive signals in some non-evolutionarily stable communicative systems by citing a novel case observed in nature. Moreover, predictive information gives a counter-intuitive description to the case while some of its rival influence-based theories do not. I argue that there are no clear ways for defenders of predictive information to respond to this apparent problem without sacrificing important virtues of their theory or deflating the difference between the rival views.

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Deception: a functional account

Cited by 13 publications

References 38 publications

A new model of the development of deception: Disentangling the role of false‐belief understanding in deceptive ability

A new model of the development of deception: Disentangling the role of false‐belief understanding in deceptive ability

Altruistic deception

Problems for Predictive Information

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