Is Lying Bound to Commitment? Empirically Investigating Deceptive Presuppositions, Implicatures, and Actions

Abstract

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.

Lying Without Saying Something False? A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Folk Concept of Lying in Russian and English Speakers

“…Given that it is one of the most important desiderata for philosophical definitions of lying to capture people's intuitions about the concept (e.g., Arico and Fallis 2013;Carson 2006Carson , 2010Saul 2012), our findings pose a problem for narrow says-and assertion-based definitions of lying. For a more detailed discussion of the implications of the present and related findings for different definitions of lying, as well as a proposal of an alternative definition of lying based on commitment, see Reins and Wiegmann (2021).…”

“…While there is a strong consensus in the theoretical literature that lying requires a believed-false proposition to be explicitly communicated, empirical findings have challenged this view (see Wiegmann and Meibauer 2019, for an overview of empirical studies on people's concept of lying). In particular, recent findings indicate that people judge certain deceptive conversational implicatures to be cases of lying (e.g., Antomo et al 2018;Or et al 2017;Reins and Wiegmann 2021;Wiegmann and Willemsen 2017; but see Weissman andTerkourafi 2019, andViebahn et al 2020, for examples of deceptive implicatures that are judged to be merely misleading). In addition, it has been shown that people hold it possible to lie by means of deceptive presuppositions (Reins and Wiegmann 2021;Viebahn et al 2020) and certain deceptive non-verbal actions (Reins and Wiegmann 2021).…”

“…In particular, recent findings indicate that people judge certain deceptive conversational implicatures to be cases of lying (e.g., Antomo et al 2018;Or et al 2017;Reins and Wiegmann 2021;Wiegmann and Willemsen 2017; but see Weissman andTerkourafi 2019, andViebahn et al 2020, for examples of deceptive implicatures that are judged to be merely misleading). In addition, it has been shown that people hold it possible to lie by means of deceptive presuppositions (Reins and Wiegmann 2021;Viebahn et al 2020) and certain deceptive non-verbal actions (Reins and Wiegmann 2021). Since it is widely agreed that consistency with ordinary people's use and understanding of the term is an important desideratum for any definition of lying (e.g., Arico and Fallis 2013;Carson 2006Carson , 2010Saul 2012), these findings pose a problem for proponents of says-and assertion-based definitions of lying who hold that deceptive implicatures, presuppositions, and/or non-verbal actions are not said or asserted.…”

True lies and Moorean Redundancy

“…18 This objection is incompatible with the view that ties lying to what is said, but could be combined with recent commitment-based approaches, such as those defended by Viebahn (2020Viebahn ( , 2021 and Reins & Wiegmann (2021). 19 This objection was put forward by an anonymous reviewer.…”

True lies and Moorean redundancy

“…This objection is incompatible with the view that ties lying to what is said, but could be combined with recent commitment-based approaches, such as those defended byViebahn (2020Viebahn ( , 2021 andReins & Wiegmann (2021).19 This objection was put forward by an anonymous reviewer.…”