Lying and Insincerity

Abstract

This book is a comprehensive study of lying and insincere language use. Part I is dedicated to developing an account of insincerity qua linguistic phenomenon. It provides a detailed theory of the distinction between lying and ways of speaking insincerely without lying, as well as accounting for the relation between lying and deceiving. A novel theory of assertion in terms of a notion of what is said defined relative to questions under discussion is used to underpin the analysis of lying and insincerity throughout the book. The framework is applied to various kinds of insincere speech, including false implicature, bullshitting, and forms of misleading with presuppositions, prosodic focus, and different types of semantic incompleteness. Part II discusses the relation between what is communicated and the speaker’s attitudes involved in insincere language use. It develops a view on which insincerity is a shallow phenomenon in the sense that whether or not a speaker is being insincere depends on the speaker’s conscious attitudes, rather than on deeper, unconscious attitudes or motivations. An account of a range of ways of speaking while being indifferent toward what one communicates is developed, and the phenomenon of bullshitting is distinguished from lying and other forms of insincerity. This includes insincere uses of language beyond the realm of declarative sentences. The book gives an account of insincere uses of interrogative, imperative, and exclamative utterances.

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

“…Whether a certain case is included or excluded by this definition depends on how assertion is spelled out. In recent years, the predominant approaches have characterized assertion in such a way that the resulting definitions of lying are based on a (narrow) notion of what is said (e.g., Carson, 2006, 2010; Saul, 2012; Stokke, 2013a, 2013b, 2016, 2017, 2018). Probably the most influential definition of lying in recent times has been put forward by Stokke (see Stokke, 2018, for a synthesis of his work).…”

“…In recent years, the predominant approaches have characterized assertion in such a way that the resulting definitions of lying are based on a (narrow) notion of what is said (e.g., Carson, 2006, 2010; Saul, 2012; Stokke, 2013a, 2013b, 2016, 2017, 2018). Probably the most influential definition of lying in recent times has been put forward by Stokke (see Stokke, 2018, for a synthesis of his work). Stokke accepts the traditional definition of lying and combines it with a view of assertion that defines “asserting that p ” as “saying that p and proposing to making it common ground that p ” (Stokke, 2018, p. 31; see Stalnaker, 1999, for an analysis of common ground).…”

“…Probably the most influential definition of lying in recent times has been put forward by Stokke (see Stokke, 2018, for a synthesis of his work). Stokke accepts the traditional definition of lying and combines it with a view of assertion that defines “asserting that p ” as “saying that p and proposing to making it common ground that p ” (Stokke, 2018, p. 31; see Stalnaker, 1999, for an analysis of common ground). The result is the following definition of lying (Stokke, 2018, p. 31):

A lies to B if and only if there is a proposition p such that1.

…”

The folk concept of lying

“…For this reason, it seems impossible to deceive the hearer and, accordingly, bald‐faced lies are considered to be lacking the intention to deceive. Since they still appear to be cases of lying, it is argued (see Carson, ; Fallis, ; Sorensen, ; Stokke, , ) that they provide evidence that lying does not require an intention to deceive the addressee.…”

“…Because she does not, the implicature was licensed as a reasonable hypothesis on the part of the hearers, and Anna can certainly deceive the addressees with her intended implicature, making them believe that Peter was unfaithful. Now, if the untruthfulness condition holds, this would not be case of lying and might be described as “merely misleading” (e.g., Adler, ; Horn, , ; Saul, ; Stokke, ). However, if the property of being a lie is ascribed to complete speaker meaning comprising what is said plus what is implicated, it might be plausible to count this as a proper lie.…”