Some telling examples: A reply to Tsohatzidis

Abstract

(1978) and Zeno Vendler (1980) have independently claimed that tell behaves in two different ways, depending on its complement. When it is used with a whcomplement, as in (1) The boy told them where he had spent the night it requires that the subject spoke the truth: (1) could only be correctly used if the boy had spoken truthfully. In contrast, when tell is used with a that-complement, as in (2) The boy told them that he had spent the night with friends it brings no such requirement; (2) could be used correctly even if the boy had lied about his whereabouts. In a recent paper Savas Tsohatzidis (1993) has disputed the first of these claims, that concerning the behaviour of tell with a wh-complement. He argues that Kartunnen and Vendler's account of this construction-which he dubs the K-V thesis-is refuted by the following examples:John told the voters what he intended to do for them once elected, but, as usual, he was lying to them.(4) Old John told us who he saw in the fog, but it turned out that he was mistaken.(5) John told them where he had been between 4 and 5 p.m., but he was certainly lying since nobody was at the place he said during that time.Tsohatzidis argues that each of these sentences (together with a number of others that he gives) is acceptable; yet each entails that the subject spoke falsely; so the K-V thesis is false. He goes on to explain the superficial plausibility of the K-V thesis as the result of conventions of truthfulness and trust which, on David Lewis's (1975) account, are necessary for any language. These conventions guarantee that speakers will in general tell the truth, and that hearers will in general believe them. So we might expect that when people are reported as having been told something, there is a default assumption that they have been told the truth. According to Tsohatzidis it is the existence of such a default assumption-which can be defeated by explicit indication to the contrary as in (3), (4) and (5)-that makes the K-V thesis seem plausible. If Tsohatzidis' argument were sound it would have important repercussions. For, as he points out, a considerable amount of work has been premised on the K-V thesis. However, I do not think that we should be convinced by his argument. In the first place, the explanation he gives for the plausibility of the K-V thesis appears to prove too much. If the general conventions of truthfulness and trust are enough to generate a default assumption that the subjects of tell+wh reports have spoken truly, they should equally generate a default assumption that the subjects of tell+that reports have likewise spoken truly. But there does not seem to be any such assumption; or at least it seems nothing like as strong as that governing tell+wh. There is far less reason to conclude from (2) than from (1) that the boy has spoken truly.This should make us re-examine Tsohatzidis' counterexamples. When we do so, I think we will find that they do not make a convincing case for the falsity of the K-V thesis, since they are better explained in another ...

Lay denial of knowledge for justified true beliefs

“…Known as "factivity," this property of the verb "know" is not shared by verbs such as "think," which are classified as nonfactive: it is fully acceptable to say "John thinks that the door is locked, but the door isn't locked." However, we can also use the verb "to know" in a projected or non-literal sense, as in the sentence "John knew that his team was going to win, and then they didn't" (Holton, 1997). Someone who asserts this sentence is best understood as expressing the thought that it seemed very much to John that he knew.…”

Knowledge as a Mental State

“…To begin, the special emphasis on 'knew' in that remark is plausibly a clue that 'knew' is not being used in a straightforward fashion. Richard Holton argues that such utterances gain their dramatic flair from 'protagonist projection', in which one puts oneself in the position of another (or in this case, one's past self), deliberately selecting words fitting that perspective rather than our current one (Holton, 1997). Note that one could say to similar effect, "Up until the last chapter, the butler was obviously the murderer, and then it turned out he wasn't."…”

Question-Embedding and Factivity

“…The first of these, originally put forward by Austin 1954, concerns the opposition between why-and how-questions. Questions concerning the justification of belief are typically why-questions, while questions concerning the justification of knowledge are typically how-questions: (17) a (20), however. 5 None of these contrasts, we should note, provides clear linguistic evidence for the idea that "that"-clauses are ambiguous.…”

“…For instance, in order to have a belief about who came, it is probably sufficient to believe a proposition that only partially answers the question (rather than a potential complete answer in GS's sense). 17 For a verb like agree, on the other hand, the meaning assumed seems adequate, since in order to agree about who left, it is not enough to agree on some partial answer: John and Mary may agree that Sue left, bit disagree about Janet, for instance, in which case they disagree about who left.…”