The Research Seminar Series in Philosophy invites you to a seminar with Luise Mirow, "Expressive Lies?".
Abstract: In this talk, I present a puzzle that arises in connection with certain sentences, such as "The soup is tasty", "Plagiarism is wrong", and "The lady over there might be your mother". The puzzle consists of three theses: (1) The relevant sentences can be used to lie. (2) Lying is defined as asserting a proposition one believes to be false. (3) The relevant sentences do not have propositional content. The problem is that the three theses cannot be true all at the same time. First, I look at what supports each of the three theses. Then, I roughly present some possible solutions to the problem. I look deeper into one of these solutions, using a diagnostic test for lying to argue that the cases that support thesis 1 are cases of lying. Hence, denying thesis 1 is not a good solution to the problem.
All interested are welcome to participate in this seminar.
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