The Research Seminar Series in Philosophy invites you to a guest lecture with Neri Marsili, Universitat de Barcelona, "Lying, misleading, and deniability".
Abstract: How can we capture the intuitive distinction between lying and merely misleading? According to a traditional view, the difference boils down to whether the speaker says – as opposed to merely implies – something that they believe to be false. Recently, Emmanuel Viebahn has challenged this traditional view with several counterexamples (non-literal lies), proposing an alternative account of the distinction. According to the alternative view, lying differs from misleading in that liars (but not misleaders) can consistently deny that they meant to communicate the relevant proposition. In this talk, I will highlight several problems with this alternative proposal: it is arguably circular, uninformative, and bound to deliver incorrect predictions. I will then present a revised version of the traditional account that meets the desiderata identified by Viebahn and that avoids the objections faced by the alternative view.
All interested are welcome to participate in this seminar.
