Abstract
A new definition of lying is gaining traction, according to which you lie only if you say what you know to be false. Drawing inspiration from “New Evil Demon” scenarios, I present a battery of counterexamples against this “Knowledge Account” of lying. Along the way, I comment upon the methodology of conceptual analysis, the moral implications of the Knowledge Account, and its ties with knowledge-first epistemology.
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Notes
There is disagreement about whether sufficiency requires that S intends to deceive the audience (Dynel, 2018; Fallis, 2018; Krstić, 2019; Lackey, 2013; Meibauer, 2014; Mahon, 2015; Stokke, 2018; Wiegmann and Meibauer, 2019, Marsili, 2020, §2.3). This issue can be safely set aside for our purposes. For an approach to defining lying that relies on identifying prototype elements instead of necessary and sufficient conditions, see Coleman and Kay (1981).
Some of Sartre’s remarks about bad faith point in a similar direction: “The essence of the lie implies in fact that the liar actually is in complete possession of the truth which he is hiding. A man does not lie about what he is ignorant of” (Sartre, 1956, 48).
Saul (2012) has since moved on to defend a traditional view, preferring (B) over (K).
For example, suppose that I believe p on a hunch, for no good reason. I know that I don’t know that p. But if I assert p, I would meet neither (K) nor (B).
Benton (2018) proposes a similar derivation, but acknowledges the argument’s limitations. Holguín (2019) derives (K) from the knowledge norm and the stronger premise that one lies when “one asserts the negation of what one ought to have asserted”. This gets us to (K), but at the price of quasi-circularity: Holguín’s extra premise (for which no argument is provided) is just (K) in disguise.
Holguín (2019) discusses a similar case, and attempts to explain away this prediction of the Knowledge Account. I will discuss his arguments in Sects. 4 and 6. A referee suggests that, since the internal processes underlying Malocchio’s belief are isomorphic to Pinocchio’s, it may be argued that both meet the standard for knowing. But even if we conceded that the radically deceived twin can know that (1) is false, the problem with this strategy is that it is unlikely to generalise. I will soon discuss NED scenarios where the twin lacks different requirements for knowledge (safety, truth, justification, confidence, etc.). To argue that the twin can meet the standard for knowing in each case would force us to revise our concept of knowledge beyond recognition, and (K) would end up being a very different thesis (one much closer to (B)). Additionally, and crucially, in Sect. 4 I will consider a case that does not involve internally isomorphic twins. For more on revisionist replies, see Sect. 6.
Can we avoid this prediction simply by assuming that lying is just as morally bad as misleading? Endorsing this view may help narrow the gap between the predictions of the Knowledge Account and our moral intuitions and practices, but it won’t fill the gap altogether. Even authors who defend the thesis that misleading is just as bad as lying acknowledge (i) that lying and misleading are different kinds of infractions, and (ii) that, as a matter of fact, we associate different moral stigmas and different social sanctions to each (cf. Saul, 2012, esp. §4.4). The Knowledge Account’s verdict that Pinocchio and Malocchio have committed different kinds of infraction is therefore problematic regardless of one’s take about the moral difference between lying and misleading, since it clashes with both (i) and (ii). For more on the moral implications of (K), see Sect. 4.
Augustine (DM), Aquinas (ST), Kant (1797), Leonard (1959), Isenberg (1964), Mannison (1969), Chisholm and Feehan (1977), Kupfer (1982), Adler (1997), Williams (2002), Mahon (2015), Horn (2017), Wiegmann (forthcoming). For the opposite view, Sartre (1956); for intermediate views, Siegler (1966), Carson (2010), and Saul (2012).
Turri and Turri (2015) found mixed evidence about people’s intuitions: participants would respond in radically different ways, depending on how the question was asked. A subsequent study by Wiegmann et al. (2016) has shown that people consistently judge true lies to be genuine lies, and that the mixed findings by Turri and Turri were the by-product of a flawed questioning method (cf. Marsili, 2016, 299; Wiegmann et al., 2017, §3; Wiegmann and Meibauer 2019). In light of these criticisms and further empirical research, Turri and Turri (2019) retreated to the weaker (and much less controversial, cf. Coleman & Kay, 1981) claim that only prototypical lying requires falsity.
Of course, those who intuit that Bucocchio is not lying in the True Version will be dissatisfied with both (K) and (B), since (K) makes incorrect predictions in the Gettier Version, and (B) in the True Version. To accommodate the intuition that lies must be false while avoiding the pitfalls of (K), a further condition (e.g. T: the proposition is false) could be added to the definition.
Holguín (2019, 5366). Italics are mine.
On the moral and legal difference between successful and attempted crimes, see e.g. Davis (1986). For an overview on moral luck more generally, see Nelkin (2021). Note that I am not here denying that (P*) is defensible; I am merely pointing out that (P*) is a costly commitment, since (P*) takes a rather strong stance on philosophically controversial issues.
I am assuming that both Pinocchio and Auntocchio inhabit a world (like ours) where it is impossible to communicate with dead people: if Pinocchio is right about Grandpa’s will, this is due to luck, not to sound reasoning.
Earlier I considered the idea that believing that you committed a moral infraction is sufficient for being blameworthy for that action. One may wonder whether it is rather this principle that can explain why the twins in each scenario are equally blameworthy. Leaving aside the fact that this alternative principle is less plausible than (P*), I shall note that it is easy to amend Evil Auntie so that this requirement is not satisfied: we simply need to specify ex hypothesi that Pinocchio doesn’t believe that he knows that (3) is false. For instance, Pinocchio may be aware that mediums are unreliable sources, but form his belief (perhaps irrationally) despite being aware of this. More generally, this alternative principle will not work whenever the speaker holds a belief despite being aware that that belief is based on poor or unreliable evidence.
This is a requirement that knowledge-firsters accept. See, for instance, Williamson (2000, §4).
(K) is not alone: since (B) requires outright belief, also (B) incorrectly predicts that Currocchio isn’t lying. Luckily, there are alternative views that avoid this unpalatable prediction, on which I will come back in the next section.
Arguably, also Evil Curry is a counterexample for which no error theory has been provided yet. Holguín only discusses graded belief in relation to lottery cases, where the speaker’s belief is formed on the basis of statistical evidence. Evil Curry relies on a different kind of uncertainty (compromised memories), and a plausible case can be made that Holguín’s argument is less effective when applied to this sort of case. For a further counterexample to (K) for which Holguín provides no error theory, see Marsili’s (2016) empirical study on believed-true lying promises.
This is something on which there is solid agreement within the literature, and this very assumption is what motivates the empirical research that has been conducted about laypeople’s concept of lying. For discussion, see Carson (2006, 285; 2010, 33–7), Fallis (2009, 32), Arico and Fallis (2013, §3), Weissman and Terkourafi (2018, §4), Marsili (2019, §2), Reins and Wiegmann (2021, §2.3).
The emphasis is on ‘has to’. (K) imposes several requirements on lying: that the lie be false, that the speaker’s belief be safe, justified, not graded, etc. Since each requirement is challenged by independent counterexamples, equally independent error-theories have to be introduced to explain them all away.
As I mentioned in footnotes 11 and 13, a minority of laypeople and philosophers have the intuition that an assertion is a lie only if it is false. This intuition can be accommodated by adding the further requirement that the proposition must be false.
A growing body of literature, for instance, questions the possibility of analysing factive mental states (like seeing, perceiving or remembering) in terms of knowledge (Bernecker, 2009; Cozzo, 2010; McDowell, 2002; Pritchard, 2011, 2013; Turri, 2010; Schroeder manuscript). For a broader overview of the obstacles encountered by the reductive ambitions of knowledge-first epistemology, see McGlynn (2014) and Gerken (2017).
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The author would like to thank Vladimir Krstić, Michele Palmira, Giorgio Volpe and Alex Wiegmann for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this draft.
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Marsili, N. Lying: Knowledge or belief?. Philos Stud 179, 1445–1460 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01713-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-021-01713-1