Manuel García Carpintero (University of Barcelona): On Plausible Deniability

Abstract: We have the practice of misleading our audiences by indirectly communicating contents we know to be false or otherwise improper, by literally making true or otherwise correct speech acts. There is a raging debate engaging psychologists, philosophers and other researchers on the extent and significance of that behavior. Many claim that it is executed for the sake of keeping “plausible deniability”. Several philosophers have offered sophisticated, substantive accounts of this notion, whose clarification is important because it plays a role in philosophical accounts of central notions like truth or assertion and their psychological and normative underpinnings. In my contribution I’ll raise problems for some of those robust accounts, and I’ll offer a deflationary characterization that I take to be apt on methodological bases for it to play its expected theoretical role.

Teresa Marques (University of Barcelona): Lying is prima facie morally wrong

Abstract:  I defend an Austinian metasemantics that distinguishes the general effects of speech practices from  their specific function, defined by their constitutive illocutionary rules. A challenge to Austinian metasemantics arises from challenges to the moral difference between lying and misleading. For instance, Bernard Williams (2002) and Jennifer Saul (2012) have argued that lying isn’t necessarily morally worse than misleading. Their arguments focus primarily on general effects of utterances — the effects of misleading acts can be as bad, or worse, as the effects of lies. In contrast, Viebahn (2022, MS) has argued that lying and misleading differ in terms of the communicative commitments and responsibility of the speaker, and that in lying speakers undertake stronger commitments, which relate essentially to non-moral norms. Viebahn (MS) draws from Kauppinen’s (2018) discussion of kinds of normativity to argue that the difference in commitment between lying and misleading is a difference in non-moral responsibility. Against both kinds of view, I will argue that lying is prima facie morally wrong. Misleading acts are not, whatever their effects and whatever other communicative responsibilities one may have. I give reasons for moral accountability not to be excluded from practices bound by epistemic norms, in particular from constative speech acts. This requires attending to the illocutionary act performed in lying. I will show that at least one constative act — testimony — generates directed moral obligations in a similar way to promises, which are not merely epistemic or communicative duties. I will then argue that despite the differences between giving testimony and asserting, some accounts of assertion allow for the recognition of non-directed moral obligations. The argument will contrast the different obligations owed to others in asserting, giving testimony, and promising.