Marsili, N. orcid.org/0000-0001-7853-7359 (2016) Lying by Promising. International Review of Pragmatics, 8 (2). pp. 271-313. ISSN 1877-3095
Abstract
This paper is divided into two parts. In the first part, I extend the traditional definition of lying to illocutionary acts executed by means of explicit performatives, focusing on promising. This is achieved in two steps. First, I discuss how the utterance of a sentence containing an explicit performative such as “I promise that Φ ” can count as an assertion of its content Φ . Second, I develop a general account of insincerity meant to explain under which conditions a given illocutionary act can be insincere, and show how this applies to promises. I conclude that a promise to Φ is insincere (and consequently a lie) only if the speaker intends not to Φ , or believes that he will not Φ , or both. In the second part, I test the proposed definition of lying by promising against the intuitions of ordinary language speakers. The results show that, unlike alternative accounts, the proposed definition makes the correct predictions in the cases tested. Furthermore, these results challenge the following necessary conditions for telling a lie with content p: that you have to assert p directly; that you have to believe that p be false; that p must be false; that you must aim to deceive the addressee into believing that p.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016 Brill Academic Publishing. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in International Review of Pragmatics. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > Department of Philosophy (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 19 Sep 2016 09:32 |
Last Modified: | 01 Jan 2018 01:38 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18773109-00802005 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Brill Academic Publishers |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1163/18773109-00802005 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:104810 |