ArticlePDF Available

Two Definitions of Lying

January 2008
International Journal of Applied Philosophy 22(2)

DOI:10.5840/ijap200822216

Authors:

City University of New York City - Lehman College

This article first examines a number of different definitions of lying, from Aldert Vrij, Warren Shibles, Sissela Bok, the Oxford English Dictionary, Linda Coleman and Paul Kay, and Joseph Kupfer. It considers objections to all of them, and then defends Kupfer's definition, as well as a modified version of his definition, as the best of those so far considered. Next, it examines five other definitions of lying, from Harry G. Frankfurt, Roderick M. Chisholm and Thomas D. Feehan, David Simpson, Thomas Carson, and Don Fallis. It finds reason to reject these definitions, in favor of the two definitions of lying previously defended, namely: (i) To lie (to another person) = df.to make a believed-false statement (to another person) with the intention that that statement be believed to be true (by the other person). (ii) To lie (to another person) = df.to make a believed-false statement (to an- other person), either with the intention that that statement be believed to be true (by the other person), or with the intention that it be believed (by the other person) that that statement is believed to be true (by the person making the statement), or with both intentions.

Content uploaded by James Edwin Mahon

Content may be subject to copyright.

Two Definitions of Lying

James Edwin Mahon

Washington and Lee University

AbstrAct: This article first examines a number of different definitions

of lying, from Aldert Vrij, Warren Shibles, Sissela Bok, the Oxford English

Dictionary, Linda Coleman and Paul Kay, and Joseph Kupfer. It considers

objections to all of them, and then defends Kupfer’s definition, as well as

a modified version of his definition, as the best of those so far considered.

Next, it examines five other definitions of lying, from Harry G. Frankfurt,

Roderick M. Chisholm and Thomas D. Feehan, David Simpson, Thomas

Carson, and Don Fallis. It finds reason to reject these definitions, in favor

of the two definitions of lying previously defended, namely:

(i) To lie (to another person) =

df.

to make a believed-false statement (to

another person) with the intention that that statement be believed to

be true (by the other person).

(ii) To lie (to another person) =

df.

to make a believed-false statement (to an-

other person), either with the intention that that statement be believed

to be true (by the other person), or with the intention that it be believed

(by the other person) that that statement is believed to be true (by the

person making the statement), or with both intentions.





























—



212 jameS edwIN mahoN





—





































Oxford English Dictionary—













VRIJ’S DEFINITION



lying as any









           







—



—



function











two defINItIoNS of lyINg 213































—















conceal

falsify—





—







—





















—







not 



214 jameS edwIN mahoN









—





























a successful or

unsuccessful deliberate aempt, without forewarning, to create in another a belief which

the communicator considers to be untrue.



—



 













is























—











two defINItIoNS of lyINg 215



aempting to deceive





SHIBLES’S DEFINITION













 







In Against Lying





















—



















—



—



       















—





216 jameS edwIN mahoN































p





—



BOK’S DEFINITION









   

stated











    



stated



 









—













two defINItIoNS of lyINg 217































—

















 























truthful



OED

DEFINITION

The Oxford English Dictionary

Webster’s International Dictionary of the English Language





 







218 jameS edwIN mahoN



  

 







believed—























LDCL

CDLC



believeare







L

CD

—

L

—







—

















COLEMAN AND KAY’S DEFINITION





two defINItIoNS of lyINg 219









 





















  



Le MurThe Wall



















—









          



KUPFER’S DEFINITION









 











      

 







220 jameS edwIN mahoN









—

























intentionality condi-

tionS and ApS

ApS

Ap



—









SppS

p S

p

SpS

pSAp

Ap





















—









two defINItIoNS of lyINg 221







FRANKFURT’S DEFINITION







—





























 





















—









     



—



SC

A CS

ApS

p   C      

222 jameS edwIN mahoN

AA

p

A—

CA SS

won’tS

and CApAS



SASp

AAp

SSS

AC

C



SA











C



















CHISHOLM AND FEEHAN’S DEFINITION



L lies to D



p

LpLp

LpD

L

asserts p to D



LpD

DLp

DLp





 















two defINItIoNS of lyINg 223









—











pLD

p—

D







 





—

















SIMPSON’S DEFINITION





—















 









224 jameS edwIN mahoN





—









SAp is

SpSA

pAA

Sp is A



















            



CARSON’S DEFINITION





  



















  



  

          









two defINItIoNS of lyINg 225

























—





        —







—











—



















—























226 jameS edwIN mahoN



   































—



 

















FALLIS’S DEFINITION

  











You liep

Do not

make statements that you believe to be falsep







—











two defINItIoNS of lyINg 227

      









—











—









just is

—













—

















CONCLUSION









 







 



—

228 jameS edwIN mahoN



Endnotes

  

—





  



            

The Concept of Mind



  How To Do Things With Words

  









Right and Wrong

  Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the

Unconscious Mind

  

  



  

  —







  —



  Listening:

Journal of Religion and Culture 

  Why We Lie

  Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Marketplace, Politics, and Marriage



  

         —







  Detecting Lies and Deceit: The Psychology of Lying and the Implications for

Professional Practice

  

two defINItIoNS of lyINg 229

  

  

     International Journal of Applied Philosophy 21



    Lying: A Critical Analysis  



  

  On LyingTreatises on Various Subjects

Fathers of the Church

  Lying: An Augustinian Theology of Duplicity



  

Augustinian Studies

Augustinian Studies

Augustinian Studies

  Journal of

PhilosophyPublic Aairs Quarterly



  American Philosophical Quarterly

  

  Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life



  A Pack of Lies: Towards A Sociology of Lying



  Revue Internationale de Philosophie

  





  Philosophy and Phenomeno-

logical Research

  The Hiding Place



  

  Common Morality: Deciding What to Do



  

  Lan-

guage

  La Nouvelle Revue Française

  Review of Metaphysics 36



  International Studies in Philosophy



  Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy



230 jameS edwIN mahoN

  

  

  

  Necessity Volition and Love—



      The Importance of What We Care About 



  

  

  

  

  

  Philosophy and Phenomenological Re-

search

  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research



  Noûs

  

  

  



Lying, Cheating: A Moral Theory of

White-Collar Crime 



  











  

  Journal of Philosophy

  









  Studies in the Ways of Words



  

  





Lying about the future: Shuar-Achuar epistemic norms, predictions, and commitments

Article

Jul 2023

Is there variation across cultures in what counts as a lie? Here we present evidence for a potentially unique conceptualization of lying in Shuar-Achuar communities in Ecuador, contrasting this conceptualization with people in twelve other countries and non-Shuar-Achuar Ecuadorians. In Shuar-Achuar communities, but not others, predictions of the future that turn out to be false are considered lies, even when the events that render them false are unforeseen. Failed commitments, on the other hand, are not seen as lies when unforeseen events prevent them from being kept. To explain this phenomenon, we suggest that there is an epistemic norm that regulates predictive speech acts in Shuar-Achuar communities, linked to the view that the future can be known under certain special circumstances. This norm holds that claiming knowledge of the future is a form of lying when events prove the prediction false. Commitments, on the other hand, do not imply certainty about the future and so are not considered lies when circumstances prevent them from being fulfilled. In addition, we found several other factors that influence whether speech acts are categorized as lies, including the speaker's expertise, group membership, and the nature of the outcome.

"What is Your Best Price?"-An Experimental Study of an Alternative Negotiation Opening

Article

Full-text available

May 2023
NEGOTIATION J

Much attention has been devoted to the "first offer" in negotiation research. Rightly so, as strong empirical evidence shows that the first offer has a significant impact on the negotiated outcome and, therefore, is a highly relevant topic for negotiation scholars and practitioners. Scholars typically recommend making the first offer. However, in the field, we have observed an alternative opening tactic-asking for the best price that the counterpart is willing to accept. This question represents a real alternative to making the first offer by initiating the discussion of specific settlement proposals, provided the counterpart answers the query. Does it, however, lead the other side to make a better offer? How does the question impact the economic and relational outcomes of the negotiation? Is it advisable to use this tactic in negotiations? We investigated these questions based on a controlled laboratory experiment, in which 227 dyads of cellphone buyers and sellers negotiated synchronously via a text chat. We found that the best-price question has an impact on not only the first offer but also the negotiation outcome. When the buyers in our experiment asked the question, the results were not significantly different than those from negotiations in which they made the first offer. This effect was driven by the first offer in response to the question. Additionally, we found that the best-price question did not negatively impact the relational outcome. Moreover, the effect was reduced when list price information was available. These findings suggest rethinking the traditional view of the offer-counteroffer sequence and provide an alternative opening tactic to making the first offer in the context of high information asymmetry.

Lies and Bullshit: The Negative Effects of Misinformation Grow Stronger Over Time

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2023

In a world where exposure to untrustworthy communicators is common, trust has become more important than ever for effective marketing. Nevertheless, we know very little about the long‐term consequences of exposure to untrustworthy sources, such bullshitters. This research examines how untrustworthy sources—liars and bullshitters—influence consumer attitudes toward a product. Frankfurt's (1986) insidious bullshit hypothesis (i.e., bullshitting is evaluated less negatively than lying but bullshit can be more harmful than are lies) is examined within a traditional sleeper effect—a persuasive influence that increases, rather than decays over time. We obtained a sleeper effect after participants learned that the source of the message was either a liar or a bullshitter. However, compared to the liar source condition, the same message from a bullshitter resulted in more extreme immediate and delayed attitudes that were in line with an otherwise discounted persuasive message (i.e., an advertisement). Interestingly, attitudes returned to control condition levels when a bullshitter was the source of the message, suggesting that knowing an initially discounted message may be potentially accurate/inaccurate (as is true with bullshit, but not lies) does not result in the long‐term discounting of that message. We discuss implications for marketing and other contexts of persuasion. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

A Metascientific Empirical Review of Cognitive Load Lie Detection

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2022

David Neequaye

This article examines the cognitive load lie detection hypothesis. The idea that lying is more challenging than telling the truth—thus, imposing cognitive load can exacerbate the challenge liars face and expose lies. I reviewed 24 publications to flag derivation chains authors employ to justify the hypothesis. The findings indicate that authors recycle the same set of justifications but not systematically. That state of the literature shields cognitive load lie detection from severe testing in two ways. There is no clear justification to focus on when wanting to nominate or design severe tests. And the justifications contain ambiguities that make it challenging to determine what would count as a severe test of the hypothesis. I illustrate those limitations and discuss the need to make cognitive load lie detection amenable to severe testing.

Does lying require objective falsity?

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2023
SYNTHESE

Alex Wiegmann

Does lying require objective falsity? Given that consistency with ordinary language is a desideratum of a philosophical definition of lying, empirical evidence plays an important role. A literature review reveals that studies employing a simple question-and-response format, such as “Did the speaker lie? [Yes/No]”, favour the subjective view of lying, according to which objective falsity is not required. However, it has recently been claimed that the rate of lie attributions found in those studies is artificially inflated due to perspective taking; and that if measures are applied to avoid this problem, the results actually support the objective view of lying. This paper presents three experiments that challenge this claim by showing that the findings used to support the objective view have been misinterpreted. It is thus concluded that the folk concept of lying does not require objective falsity, which is consistent with the dominant view in the philosophical literature.

A Speech-Act Theoretic Analysis of White (Prosocial) Lies

Chapter

Jun 2023

Marina Terkourafi

White lies, lies that are beneficial to the addressee and uttered out of concern for them, are pervasive in daily life. This raises a prima facie question: if white lies are so common, are they still lies? I tackle this question from the perspective of speech act theory, using the case of white lies to shed light on the broader question of whether lying itself can be considered a type of speech act. Adopting Sbisà’s (Uptake and Conventionality in Illocution. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 5 33–52. Reprinted in Marina Sbisà (forthcoming), Essays on Speech Acts and Other Topics in Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) neo-Austinian approach that places the emphasis on the achievement of certain conventional effects, I claim that malicious lying cannot be a type of speech act. However, white lies are a type of speech act, a claim which finds support in three types of evidence: the conventionality of means by which white lies are performed, their online processing, and their acquisition. Moreover, the existence of a continuum between white (harmless) lies (which are a type of speech act) and malicious (harmful) lies (which are not) suggests that whether an utterance performs a certain type of speech act or not can be a matter of degree. In other words, the property itself of being a speech act of a certain kind, an utterance’s speech-act-hood, so to speak, may be graded. This is an interesting result, which applies to speech acts more generally, beyond lying.

The myth of true lies

Article

May 2023
Theoria

Jesper Kallestrup

Suppose you assert a proposition p that you falsely believe to be false with the intention to deceive your audience. The standard view has it that you lied. This paper argues against orthodoxy: deceptive lying requires that p be in actual fact false, in addition to your intention to deceive by means of untruthfully asserting that p . We proceed as follows. First, an argument is developed for such falsity condition as the non‐psychological component of lying. The problem with the standard view, we profess, is exactly that lying is a purely psychological relation between disbelief, assertion, and intention. Then, by scrutinising familiar cases, we revisit the alleged intuitive support for the existence of true lies. It turns out these intuitions can be explained away once we reflect on the characteristic deceptive hallmarks that are associated with the distinction between lying and botched attempts at lying. Finally, we examine the morality of lying in the light of said falsity condition. The resultant view emphasises our moral sensitivity to the practical consequences of acts of lying, while still accommodating those moral considerations that pertain exclusively to the psychological components of lying.

Lying with Uninformative Speech Acts

Article

Full-text available

May 2023

Grzegorz Gaszczyk

I propose an analysis of lying with uninformative speech acts. The orthodox view states that lying is restricted to assertions. However, the growing case for non-assertoric lies made by presuppositions or conventional implicatures challenges this orthodoxy. So far, the only presuppositions to have been considered as lies were informative presuppositions. In fact, uninformative lies were not discussed in the philosophical literature. However, limiting the possibility of lying to informative speech acts is too restrictive. Firstly, I show that standard, uninformative presuppositions can also be lies. Secondly, I extend this picture into uninformative lies made by declarative statements. To implement my proposal, I do not need a new definition of lying. Recently popular commitment-based definitions of lying are able to properly handle uninformative lies.

An Introduction to the Science of Deception and Lie Detection

Book

Mar 2023

Chris NH Street

An electronic review copy can be obtained from the publisher: https://www.routledge.com/An-Introduction-to-the-Science-of-Deception-and-Lie-Detection/Street/p/book/9780367492441

Group Assertions and Group Lies

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2023
Topoi

Neri Marsili

Groups, like individuals, can communicate. They can issue statements, make promises, give advice. Sometimes, in doing so, they lie and deceive. The goal of this paper is to offer a precise characterisation of what it means for a group to make an assertion and to lie. I begin by showing that Lackey's influential account of group assertion is unable to distinguish assertions from other speech acts, explicit statements from implicatures, and lying from misleading. I propose an alternative view, according to which a group asserts a proposition only if it explicitly presents that proposition as true, thereby committing to its truth. This proposal is then put to work to define group lying. While scholars typically assume that group lying requires (i) a deceptive intent and (ii) a belief in the falsity of the asserted proposition, I offer a definition that drops condition (i) and significantly broadens condition (ii).

A Definition of Deceiving

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2007
Int J Appl Philos

James Edwin Mahon

In this article I consider six definitions of deceiving (that is, other-deceiving, as opposed to self-deceiving) and reject them all, in favor of a modified version of a rejected definition that avoids all of the objections to the previous definitions. According to this new definition, deceiving is necessarily intentional, requires that the deceived person acquires or continues to have a false belief, and must involve the agency of the deceived person; furthermore, the deceiver must know or truly believe that the false belief that the deceived person acquires or continues to have is false.

Le Mur

Article