This handbook brings together past and current research on all aspects of lying and deception, from the combined perspectives of linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. It will be an essential reference for students and researchers in these fields and will contribute to establishing the vibrant new field of interdisciplinary lying research.
The Oxford Handbook of Assertion explores philosophical themes pertaining to the speech act of assertion: the nature of assertion, assertion's place among the speech acts, empirical issues in theories of assertion, assertion's role in semantics and metasemantics, the place of assertion in the epistemology of testimony, and the social and ethical dimensions of assertion.
This book examines the significance of Kant’s moral philosophy in contemporary philosophical debates. It argues that Kant’s philosophy can still serve as a guide to navigate the turbulence of a globalized world in which we are faced by an imprescriptible social reality wherein moral values and ethical life models are becoming increasingly unstable. The volume draws on Kantian ethics to discuss various contemporary issues, including sustainable development, moral enhancement, sexism, and racism. It also tackles general concepts of practical philosophy such as lying, the different kinds of moral duties, and the kind of motivation one needs for doing what we consider the right thing. Featuring readings by well-known Kant specialists and emerging scholars with unorthodox approaches to Kant’s philosophy, the volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of philosophy, politics and ethics. It will also appeal to moral theorists, applied ethicists and environmental theorists.
The Oxford Handbook of Business Ethics is a comprehensive treatment of the field of business ethics as seen from a philosophical approach. The volume consists of 24 essays that survey the field of business ethics in a broad and accessible manner, covering all major topics about the relationship between ethical theory and business ethics.
Abstracts Wegner, Dennis, Härtl, Holden, Schlechtweg, Marcel: Optionality and the recovery of temporal information in German verb clusters. While the clause-final placement of finite elements is usually quite rigid in German embedded clauses, verbal clusters mark an exception in that they allow finite temporal auxiliaries to be placed linearly before the verbal elements they embed. The prescriptive rules of Standard German suggest that there is optionality with respect to the two ordering possibilities at least in future clauses. However, previous studies have shown that this also holds for perfect clauses with lassen ('let'). Based on two experimental studies focussing on verbal clusters with continuative lassen ('let') and perception verbs, which supposedly have similar properties, the present paper aims at investigating a) whether there really is proper optionality with respect to placing the finite auxiliary in a cluster-initial or clause-final position, and b) whether preposing the temporal auxiliary induces advantages for the processing of temporal information. Pafel, Jürgen: Konditionale und minimale Differenz. Counterfactuals invite us to imagine a course of the world in which certain state-of-affairs obtain which might be contrary to fact, but which is otherwise identical to the real course of the world. They invite us to imagine a minimal different course of the world. Minimal difference is an essential ingredient of many, perhaps most, semantic accounts of counterfactuals. They differ in the way they conceptualize minimal difference. I present a definition of 'minimal different course of the world' after discussing many scenarios in detail, with respect to which certain counterfactuals are supposed to be true or false. Minimal difference means that, as for a 'counterfactual' course of the world, everything is as it actually is except that (i) the counterfactual's antecedent is true and (ii) state-of-affair obtain which are possible in virtue of (i) and the regularities of the world. With this background, the truth condition of a counterfactual can be stated as follows: It is true if the consequent is true in every course of the world in which the antecedent is true, and which is minimal different from the actual course of the world. This kind of truth condition is argued to be adequate for singular indicative conditionals too. Various problems concerning this extension are discussed. A closer look at the pragmatics of counterfactuals exhibits a variety of different 'implications', whose status is partially unclear. Finally, I discuss the prospects of extending the minimal-difference semantics of conditionals to causals. Bauer, Anastasia: Rezension: Vadim Kimmelman (2019): Information structure in sign languages. Evidence from Russian Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands. Berlin: De Gruyter and Ishara Press. Krstic, Vladimir: Rezension: Meibauer, Jörg (ed.) (2019): The Oxford handbook of lying. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tsiknakis, Antonios: Rezension: Sonja Müller (2019): Die Syntax-Pragmatik-Schnittstelle. Ein Studienbuch. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto. Klaus, Müllner: Informationen und Hinweise.
In a postfactual world in which claims are often held to be true only to the extent that they confirm pre-existing or partisan beliefs, this book asks crucial questions: how can we identify the many forms of untruthfulness in discourse? How can we know when their use is ethically wrong? How can we judge untruthfulness in the messiness of situated discourse? Drawing on pragmatics, philosophy, psychology, and law, All Bullshit and Lies? develops a comprehensive framework for analyzing untruthful discourse in situated context. TRUST, or Trust-related Untruthfulness in Situated Text, sees untruthfulness as encompassing not only deliberate manipulations of what is believed to be true (the insincerity of withholding, misleading, and lying) but also the distortions that arise from an irresponsible attitude towards the truth (dogma, distortion, and bullshit). Chris Heffer discusses times when truth is not "in play," as in jokes or fiction, as well as instances when concealing the truth can achieve a greater good. The TRUST framework demonstrates that untruthfulness becomes unethical in discourse, though, when it unjustifiably breaches the trust an interlocutor invests in the speaker. In addition to the theoretical framework, this book provides a clear, practical heuristic for analyzing discursive untruthfulness and applies it to such cases of public discourse as the Brexit "battle bus," Trump's tweet about voter fraud, Blair and Bush's claims about weapons of mass destruction, and the multiple forms of untruthfulness associated with the Skripal poisoning case. In All Bullshit and Lies? Chris Heffer turns a critical eye to fundamental questions of truthfulness and trust in our society. This timely and interdisciplinary investigation of discourse provides readers a deeper theoretical understanding of untruthfulness in a postfactual world.
Andreas Stokke presents a comprehensive study of lying and insincere language use. He investigates how lying relates to other forms of insincerity and explores the kinds of attitudes that go with insincere uses of language. Part I develops an account of insincerity as a linguistic phenomenon. Stokke provides a detailed theory of the distinction between lying and speaking insincerely, and accounts for the relationship between lying and deceiving. A novel framework of assertion underpins the analysis of various kinds of insincere speech, including false implicature and forms of misleading with presuppositions, prosodic focus, and semantic incompleteness. Part II sets out the relationship between what is communicated and the speaker's attitudes. Stokke develops the view of insincerity as a shallow phenomenon that is dependent on conscious attitudes rather than deeper motivations. The various of ways of speaking while being indifferent toward what one communicates are covered, and the phenomenon of 'bullshitting' is distinguished from lying and other forms of insincerity. Finally, an account of insincere uses of interrogative, imperative, and exclamative utterances is also given.
This volume provides new insights on lying and (intentionally) misleading in and out of the courtroom, a timely topic for scholarship and society. Not all deceptive statements are lies; not every lie under oath amounts to perjury—but what are the relevant criteria? Taxonomies of falsehood based on illocutionary force, utterance context and speakers’ intentions have been debated by linguists, moral philosophers, social psychologists and cognitive scientists. Legal scholars have examined the boundary between actual perjury and garden-variety lies. The fourteen previously unpublished essays in this book apply theoretical and empirical tools to delineate the landscape of falsehood, half-truth, perjury, and verbal manipulation, including puffery, bluffing, and bullshit. The papers in this collection address conceptual and ethical aspects of lying vs. misleading and the correlation of this opposition with the Gricean pragmatic distinction between what is said and what is implicated. The questions of truth and lies addressed in this volume have long engaged the attention of scholars in linguistics, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, organizational research, and the law, and researchers from all these fields will find this book of interest.
Even though we instruct our children not to lie, the truth is that lying is a fundamental part of children’s development—socially, cognitively, emotionally, morally. Lying can sometimes be more compassionate than telling the truth, even more ethical. Reading specific children’s books can instruct child readers how to be guided by an etiquette of lying, to know when to tell the truth and when to lie. Equally important, these stories can help prevent them from being prey to those liars who are intent on taking advantage of them. Becoming a critical reader requires that one learn how to lie judiciously as well as to see through others’ lies. When humans first began to speak, we began to lie. When we began to lie, we started telling stories. This is the paradox, that in order to tell truthful stories, we must be good liars. Novels about child-artists showcased here illustrate how the protagonist embraces this paradox, accepting the stigma that a writer is a liar who tells the truth. Emily Dickinson’s phrase “telling it slant” best expresses the vision of how writers for children and young adults negotiate the conundrum of both protecting child readers and teaching them to protect themselves. This volume explores the pervasiveness of lying as well as the necessity for lying in our society; the origins of lying as connected to language acquisition; the realization that storytelling is both lying and truthtelling; and the negotiations child-artists must process in order to grasp the paradox that to become storytellers they must become expert liars and lie-detectors.
In an age where fake news, conspiracy theories, and outright lies by political and cultural leaders are commonplace, we may be becoming accustomed to lying, or worse, even immune to it. Pseudology unravels the reasons for this by describing a “science of lying” that looks at various aspects of this trait, from how it affects the brain to how it distorts perception. Interest in lying goes back to antiquity and writing and debate has only increased in the present day, but what is missing is a treatment that synthesizes the work from linguists, political scientists, anthropologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and sociologists, tying them to the philosophical and literary views of lying throughout history. Such a treatment can be called "pseudology": an interdisciplinary science for classifying, collating, and assessing ideas about lying. This book is a comprehensive treatment of pseudology, emphasising the importance of studying lying in our current climate. Pseudology addresses questions such as: • What is a lie? • Why do we lie? • Why are we so susceptible to lying? • How does lying activate false beliefs and generate hatred of others? • How has lying shaped the course of history (at least to some extent)? • How has lying been adopted as a basic thematic element in literature and the arts? Synthesising research from a broad range of disciplines and from the perspective of a leading cognitive linguist, this text weaves ideas and theories about lying cohesively into an overall interdisciplinary science. This landmark book is vital for students and scholars of language as well as anyone interested in politics, sociology, or psychology.