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LYING, MISLEADING, and LANGUAGE by Matthew Knachel

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LYING, MISLEADING, and LANGUAGE by Matthew Knachel LYING, MISLEADING, AND LANGUAGE by Matthew Knachel B.G.S, University of Dayton, 1999 M.A., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2003 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2014 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Matthew Knachel It was defended on April 3rd, 2014 and approved by Michael Liston, Professor, Department of Philosophy, UW-Milwaukee Mark Wilson, Professor, Department of Philosophy Dissertation Advisor: Kieran Setiya, Professor, Department of Philosophy Dissertation Advisor: James Shaw, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy ii Copyright © by Matthew Knachel 2014 iii LYING, MISLEADING, AND LANGUAGE Matthew Knachel, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2014 My focus is the everyday distinction between lies and other deceptive speech acts—acts of misleading—which involve saying something truthful with the intention of causing one’s listener to have false beliefs. The distinction resists straightforward pre-theoretical formulation, but it is closely tied to the concept of saying: if what someone said, strictly speaking, is true, then she did not lie— though she may have misled. Ever since Paul Grice distinguished what a speaker says from what she otherwise communicates (e.g., via implicatures), theorists have attempted to provide a rigorous circumscription of ‘what is said’. I test these theories according to how well they handle our intuitions about the lying/misleading distinction, and find that no extant account can adequately underwrite that distinction—in the process discovering that the boundary in question is even more difficult to draw than initially expected. Positions in the debate over ‘what is said’ can be characterized as more or less minimal, according to how much pragmatic—as opposed to semantic—content is taken to be a part of what a speaker says. There are different accounts, though, of how to characterize the division of labor between Semantics and Pragmatics, so I turn my attention to those, applying the lessons of my previous investigations. I focus mainly on a prominent recent proposal from Herman Cappelen and Ernest Lepore (“Semantic Minimalism”), according to which semantic content is particularly austere. I argue that their account is deeply flawed. I then briefly examine some alternative views from the literature, expressing guarded skepticism about those. iv Finally, I turn to non-linguistic philosophical questions that arise in connection with my focal concern: How should lying be defined? What is the moral (and legal) significance of the lying/misleading distinction? I argue that the literature on the definition of lying would be enriched by more carefully considering competing accounts of assertion, and that a Robert Brandom-style normative account seems the best option. I conclude that it’s difficult to make the case for a moral difference between lying and misleading, but that a legal distinction can be made with the help of my earlier conclusions. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ..................................................................................................................................... ix 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 1.1 WHAT IS SAID ................................................................................................... 3 1.2 THE SEMANTICS/PRAGMATICS DIVIDE ................................................ 10 1.3 THE DEFINITION OF LYING, ASSERTION, AND THE LAW ............... 22 1.4 OUTLINE ........................................................................................................... 26 2.0 IN SEARCH OF ‘WHAT IS SAID’ ........................................................................ 28 2.1 METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................ 30 2.1.1 Alternative methods .................................................................................... 32 2.1.2 Concerns ...................................................................................................... 35 2.2 STARTING AT THE BEGINNING: GRICE ................................................. 40 2.2.1 Implicature: the basics ............................................................................... 46 2.2.2 Logical Connectives .................................................................................... 48 2.2.3 Other limitations of the Gricean picture .................................................. 57 2.3 GENERALIZED CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES ........................ 60 2.3.1 Categories of GCIs ...................................................................................... 62 2.3.2 Q-Implicatures ............................................................................................ 65 2.3.3 I-Implicatures .............................................................................................. 72 2.3.4 M-Implicatures ............................................................................................ 74 2.3.5 Final reflections on GCIs............................................................................ 76 vi 2.4 RELEVANCE THEORY .................................................................................. 78 2.4.1 The basics ..................................................................................................... 78 2.4.2 Appraisal ...................................................................................................... 80 2.4 LESSONS FOR THE DEBATE OVER ‘WHAT IS SAID’ ........................... 86 2.5.1 Refining Grice’s minimal notion ............................................................... 87 2.5.2 Truth-Conditional Pragmatics .................................................................. 89 2.5.3 The role of a minimal ‘what is said’ .......................................................... 91 3.0 WHITHER SEMANTICS? .................................................................................... 107 3.1 CAPPELEN AND LEPORE’S SEMANTIC MINIMALISM ..................... 109 3.1.1 Minimal propositions: metaphysical problems ...................................... 112 3.1.2 Minimal propositions: psychological problems...................................... 123 3.1.3 Speech Act Pluralism ................................................................................ 129 3.1.4 SPAP undermines other arguments ........................................................ 134 3.1.5 Summing up: how to use intuitions ......................................................... 144 3.2 ALTERNATIVES TO CAPPELEN AND LEPORE ................................... 147 3.2.1 Borg’s semantic minimalism .................................................................... 148 3.2.2 Indexicalism ............................................................................................... 154 3.2.3 Default Semantics...................................................................................... 162 4.0 LYING, ASSERTING, MORALITY, AND THE LAW ..................................... 168 4.1 THE DEFINITION OF LYING ..................................................................... 169 4.2 ASSERTION .................................................................................................... 180 4.3 MORAL QUESTIONS .................................................................................... 200 4.4 LEGAL MATTERS......................................................................................... 213 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 225 vii For my parents, Howie and Maryrita Knachel viii PREFACE I could not have completed this project without the help and support of many, so I beg indulgence while I use this space to acknowledge my debts and record my gratitude. Extra special thanks are due to my mother-in-law, Barb Lorenz, who was extraordinarily generous with her childcare services—accepting only Miller Lite and the occasional home- cooked meal as remuneration. I would not have had enough time to write without Nana’s help. Speaking of time, I’d also like to thank my decrepit 1986 Toro model 521 snow-blower for getting jammed up with wet snow and chopping off the top digits of two of my fingers. This injury convinced the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to extend my deadline an extra two semesters; I’m not sure I could have finished without the extra time. For helpful discussion of the material from Chapter 2, I thank Rick Scaia, Dan Williams, Poop Secaur, Tim Upton, Johnny Sullivan, R.W. Haskins, Eric Romer, Hank Guelcher, Al Frecker, Jason Mennino, and Chris Lyons. For their encouragement, guidance, and helpful comments on drafts, I thank the members of my committee: Kieran Setiya, James Shaw, Mark Wilson, and Michael Liston. Kieran deserves special recognition for encouragement and guidance: he convinced me it was possible to finish, facilitated the formation of my committee, and got me through the usual (and in my case, some unusual) administrative bottlenecks (with help from above, from the omniscient and ever-vigilant Kathy Rivet). James deserves special recognition for helpful comments: his notes were incredibly detailed and insightful. This would be a much worse piece of work if not for his ix feedback, and
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