Lying and Omissions

2018 ◽  
pp. 182-192
Author(s):  
Don Fallis
Keyword(s):  
False Beliefs ◽  
Maxim Of Quality

Work in the philosophy of deception tends to focus on outright lying. However, saying something that you believe to be false is not the only way to intentionally cause people to have false beliefs. This chapter focuses on deceiving people by *not* saying things. Not speaking may constitute lying, in contexts where it can be construed as a communication. Deceptive omissions, such as half-truths and lies of omission, can be just as common, just as misleading, and just as dangerous at outright lies. Grice’s “first maxim of Quality” and “first maxim of Quantity” are used in directing the discussion. The chapter investigates the ontology, the epistemology, and the ethics of deceptive omissions.

Do People’s Motives Influence Their Susceptibility to Imagination Inflation?

2010 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie J. Sharman ◽  
Samantha Calacouris
Keyword(s):  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Source Monitoring ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Explicit Motives ◽  
Imagination Inflation ◽  
Motivational Model ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Affiliation Motives

People are motivated to remember past autobiographical experiences related to their current goals; we investigated whether people are also motivated to remember false past experiences related to those goals. In Session 1, we measured subjects’ implicit and explicit achievement and affiliation motives. Subjects then rated their confidence about, and memory for, childhood events containing achievement and affiliation themes. Two weeks later in Session 2, subjects received a “computer-generated profile” based on their Session 1 ratings. This profile suggested that one false achievement event and one false affiliation event had happened in childhood. After imagining and describing the suggested false events, subjects made confidence and memory ratings a second time. For achievement events, subjects’ explicit motives predicted their false beliefs and memories. The results are explained using source monitoring and a motivational model of autobiographical memory.

Dream interpretation and false beliefs.

1999 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuliana A. L. Mazzoni ◽  
Pasquale Lombardo ◽  
Stefano Malvagia ◽  
Elizabeth F. Loftus
Keyword(s):  
Dream Interpretation ◽  
False Beliefs

Examining false beliefs about voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 Presidential Election

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Pennycook ◽  
David Gertler Rand
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Wide Spread ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
Election Fraud ◽  
Voter Fraud ◽  
Election News

The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election saw an unprecedented number of false claims alleging election fraud and arguing that Donald Trump was the actual winner of the election. Here we report a survey exploring belief in these false claims that was conducted three days after Biden was declared the winner. We find that a majority of Trump voters in our sample – particularly those who were more politically knowl-edgeable and more closely following election news – falsely believed that election fraud was wide-spread and that Trump won the election. Thus, false beliefs about the election are not merely a fringe phenomenon. We also find that Trump conceding or losing his legal challenges would likely lead a ma-jority of Trump voters to accept Biden’s victory as legitimate, although 40% said they would continue to view Biden as illegitimate regardless. Finally, we found that levels of partisan spite and endorsement of violence were equivalent between Trump and Biden voters.

The Fight Against Doubt

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inmaculada de Melo-Martín ◽  
Kristen Intemann
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Vaccine Safety ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Scientific Process ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scientific Consensus ◽  
Scientific Claims

Current debates about climate change or vaccine safety provide an alarming illustration of the potential impacts of dissent about scientific claims. False beliefs about evidence and the conclusions that can be drawn from it are commonplace, as is corrosive doubt about the existence of widespread scientific consensus. Deployed aggressively and to political ends, ill-founded dissent can intimidate scientists, stymie research, and lead both the public and policymakers to oppose important policies firmly rooted in science. To criticize dissent is, however, a fraught exercise. Skepticism and fearless debate are key to the scientific process, making it both vital and incredibly difficult to characterize and identify dissent that is problematic in its approach and consequences. Indeed, as de Melo-Martín and Intemann show, the criteria commonly proposed as means of identifying inappropriate dissent are flawed, and the strategies generally recommended to tackle such dissent are not only ineffective but could even make the situation worse. The Fight against Doubt proposes that progress on this front can best be achieved by enhancing the trustworthiness of the scientific community and being more realistic about the limits of science when it comes to policymaking. It shows that a richer understanding is needed of the context in which science operates so as to disarm problematic dissent and those who deploy it in the pursuit of their goals.

Knowledge, Benign Falsehoods, and the Gettier Problem

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio de Almeida
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Inferential Knowledge ◽  
The Gettier Problem

Contrary to millennial thought, inferential knowledge does seem to arise in certain cases of reasoning to which false premises are evidentially essential. The phenomenon refutes all of the well-known epistemologies that account for inferential knowledge. I offer an explanation of the phenomenon based on a fairly conservative revision to the defeasibility theory of knowledge, and explain why Peter Klein’s proposed solution fails. The explanation put forward here aims at giving us these two highly desirable results: (a) something we have never had and may not have noticed we needed, a defeasibility theory that is compatible with epistemological fallibilism, and, (b) within this revised, fallibilistic version of the defeasibility theory, an explanation of the benign/malignant distinction for false beliefs that completes the defeasibilist resolution of the Gettier Problem.

Is Rationality Normative?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Wedgwood
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Ought Implies Can ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Original Meaning ◽  
Formal Theories

In its original meaning, the word ‘rational’ referred to the faculty of reason—the capacity for reasoning. It is undeniable that the word later came also to express a normative concept—the concept of the proper use of this faculty. Does it express a normative concept when it is used in formal theories of rational belief or rational choice? Reasons are given for concluding that it does express a normative concept in these contexts. But this conclusion seems to imply that we ought always to think rationally. Four objections can be raised. (1) What about cases where thinking rationally has disastrous consequences? (2) What about cases where we have rational false beliefs about what we ought to do? (3) ‘Ought’ implies ‘can’—but is it true that we can always think rationally? (4) Rationality requires nothing more than coherence—but why does coherence matter?

Lying and Gricean Quality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Stokke
Keyword(s):  
Gricean Maxims ◽  
Maxim Of Quality

This chapter argues against accounts of lying in terms of Gricean maxims. It first considers attempts to characterize lying in terms of Grice’s First Maxim of Quality, admonishing speakers to avoid saying what they believe to be false. Even though many lies are instances of covert violations of the First Maxim of Quality, the phenomenon of bald-faced lies demonstrates that some lies overtly violate the First Maxim of Quality. In light of this, one account takes lies to be violations of the First Maxim of Quality, covert or overt. This view is seen to wrongly count ironic utterances as lies. The chapter then goes on to discuss an alternative Gricean conception of lying in terms of the Supermaxim of Quality. Yet this view is seen to wrongly count false implicatures as lies. The chapter concludes that lying cannot satisfactorily be characterized in terms of Gricean maxims.

Hybrid and Austere Responses to the Problem of Error

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holly M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Long Range ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
The Core ◽  
Extended Sense ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Long Range Planning ◽  
The Ideal

Chapter 8 explores the Austere and Hybrid Responses to the problem of error. The two types of response are described in both ideal and non-ideal versions. Both are found wanting, but the Austere Response emerges as best. Codes endorsed by the Austere approach cannot be shown to meet the “goal-oriented” desiderata of maximizing social welfare, facilitating social cooperation and long-range planning, or guaranteeing the occurrence of the ideal pattern of actions. But Austere-endorsed codes do satisfy the conceptual desiderata for “usable” moral theories in the core (but not the extended) sense of “usability.” They are usable despite the agent’s false beliefs, and they provide agents with the opportunity to live a successful moral life according to the modest conception of this life. This chapter concludes that the only remedy for the problem of error is an Austere code containing a derivative duty for agents to gather information before acting.

The Sophist on Statements, Predication, and Falsehood

2019 ◽  
pp. 307-336
Author(s):  
Lesley Brown
Keyword(s):  
Middle Part ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
False Statement ◽  
Definitive Solution ◽  
Eleatic Stranger ◽  
Different Parts ◽  
Lengthy Discussion ◽  
Striking Contrast

Plato’s late dialogue, the Sophist, divides clearly into two very different parts. In the Outer Parts (216–236d; 264b9–end), the main speaker, a nameless visitor from Elea in Italy (hereafter ES, for Eleatic Stranger) embarks on a discourse ostensibly designed to say what a sophist is. Using the so-called Method of Division, the ES offers no fewer than seven accounts of what the sophist is. Interrupting the seventh attempt, the Middle Part (236d9–264b8) provides a striking contrast. There the ES undertakes a lengthy discussion sparked by problems arising from defining a sophist as a maker of images and purveyor of false beliefs. This chapter focuses on two key problems discussed and solved in the Middle Part: the Late-learners’ problem (the denial of predication), and the problem of false statement. It looks at how each is, in a way, a problem about correct speaking; how each gave rise to serious philosophical difficulty, as well as being a source of eristic troublemaking; and how the ES offers a definitive solution to both. The Sophist displays an unusually didactic approach: Plato makes it clear that he has important matter to impart, and he does so with a firm hand, especially on the two issues discussed.

scholarly journals Observing a superposition

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Skokowski
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
False Beliefs ◽  
Belief States ◽  
Collapse Theories

AbstractThe bare theory is a no-collapse version of quantum mechanics which predicts certain puzzling results for the introspective beliefs of human observers of superpositions. The bare theory can be interpreted to claim that an observer can form false beliefs about the outcome of an experiment which produces a superpositional result. It is argued that, when careful consideration is given to the observer’s belief states and their evolution, the observer does not end up with the beliefs claimed. This result leads to questions about whether there can be any allure for no-collapse theories as austere as the bare theory.

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