Lying, Misleading, and What is Said: An Exploration in Philosophy of Language and in Ethics PDF
Preview Lying, Misleading, and What is Said: An Exploration in Philosophy of Language and in Ethics
Lying, Misleading, and What Is Said This page intentionally left blank Lying, Misleading, and What Is Said An Exploration in Philosophy of Language and in Ethics Jennifer Mather Saul 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries #JenniferMatherSaul2012 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin2012 Impression:1 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Dataavailable ISBN 978–0–19–960368–8 PrintedinGreatBritainby MPGBooksGroup,BodminandKing’sLynn LinkstothirdpartywebsitesareprovidedbyOxfordingoodfaithand forinformationonly.Oxforddisclaimsanyresponsibilityforthematerials containedinanythirdpartywebsitereferencedinthiswork. I dedicate this book to Ray, Theo, and my parents, Frank and Julie Saul. Without your love and support, I’d just be swearing at the internets. This page intentionally left blank Preface Theterm‘whatissaid’,andotherrelatedterms,arecurrentlybeingused in a huge variety of ways in the philosophy of language. They are the subject of many complicated, ingenious, and passionate debates. One of thesubjectsofdebateishow,andwhether,ouruseofthesetermsrelates tothatofordinaryspeakers.Arethesedebatesmerelyamatteroftheore- ticiansarguingabouttheirtheoreticalvocabulary?Isanythingatstakehere that ordinary speakers do, or should, care about? The answers to these questions(andmanyothers)seematthispointtobefarfromclear. Not all thetermsphilosophers discussare likethis.Take, for example, termssuchas‘lie’and‘mislead’.Thedistinctionbetweenlyingandmerely misleading is an immensely natural one. It is clearly not a mere philoso- phers’distinction,unfamiliartoordinarylifeandofdubioussignificance.It isadistinctionthatordinaryspeakersdrawextremelyreadily,andgenerally careabout,andadistinctionrecognizedandaccordedgreatsignificancein someareasofthelaw.Interestingly,itisalsoadistinctionthatturnsonthe notionofsaying:youcannotlieunlessyoudeliberatelysaysomethingfalse (oratleastsomethingyoubelievetobefalse). And this distinction matters. Recently, it played a crucial role in the scandal that nearly led to President Bill Clinton’s removal from office. During the scandal (which will be discussed much more extensively in Chapter5), Clinton made a number of utterances that seemed carefully phrasedinordertoavoidlyingbymerelymisleading.Onefamousonewas hiscarefullypresent-tensedenialofarelationshipwithMonicaLewinsky: “Thereisnoimproperrelationship.” Infact,thelying–misleadingdistinctionisquitefrequentlyasignificant oneinpolitics.Awarenessofthelying–misleadingdistinctionunderliesthe infamous political practice of push-polling. A push-poll is a campaign tactic in which voters receive a phone call purporting to be a genuine pollforthepurposeofgatheringdata.Butnodataisgathered.Instead,the voter is asked a series of questions which are meant to suggest the truth ofsomeinformationconsideredlikelytobedetrimentaltotheopponent of the campaign behind the push-polling. One of the most famous examples of this was the push-poll conducted by George W. Bush’s viii PREFACE 2000primarycampaignagainstJohnMcCain,inwhichvoterswereasked, “Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?” John McCainhadnotinfactfatheredanyillegitimatechild,blackorwhite.To say that he had done so would have been a lie. But the poll effectively insinuated that he had, without saying it. And this is widely believed to havecostMcCaintheSouthCarolinaprimary.1 Butit’snotjustpoliticianswhocareaboutthelying–misleadingdistinc- tion—nearlyallofusseemto.Thinkofwhatyoumightdoifyoufound yourselfatthedeathbedofakindoldwomanwantingtoknowifhersonis allright.Yousawhimyesterday(atwhichpointhewashappyandhealthy), but you know that shortly after your meeting he was hit by a truck and killed.Ifyou’relikemostpeople,youwouldconsideritbettertoutter(1) than(2)—becauseuttering(1)ismerelymisleadingwhileuttering(2)isalie. Andthereasonforthisisthatwhat(1)saysistrue,whilewhat(2)saysisfalse. (1) Isawhimyesterdayandhewashappyandhealthy. (2) He’shappyandhealthy.2 Ihavelongbeeninterestedinwhatissaid,andIhaveevenlongerbeen interested in the careful statements and machinations of politicians. It was natural,then,formetobegintowonderabouttherelationshipbetweenthe notion of saying involved in the very intuitive distinction between lying and misleading and the notions discussed in the philosophy of language literature.Ifthenotioninvolvedinthelying–misleadingdistinctionisoneof those from the philosophy of language literature, then we know that this notion,atleast,isonethatordinaryspeakersdothinkandcareabout.Ifit isnot,thenweknowthatthereisaproblemtobedealtwith:thereseemsto be a notion of saying that matters to ordinary speakers which, despite the enormous literature on saying and related notions, has not yet been captured.InChapter2,Iarguethatoursituationisthelatterone.Despite thevastliteratureonsaying,wedonotyethaveanotionsuitablefordoing theworkneededbythelying–misleadingdistinction. One response to this situation might be to pronounce the lying– misleadingdistinctionunworkableorillusory because itdoesnotdrawon any currently defended notion of saying. But this seems to me extremely 1 See,forexample,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll 2 ThisislooselybasedonanexamplefromWilliams(2002:114). PREFACE ix unappealing. We should not give up on such an intuitive and widely accepteddistinctionwithoutafight,andthereisnoreasonforconfidence that all viable notions of saying have already been put forward. Instead, it seemstomethattherightresponseistotrytodevelopanotionofsaying that can do the work needed for the lying–misleading distinction. This is whatIattemptinChapter3.ThereIargueforanotionofsayingthatcando theworkweneedforthelying–misleadingdistinction.(Ialsosketchoutthe furtherworkthatwouldneedtobedonetodevelopthisnotionfully.) All of the discussion in Chapters 1–3 takes as its starting place the thoughtthatthereisanintuitivedistinctionbetweenlyingandmisleading, to which many assign moral significance. But it is worth investigating whetherthemanyarerighttoassignthismoralsignificancetothedistinc- tion. After all, morally preferring misleading to lying is really rather puzzling. In both cases, a speaker deliberately attempts to induce a false belief in their audience. Why on earth should it matter whether they do thisbysayingsomethingfalseormerelyconveyingitbysomeothermeans? Chapter4tacklesthisdifficultquestion.Intheend,Iarguethatthereisno across-the-board moral distinction such that any particular act of decep- tion is better if accomplished by mere misleading rather than lying. But I also argue that the lying–misleading distinction may still have moral significance, in that whether a person decides to lie or mislead quite frequentlyrevealssomethingmorallysignificantabouttheircharacter. AlthoughtheargumentsinChapter4concernthemoralsignificanceof the lying–misleading distinction, they draw in part on insights from philosophy oflanguage.Even thoughitseems quiteclear thatthe lying– misleading distinction involves an intersection of issues in philosophy of language and ethics, there has been relatively little attention paid to this intersection. Discussions of what is said and discussions of the ethics of lyingandmisleadinghaveproceededalmosttotallyinisolationfromeach other.Chapter5representsafurther chippingaway at thisdivide.In this chapter, I consider a selection of interesting, historically significant or difficultcasesforthelying–misleadingdistinction,workingthroughboth theethicalandphilosophyoflanguageissuesforeachone.Whatwesee,in doingthis,isthattheworkonthenatureofsayinginChapters2and3fits rather nicely with the work on the morality of lying and misleading in Chapter4.Together,Ithinktheyservetoprovideilluminatinganalysesof avariety of puzzling and problematic cases.They also serve to show that philosophical reflection on the lying–misleading distinction, and even
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