The Lies We Tell Each Other Together

TY - CHAP

T1 - The Lies We Tell Each Other Together

AU - Michaelson, Eliot

PY - 2018/10/25

Y1 - 2018/10/25

N2 - A great deal of attention has been directed at the question of what exactly is required for an utterance to count as a lie. At the center of recent discussion stand bald-faced lies, which have proven to be remarkably resistant to philosophical analysis. This chapter focuses on a related, yet curiously under-explored, set of cases: lies that we construct together, as friends, families, colleagues, and communities. This sort of lie exhibits a degree of moral and linguistic complexity not found in more standard examples of lying. That moral complexity will ultimately put pressure on the enduring thesis that the distinctive wrong of lying is that it threatens to undermine the potential for communication. The linguistic complexity, in contrast, will stand as a challenge to standard theories of conversational dynamics.

AB - A great deal of attention has been directed at the question of what exactly is required for an utterance to count as a lie. At the center of recent discussion stand bald-faced lies, which have proven to be remarkably resistant to philosophical analysis. This chapter focuses on a related, yet curiously under-explored, set of cases: lies that we construct together, as friends, families, colleagues, and communities. This sort of lie exhibits a degree of moral and linguistic complexity not found in more standard examples of lying. That moral complexity will ultimately put pressure on the enduring thesis that the distinctive wrong of lying is that it threatens to undermine the potential for communication. The linguistic complexity, in contrast, will stand as a challenge to standard theories of conversational dynamics.

U2 - 10.1093/oso/9780198743965.003.0010

DO - 10.1093/oso/9780198743965.003.0010

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9780198743965

BT - Lying: Langauage, Knowledge, Ethics, and Politics

PB - Oxford University Press

ER -