Why do we need the notion of a lie? Considerations from the case of presuppositional lies.Antonina Jamrozik (University of Warsaw)
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- Polish Semiotic Society
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The next meeting of the Sign-Language-Reality seminar in the academic year 2025/26 will take place:
Thursday, the 23rd of October 2025, 17.00, Central European Time
Antonina Jamrozik
(university of Warsaw)
will deliver a talk:
Why do we need the notion of a lie?
Considerations from the case of presuppositional lies.
Abstract: Why do we need the notion of a lie? Considerations from the case of presuppositional lies. There is an ongoing debate on whether or not one can lie with presuppositions. On one side of the debate there is Viebahn (2018, 2021) who claims that one can lie with some presuppositions — namely those that are assertions. On the other side, there is Stokke (2017, 2024), who claims that only assertions can be lies, and that one cannot claim that presuppositions are assertions. Yet another view is put forward by Gaszczyk (2022), according to whom we can indeed lie with presuppositions, however we do not need to claim that some presuppositions are assertions and thereby can be lies. We should rather bite the bullet and say that we can lie with all kinds of speech acts, even uninformative ones.
Each view has its drawbacks. I start with discussing each one. In short: Viebahn has empirical data on his side, however he needs to maintain a rather controversial claim that one can assert with presuppositions. Stokke manages to maintain the presupposition-assertion distinction, albeit on the pain of ignoring some of the data (this is a smaller problem) and making his theory unnecessarily restrictive (which is a bigger one). Going too far in the other direction is Gaszczyk, as his theory is too permissive — muddying the waters of the notion of a lie to a great extent (and, as I argue, going against some basic intuitions). Then, I move on to present my account of presuppositional lies. It is based on Van der Sandt’s theory of presuppositions as anaphors (Van der Sandt 1992). I argue that looking at the presuppositional lies from this angle avoids the drawbacks of the aforementioned views on the issue. Such an approach allows both for maintaining.
In the second part of the talk, I discuss the potential problems that this approach presents (and
propose some solutions), as well as insights into the notion of lie that it can give. Adopting an
anaphoric notion of presupposition (and presuppositional lies), worked out in terms of dynamic
semantics, requires looking at lies in general at the level of their influence on the discourse state. I argue that such a dynamic approach to lies is beneficial not only in the case of presuppositional lies but also in explicating the notion of lie per se. I am inclined to agree with Stokke’s claim that empirical data should not be a decisive factor in defining the notion of lie — it is a theoretical notion, and as such, its theoretical usefulness should be the primary concern. However, I disagree on the importance of the claim that only assertions can be lies. I believe that Viebahn and Gaszczyk both have good theoretical reasons to claim that it is possible to lie with presuppositions. I believe the dynamic approach to lies, which takes into account the context change potential of a sentence that can be used to lie, best captures the intuitions regarding the notion of a lie and the theoretical requirements imposed onto this notion. I conclude with some remarks as to why my proposal reinforces the idea that we should move away from both the moral importance of the definition of a lie — while the distinction between lying and misleading has been regarded as primarily ethical, this is being disputed more and more often (see Wiegmann & Engelmann 2022, Saul 2012, Rees 2014, Timmermann & Viebahn 2020, Wilkinson 2000) — and the empirical data regarding ordinary speakers’ judgements as to whether an utterance is or is not a lie. Instead, we should adopt a theory-driven approach to defining the notion of a lie, and I argue that the approach based on the dynamic representation of a discourse is bestsuited for such task. Instead of focusing on the distinction between lying and misleading, I propose to focus on the distinction between lying and repeating a lie, which is further explicated in the
account proposed here.
The seminar will be held online, to join the meeting, please use the information below:
Join Zoom Meeting https://uw-edu-pl.zoom.us/j/92716044372...
Meeting ID: 927 1604 4372 Passcode: 697648 The meeting opens at 4:45 pm, the talk starts at 5 pm.
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