Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Communication is governed by epistemic expectations: we expect other people to tell the truth.  Various authors noted that “telling the truth” admits at least two relevant readings. The first tracks expectations of sincerity: speakers ought to be sincere. The second tracks broader expectations of truthfulness: speakers ought to communicate propositions that are reliably true. But what do we expect exactly from sincere and truthful speakers? Existing attempts to answer the question, I argue, are too narrow in focus. The place too much emphasis on utterance production (as opposed to expected uptake) and literal speech (as opposed to non-literal communication). I will argue that our epistemic expectations have a broader scope. Broadly, the idea is that we don’t just expect speakers to “tell” the truth, but also ensure that they are understood to be communicating (believed) true propositions. This, in turn, has implications for recent philosophical discussion on risky speech, deniability, and commitment.