Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Bernard Williams (2002) and Jennifer Saul (2012) have argued that lying isn’t necessarily morally worse than misleading. Their arguments focus primarily on general effects of utterances -- the effects of misleading acts can be as bad, or worse, as the effects of lies. In contrast, Viebahn (2022, MS) has argued that lying and misleading differ in terms of the communicative commitments and responsibility of the speaker, but that these commitments relate to essentially non-moral norms. Viebahn (MS) draws from Kauppinen’s (2018) discussion of kinds of normativity and applies it to constative speech acts to argue that the difference in commitment between lying and misleading is a difference in non-moral responsibility. I will argue that lying is (or may be) prima facie morally wrong. Misleading acts are not, whatever their effects and whatever other communicative responsibilities one may have. I will give reasons for moral accountability not to be excluded from practices bound by epistemic norms, such as constative speech acts like giving testimony, telling, or flat out asserting.