Research

Sam Berstler has recently argued for a fairness-based moral difference between lying and misleading. According to Berstler, the liar, but not the misleader, unfairly free-rides on the Lewisian conventions which ground public language meaning. Although compelling, the pragmatic and metasemantic backdrop within which this moral reason is located allows for the generation of a vicious explanatory circle. Simply, this backdrop entails that no speaker has ever performed an assertion. As I argue, escaping the circle requires rejecting Berstler's fairness-based reason against lying. The problem is a general one: The wrong of lying cannot be founded on the goods of language.

Are slurring statements, when applied to members of the slurred group, true, false, or a little bit of both? Intuitions are mixed. And investigating more truth-value judgments is unlikely to cure the stalemate we find ourselves in. Truth-value judgments are just not up to the task. In their place, I propose we look to judgments of lying instead. This change in focus provides a new and better tool for understanding the complex semantics and pragmatics of slurs. As I argue, it also suggests that slurring statements encode, conventionally implicate and presuppose the same information as statements with the slur's neutral counterpart. I then briefly apply this style of argument to the semantics and pragmatics of evaluative language more generally.

Deception is an important concept in ethics, social philosophy, law, and the philosophy of language. Deception can invalidate consent, is constitutive of fake news, and a deceptive evil genius laid the foundations of Cartesian doubt. But what is deception? A careful examination of three similar but contrasting notions---misleading, manipulating, and orchestrating a deception---provides the answer. As I argue, deceivers, themselves or through proxies, intentionally cause their victims to have inaccurate doxastic attitudes by exposing them to phenomenal evidence. This theory of deception and the contrasts that motivate it suggest a broadly Kantian theory of its unique and essential wrong. The wrong of deception is grounded in the essentially covert and co-opting control deceivers exert over their victims.

Orthodoxy within the literature on the lying-misleading distinction understands the distinction to be between asserting disbelieved information, maybe with an intention to deceive, and conversationally implicating such information by asserting something believed to be true. The main battleground within Orthodoxy is over what account of assertion can bear this weight. In this paper I argue against Orthodoxy. More specifically, I argue that lying does not require assertion, nor is the relevant attitude disbelief. Speakers can expressively lie when they utter ``Ouch!" by not being in acute pain. Expressive lies necessitate a dramatic shift away from the orthodox, assertion-based theory of lying which dominates the literature, and towards a heterodox, expressing-based one.

Does lying require an intention to deceive? Deceptionists answer ``Yes," while Non-Deceptionists answer ``No." Non-Deceptionists point to a host of purported counterexamples in support of their position. Deceptionists are left unconvinced. By forging a stronger link between the lying and action theoretic literatures, I offer a new argument against the Deceptionist position. One that must be responded to differently if it is to be countenanced by Deceptionists. I then propose a promising middle ground between these two positions. I conclude by discussing how this middle ground sheds light on lies told to groups.

Some truths are fundamental, while others are derivative, or non-fundamental. This distinction between truths has often been put in terms of ground. Fundamental truths are ungrounded, and derivative, non-fundamental truths are grounded. Although widely assumed, this distinction between fundamental/ungrounded and non-fundamental/grounded truths is untenable. We need to make room for truths of a third type: truths that are inapt to be grounded, and therefore are ungrounded, but are not fundamental. Although this third status is not new, in this paper I provide a new argument for it.

Metaphysical grounding is mired in paradox. Grounding is closely bound up with two notions: metaphysical explanation and building. The tie to explanation suggests certain impure rules for the grounds of logically complex truths, while the nature of building independently requires that ground satisfy certain structural features. As others have demonstrated by deriving "puzzles of ground," these impure rules and structuring features are inconsistent. We propose to distinguish explanations of why a fact obtains from explanations of how a fact obtains. This distinction, we argue, is intuitive and philosophically fruitful. We show that each species of explanation respects a consistent rule set and that why-explanation, but not how-explanation is consistent with the structural features required by building. Thus, the puzzles of ground are resolved, and grounding's connections to both metaphysical explanation and building restored.

Expressivists have a lying problem. According to expressivism, moral statements are not assertions. But lying requires assertion. If expressivism is true, we have a surprising answer to how speakers can lie about moral matters: They can't. Descriptivists, those who reject expressivism, will see this problem as more grist for their mill in support of their position. Expressivists are in a less comfortable position. To allow for lies about moral matters, expressivists must reject the orthodox theory of lying. I develop an expressivist-friendly theory of lying in orthodoxy's place. Not only does expressivism teach us something about lying---that lying does not require assertion---but lying also teaches us something about expressivism.

Speech is silenced when it is systematically and negatively interfered with. To understand the phenomenon of silencing, and ultimately help lessen its prevalence, we must understand two things: first, how speech can "go wrong"; and second, which of those speech related failures are systematic. The focus of this paper is the first of these two questions. Using concepts from speech act theory and illocutionary logic, I present a comprehensive and systematic taxonomy of silenced speech. The framework appealed to in this investigation is importantly different from those usually offered in the silencing literature. As I argue, it should also be preferred. I conclude with one practical benefit of a fine-grained taxonomy of ways that speech can be silenced.

We all have lied. We all have also apologized. But is it possible to lie by apologizing? As I argue, not only are such lies possible, but a speaker can lie by apologizing in two different ways: (1) By apologizing for something they know they haven't done, and (2) By insincerely apologizing---apologizing without feeling regret or shame for the action they apologized for. Both of these ways of lying pose problems for the orthodox view of lying on offer in the literature. According to orthodoxy, to lie is to make a believed false assertion. The possibility of lying by apologizing shows orthodoxy to be doubly wrong. First, a speaker can lie by presupposing---but not asserting---disbelieved information. Second, they can lie by expressing a state (i.e., regret or shame) which they are not in---not by asserting disbelieved information. These lies necessitates a dramatic shift away from the traditional, assertion-based accounts of lying which dominates the literature and towards a heterodox, expressing-based one.

Sentences, words, and other vehicles of communication mean what they do in virtue of how we use them. But sentences can be meaningful while never having been used. Consider an exceedingly long and complicated sentence---maybe a million-word sentence with clauses within clauses within phrases within clauses and a nauseating amount of cross-references like `the latter,' `the former.' Such a sentence is surely meaningful. But happily for us audiences, it has never been used. This is the problem of Meaning without Use. Many see this problem as stemming from the priority of sentential meaning to sub-sentential meaning. As I argue, this is incorrect. The problem of meaning without use is inescapable. Whatever use we privilege as the one that bestows meaning, meaning will always go beyond it. We must either abandon the dictum that meaning depends on use or greatly constrain our notion of meaning.