Faulkner's Implicature -- and Grice's Desideratum of Conversational Candour

Speranza

Grice, Faulkner, and Faulkner, on the desideratum of conversational candour

Helm quotes my:

“Well, the conceptual analysis of lying is quite a trick […] I would think the Griceian approach to this is complex, and perhaps relying on his “Intention and uncertainty.” It seems ‘intention’ is essential. Violating the maxim pertaining to the conversational category of ‘quantitas’ (“Do not say what you believe to be false”) – of what he has as the desideratum of conversational candour in his earlier Oxford lectures on implicature -- seems central in communication. Yet of course, most figures of speech (qua conversational impicatures) are a sort of ‘lie’: ‘metaphor,’ ‘hyperbole,’ ‘litotes,’ ‘irony’. If the intention is there on the part of the utterer that the addressee will recognise that the utterer is ‘flouting’ the maxim, things seem okay, even for Kant. Faulkner, granted, lied. If following philosopher D.F. Pears in “Motivated irrationality,” we see Faulker as believing his lies (“self-deceiving,” technically) and a further caveat may be needed. Faulkner may have ended up believing his lies. It is obvious that his novels were a way to ‘legitimise’ those lies into ‘fictional narratives’ that perhaps only a die-hard Oxonian (from Oxford, Mississippi) would regard as a lie!”

And comments:

 “Let us say as I think perhaps you may have been implying (but since this was your last post of [a long] day [yester-day] perhaps you were not entirely [perspicuous]), that Faulkner initially intended to lie when he described his rum smuggling and aerial combat over France during WWI (and was not really self-deceving, alla Pears), but eventually he became mixed up in his thinking as many do, and began believing *as truth* what he originated in the past as a *lie*; therefore (you may be implying), Faulkner is *not* a liar, at least not insofar as he came to believe as true the lies he told at an earlier date (t1>t2).”

Yes, this is a good qualification, thanks.

“To take this a bit farther, since Faulkner believed (what in retrospect we might conclude ought to have been a *lie*), namely that he could handle a difficult horse, perhaps at t2 his belief-system was such that he no longer strictly *lied* about anything!”

True. We have to rule out the possibility that it was the horse that was lying.

 Helm:

“And since he died, as you said,  many years ago in Mississippi, I wonder how his defense went when he stood before God (if he believed there was a God): 

God:  You were a liar all your life, William.

WCF:  No I was not! I never lied and I can prove it. Search my soul, and you will see that I believed everything I said!

 God: I’ve already done that, and as you will recall Romans 1: 28-31: “Since [thou] didst not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave thee over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. Thou hast become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity.  Thou art full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice!”  

WCF: God! You are just describing my novels! I want to take the fifth. 

 Or, to put it another way, Faulkner originally *chose* to lie.  The fact that Faulkner later came to believe as true [the proposition “p”] what he originally chose to lie about was still, at the time [t2] he fell from his horse, the result of his original choice.”

Yes, this is a good qualification, too – thanks.

Helm:

“And also, let us consider someone sitting on death row, Troy Clark, who was convicted of killing Christina Muse, but has been denying the crime for all the years since. He is one day executed. Suppose you could convey this to Greg Abbot (the wheel-chair bound Governor of Texas).”

Is he a Griceian?

“Might you stand a chance of convincing him that even though Troy Clark may have killed his room-mate Christina Muse, he has protested his innocence so long that he does NOT remember drowning her and stuffing her body in a barrel of lime. Therefore, you tell the governor: ‘Since Clark does not remember killing Christina Muse, he ought not to be given the lethal injection.”

Mmm. While the scenarios compare – they don’t on some fronts. Clark need to argue that it’s the judge who convicted who ‘lied.’

But back to Faulkner, I found a good of analysis of what Faulkner would think about lying. It is an essay he (Faulkner) published in

·             Faulkner, P., 2007. ‘What is Wrong with Lying?,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 75: 524–547.

·             –––, 2013. ‘Lying and Deceit,’ in International Encyclopedia of Ethics, Hugh Lafollette (ed.), Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 3101-3109.

Faulkner holds that lying necessarily involves telling someone something, which necessarily involves invoking trust. He distinguishes between telling and making an assertion, and argues that in certain cases the implication of my assertion “is sufficiently clear that I can be said to have told you this” (Faulkner 2013, 3102) even if I did not assert this. He defines telling as follows: “x tells ythat p if and only if (i) x intends that y believe that p, and (ii) x intends that y believe that p because y recognizes that (i)” (Faulkner 2013, 3103). In telling another person something, the speaker intends that the hearer believe what she is stating or implying, but she intends that the hearer believe what she is stating or implying for the reason that “y [the hearer] believes x [the speaker]” (Faulkner 2013, 3102). It follows that tellings “operate by invoking an audience’s trust” (Faulkner 2013, 3103). In lying, the speaker intends that the hearer believe what she is stating or implying on the basis of trust: “In lying, a speaker does not intend his audience accept his lie because of independent evidence but intends his audience accept his lie because of his telling it. The motivation for presenting his assertion as sincere is to thereby ensure that an audience treats his intention that the audience believe that p as a reason for believing that p” (Faulkner, 2007, 527) A lie is an untruthful telling. The speaker believes that what she asserts or implies is false, she intends that the hearer believe that what she states or implies is true, she intends that the hearer believe that she intends this, and she intends that this be the reason that the hearer believes that what she states or implies is true: “x’s utterance U to y is a lie if and only if (i) in uttering U, x tells y that p, and (ii) x believes that p is false” (Faulkner 2013, 3103).

Faulkner’s definition of lying also needs to be modified to include cases in which speakers only intend to deceive about their beliefs:

• (L9)To lie =_df to (i) utter some proposition to another person; (ii) believe that the proposition is false; (iii) intend that the other person believe that the proposition is true and is believed to be true [or intend that the other person believe that the proposition is believed to be true]; (iv) intend that the other person believe that it is intended that the other person believe that the proposition is true; (v) intend that the other person believe that the proposition is true and is believed to be true [or intend that the other person believe that the proposition is believed to be true] for the reason that it is intended that the other person believe that the proposition is true. (Faulkner 2007; 2013)