Neri Marsili
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Lógica, Historia y Filosofía de la Ciencia, Faculty Member
Universitat de Barcelona, LOGOS - Logic, Language and Cognition Research Group, Postdoctoral Researcher
My research focuses on cooperative (and uncooperative) communication. I write on philosophy of language (in particular philosophical pragmatics), aesthetics (esp. philosophy of literature), epistemology (testimony) and ethics (the nature of norms).
Supervisors: Manuel García Carpintero and Josep Macià
Address: Departament de Lògica, Història i Filosofia de la Ciència
Universitat de Barcelona
Montalegre, 6-8, 4ª planta
08001 Barcelona
Supervisors: Manuel García Carpintero and Josep Macià
Address: Departament de Lògica, Història i Filosofia de la Ciència
Universitat de Barcelona
Montalegre, 6-8, 4ª planta
08001 Barcelona
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Papers by Neri Marsili
In the second part, I test the proposed definition of lying by promising against the intuitions of ordinary language speakers. The results show that, unlike alternative accounts, the proposed definition makes the correct predictions in the cases tested. Furthermore, these results challenge the following necessary conditions for telling a lie with content p: that you have to assert p; that you have to believe that p be false; that p must be false; that you must aim to deceive the addressee about p.
In the second part, I test the proposed definition of lying by promising against the intuitions of ordinary language speakers. The results show that, unlike alternative accounts, the proposed definition makes the correct predictions in the cases tested. Furthermore, these results challenge the following necessary conditions for telling a lie with content p: that you have to assert p; that you have to believe that p be false; that p must be false; that you must aim to deceive the addressee about p.
assertions. The first part considers the issue of defining lying: here,
against a standard view, I argue that a lie need not intend to deceive
the hearer. I define lying as an insincere assertion, and then resort
to speech act theory to develop a detailed account of what an
assertion is, and what can make it insincere.
Even a sincere assertion, however, can be improper (e.g., it can be
false, or unwarranted): in the second part of the thesis, I consider
these kinds of impropriety. An influential hypothesis maintains that
proper assertions must meet a precise epistemic standard, and
several philosophers have tried to identify this standard. After
reviewing some difficulties for this approach, I provide an innovative
solution to some known puzzles concerning this issue. In my view,
assertions purport to aim at truth, but they are not subject to a norm
that requires speakers to assert a proposition only if it is true.
Secondo la definizione “standard”, la menzogna è definita da quattro condizioni necessarie, congiuntamente sufficienti. La prima (condizione dell’asserto) richiede che il parlante proferisca un asserto in una frase dichiarativa dotata di senso compiuto, o qualcosa di equivalente, come dei gesti o dei simboli che possono contare come una frase dichiarativa. La seconda (condizione dell’insincerità), stabilisce che il parlante debba credere falso il contenuto proposizionale del suo asserto, e la terza (condizione dell’interlocutore) richiede che l’asserto sia rivolto a un interlocutore. Secondo l’ultima condizione (condizione dell’intenzione di ingannare), il parlante deve avere l’intenzione di far credere vero all’interlocutore il contenuto proposizionale del suo asserto.
Fra le quattro condizioni necessarie per mentire, quella dell’intenzione di ingannare è la più contestata. Presenterò diversi esempi, in particolare quelli di bluff, doppio bluff, e menzogne sfacciate.
Alla condizione dell’intenzione di ingannare è generalmente contrapposta la definizione della menzogna nei termini di un’asserzione genuina insincera. Un’asserzione genuina è un’asserzione in cui il parlante presenta il contenuto proposizionale dell’asserzione come vero, impegnandosi alla sua verità.
Stabilito che la definizione di menzogna più plausibile è quella avanzata nei termini dell’asserzione insincera, emerge un nuovo problema: come va interpretato il concetto di asserzione? Questa domanda sposta l’accento dall’analisi concettuale all’analisi del linguaggio nei termini di una teoria degli atti linguistici, in un’interfaccia pragmatica. Nel capitolo conclusivo, solleverò alcuni quesiti direttamente connessi a questo mutamento di paradigma: la definizione di cosa sia una menzogna si va a sovrapporre alla questione di quale sia la forza illocutoria e il significato effettivo di una frase. Ne emergerà un modello più completo e complesso, capace di rendere conto dei vari gradi di intensità di questo fenomeno, a differenza della visione dicotomica della definizione “standard” della menzogna, che contrappone genuine bugie a genuine non-bugie. Considerare la menzogna in una prospettiva pragmatica significa riconoscere che esiste un continuum che va della menzogna alla non menzogna, un continuum che non esclude la possibilità di tracciare alcuni confini, ma ammettendo il quale si deve abbandonare l’idea di poter rendere conto del fenomeno con delle definizioni semplici e lapidarie come quelle suggerite nell’ambito dell’analisi concettuale. In questa prospettiva, un motto come “mentire a qualcuno è proferire un asserto insincero con l’intenzione di ingannare” può suonare certo interessante, ma si rivela incapace di rendere conto della complessità del fenomeno e di affrontarne le molteplici sfumature.
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The programme returns for the Spring season with a screening of F for Fake (1973) introduced by Neri Marsili.
'F for Fake'
F for Fake (1974) is a genre-warping, free-form documentary by renowned filmmaker Orson Welles.
Forgeries and Hoaxers
The film revolves around several intertwined storylines about forgeries and hoaxers. It focuses on Elmyr de Hory’s legendary career as an art-forger, narrated by De Hory in person from his Ibiza mansion, where he retired to avoid prison. In this mansion we also encounter de Hory’s equally devious biographer Clifford Irving, who fabricated a successful biography of multimillionaire Howard Hughes. The group of forgers includes Welles himself, author of a hoax that earned him notoriety: a radiophonic re-enactment of the War of the Worlds as an actual newscast, which sparked panic among many listeners.
We will follow Welles as he gleefully reengages with the central preoccupations of his career: the tenuous lines between illusion and reality, between truth and lies; the ephemeral nature of authorship; the duplicitous essence of art, fiction, and communication itself.
true that p, that it is certainly true that p, etc. Epistemic modality markers also influence the illocutionary force of an utterance, reinforcing or mitigating its intensity (Bazzanella, Caffi & Sbisà 1991, Sbisà 2001). Epistemic modality markers can be used in a deceitful way, to omit or hide our uncertainty (or certainty) about the truth of what we say: I will call these phenomena “concealment of certainty” and “concealment of uncertainty” (CoC for both).
In my presentation, I will compare genuine lying and the CoC, in order to clarify if it is possible to lie by means of epistemic modality markers. My analysis will focus on a specific speech act, the act of asserting. Several attempts have been made to provide a definition of lying in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions (cfr. Mahon 2008); many rule out the CoC, while some rule it in. Recently, Fallis (2009) has argued that lying is asserting something that you believe to be false; more precisely, that lying is uttering a believed-false assertion while believing that Grice's first maxim of quality (viz., "Do not say what you believe to be false ") is in effect as a norm of conversation. Fallis’ definition lays the groundwork for my comparison of lying and concealment of uncertainty.
In my view, lying and CoC are easily confused because they are both a deceptive covert violation of a gricean maxim. However, concealing your uncertainty goes against the second rather than the first maxim of quality: “do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence”. I conclude that the CoC does not count as lying: when concealing your uncertainty, you intend to deceive your audience about your degree of confidence in what you say rather than about what you say. Thus, the CoC is to be classified as a borderline case of doxastic misdirection (Fallis 2011) or more broadly as positive deception (Chisholm and Feehan 1997).
List of confirmed speakers:
Marina Terkourafi, Mark Jary, Mikhail Kissine, Tomoyuki Yamada, Gregory Bochner,
F. Ch. Dörge, Neri Marsili, Marcin Lewinski, Leo Townsend, Grzegorz Gaszczyk,
Chloé Muteau-Jaouen, Lucy McDonald, Mitchell Green, Jennifer Hornsby, Claudia Bianchi, Laura Caponetto, Filippo Domaneschi, Paolo Leonardi, Marco Mazzone,
Maciej Witek, Bruno Ambroise, Rae Langton, Bart Geurts.
- assertion and its social effects
- assertion and conversational dynamics
- assertion, presupposition and implicature
- assertion and testimony
- assertion and epistemic injustice
- assertion and its relation to other speech acts
- assertion and its norm(s)
- insincerity, lying and misleading
- epistemic vigilance
- dangerous speech acts (e.g. silencing)
- insulting and hate speech (e.g slurs)
- empirical work on speech acts
Submissions may be in English and Italian, and should include an abstract of no more than 250 words (in English) and 5 keywords (also in English). Submissions must be fully anonymised and prepared for blind review. RIFL provides a Word template for the preparation of the manuscript [Download: http://www.rifl.unical.it/authortemplate/template_eng.doc]. The usage of the template is mandatory.