Defeating Deception: Detection or Deterrence?

Monday, Nov. 16th 2020, 6 pm – 8 pm

Commentary: Joern Wiengarn

Abstract: According to our folk psychology, deceptive communication--various forms of intentional dishonesty--is common but detectable. And so, to form reliably true beliefs through communication--and so to acquire knowledge-- receivers must reliably detect and not believe deceptive messages. A few philosophers, especially Elizabeth Fricker, have elevated our folk theory to normative epistemology. But what does the psychological literature on deception detection have to say? It appears real-time detection of deception is unreliable. There are no reliable observable cues of deception, and we are poor judges of deception in communication. But does that mean we are significantly misled? Only if deception is common enough, and it looks like it isn't. We are disposed to tell the truth. And despite occasional incentives to deceive, we are deterred often enough to help ensure the reliability of sender's assertive communication. Contemporary psychological research more closely aligns with Thomas Reid's view that (as senders) we are disposed to tell the truth and (as receivers) we are disposed to believe what people say.

Responsible: Prof. Dr. Christine Chwaszcza: Forschungskolloquium Praktische Philosophie. 

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Die 15th Cologne Summer School in Philosophy (CSSiP) mit Thomas Grundmann zu The Epistemology of Philosophy: A Priori - Disagreement - Authority (20. - 24. Juli 2020) wird aufgrund der Covid-19-Pandemie auf das SoSe 2021 verschoben. Ausführliche Informationen zu der Veranstaltung sowie der CSSiP-Reihe gibt es hier. 

Dr. Daniel Gutzmann ist seit März 2017 akademischer Rat a.Z. am Institut für deutsche Sprache und Literatur I. Seine Forschungsgebiete sind die formale Semantik, sowie Pragmatik und Syntax und deren Schnittstellen. Ihn interessieren u.a. sprachliche Phänomene wie expressive Adjektive, Schimpfwörter und Injektionen oder Implikaturen. The Grammar of Expressivity ist seine Habilitationsschrift, die 2019 bei Oxford University Press in der Reihe 'Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics' erschien.

• Gutzmann, Daniel. 2019. The Grammar of Expressivity. (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics 72) Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kai Wehmeier (University of California, Irvine) is one of the leading scholars in philosophical and math. logic, philosophy of logic, philosophy of language, and formal semantics world-wide. He is also an internationally recognized expert in the history of analytic philosophy, especially regarding the work of Gottlob Frege. He has made significant and original contributions to several areas of theoretical analytic philosophy.

1. Logical reconstruction of Gottlob Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik: Wehmeier proved the consistency of a certain fragment of Frege's logical theory, thereby refuting a conjecture by noted Frege scholar Richard Heck. Wehmeier's fragment is the strongest consistent subtheory of Grundgesetze in terms of the complexity of its comprehension axioms; any stronger subtheory falls prey to Russell's antinomy.
2. Identity: Wehmeier has shown that the (putative) binary relation of objectual identity is logically dispensible, and has advanced powerful arguments that such a relation is in fact incoherent. Along the way, he has made surprising discoveries regarding Frege's and Wittgenstein's theories of identity.
3. Modality: Wehmeier has developed a novel system of modal logic (SML) that is able to account for the logical role of the indicative-subjunctive distinction. He has shown that, with SML rather than standard quantified modal logic as the semantic background theory, Kripke's celebrated modal argument against the Russell--Frege theory of proper names fudges the indicative-subjunctive distinction and is therefore fallacious. He has moreover made significant and influential contributions to the study of cross-world predication and to the proper understanding of the actuality operator.
4. Formal Semantics: Refuting a claim by prominent logician Kit Fine, Wehmeier has shown that a Frege-style predicate logic has an elegant compositional semantics and avoids certain fundamental challenges that beset traditional, Tarskian predicate logic, including Fine's own "antinomy of the variable". Extending this result to functional type theory, he has argued that the appearance of quantifiers as intensional operators in traditional systems is a red herring.