1. The size of a lie: from truthlikeness to sincerity.
- Author
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Pepp, Jessica
- Subjects
- *
SINCERITY , *DECEPTION , *INSPIRATION - Abstract
Lies come in different sizes. There are little white lies, slight stretches, exaggerations, fibs, and whoppers. Such terms can reflect different aspects of lies, but one of these is how far a lie is from what the liar really thinks. This paper proposes that this dimension of lie-size reflects a scalar aspect of sincerity. Drawing inspiration from the study of truthlikeness, the paper elucidates this aspect of sincerity, which I call “truthful-likeness”. Truthful-likeness reflects how sincere a reply to a question is, based on how close the speaker takes the reply to be to their best available one. A related measure, expected subjective truth factor, reflects how sincere a constative act that is not a reply to a question is, based on how close to being true the speaker thinks it is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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