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In this conclusion, I use graphic satires by the likes of James Gillray, Isaac Cruikshank, and William Dent as a means of both reaffirming and problematizing Sheridan’s ‘theatrical politics’. Sheridan appeared in close to 500 political caricatures during his life, and a survey of these prints—which frequently appropriated the characters and vocabularies of his own plays, of Shakespeare’s works, and of the pantomime—shows how entrenched tensions between the propriety of parliament and the supposed impropriety of the playhouse provided a constant impediment to Sheridan’s political aspirations. The language of drama deployed in caricatures of Sheridan was powerfully charged with particular social and moral values: theatrical politics becomes, in such graphic satire, a lower-class politics of insincerity.

This chapter takes a look at the debate surrounding the proper model of harmonization to select with regards to the consumer law field. It first studies consumer protection in the EU's legislation, and then considers the importance of harmonization within the consumer field. The next section addresses the issue of constitutional insincerity related to the story of ‘spillover’ in the EU. It also discusses maximum and minimum harmonization, the Committee's response to minimum harmonization, and the proposed Directive for consumer rights.

This chapter teases out some key theoretical issues relating to the scope, ethics, and situated analysis of insincerity, as one of the two faces of untruthfulness. It begins by grounding sincerity in an indispensable human need for trust and cooperation and notes how insincerity can breach trust. It then gives arguments for why the TRUST framework does not focus on deception. Grice’s implicature is considered fundamental to understanding insincerity within a framework of communicative cooperation, but his sincerity maxim unnecessarily narrows its scope. Instead, insincerity is viewed as the disruption of inquiry. By drawing on a psychological account of how untruthfulness works in situated discursive practice, the chapter argues that the concept of insincerity needs to be extended to cases of “editing out” where there is no textual clue to omission. This broadened conception of insincerity, which subsumes misleading and lying under withholding, is termed discursive insincerity.

This chapter sets out a framework for analyzing insincere discourse strategies. Though not equivalent, there is sufficient overlap between insincerity and deception to begin by considering typologies of deception based on Grice’s Cooperative Principle and the speaker’s communicative intentions and goals. However, the chapter argues for an approach to insincere discourse based on a number of communicative variables relating to pursuit of inquiry. Accordingly, the underlying insincere discourse strategy is considered to be withholding (failing to disclose what you believe you should disclose), while misleading involves linguistically leading the interlocutor astray with regard to that concealed knowledge either by suggestion (misleading without lying) or explicit assertion (lying). The insincere discourse strategies may be realized through sub-strategies (e.g., omitting, evading, and blocking) or more general pragmatic tactics (e.g., equivocating and falsely implicating). Insincere discourse becomes unethical or wrong when it is willful (i.e., it breaches trust and is not justifiably suspended).

Chapter 3 focuses on the first two steps of the TRUST untruthfulness heuristic: CLAIM and EVIDENCE. It begins by noting four principal rational motives for calling out lies and bullshit (confession, detection, self-contradiction, and falsification), but stresses that in the majority of cases one relies primarily on falsification. This is problematic because Chapters 1 and 2 stress that both discursive insincerity and epistemic irresponsibility are subjective rather than objective notions. The reliance on falsification as a starting point for analysis restricts the application of the framework primarily to “factually significant” and “falsifiable” claims. A distinction is made between “salty-type” statements that invite further investigation and “tasty-type” statements that invite agreement or disagreement but not further investigation. Only “salty-type” claims are open to a TRUST analysis. Finally, the challenge of anti-realism is taken up, and it is argued that there is more consensus about evidence than the “truth wars” would suggest.

This chapter summarizes the main analytical moves in the TRUST heuristic for analyzing untruthfulness. It then applies the heuristic to three short texts that have been widely called out as lies: Trump’s tweet about large-scale voter fraud just before the 2016 presidential elections; the “Brexit Battle Bus” claim that the United Kingdom sent £350 million per week to the European Union; and Tony Blair’s 2002 statement to Parliament about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. The cases share a common theme: the capacity of untruthful public discourse to undermine democratic legitimacy by, respectively, questioning the integrity of electoral procedures, harming the capacity of voters to make a rational choice, and undermining faith in the rational and responsible deliberation of one’s leaders. The chapter troubles the simple attribution of lying in these cases and shows how a TRUST analysis can lead to a deeper understanding of the types and ethical value of untruthfulness.

This chapter demonstrates an alternative “holistic” method of TRUST analysis in which the focus is not on individual claims or short sections of text with a few related claims, but on the general manifestation of untruthfulness with respect to a particular case. The chapter provides an extensive analysis of multiple claims regarding the poisoning of the Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England, in March 2018. It opens with the prime minister’s short statement to Parliament just after the attack, which superficially but confusingly reminds us of Blair’s Preface, but this is used as a springboard for exploring various types of untruthful discourse that have emerged in relation to this international crisis. The framework thus becomes a way of structuring a much broader analysis of untruthfulness in international discourse. The study also demonstrates very clearly the role of social media in promoting epistemic partisanship.

This chapter addresses consent and estoppel, raising questions about their meaning, implications, and justification. It disentangles various bases on which one could lose the right to redress for a civil wrong. One such basis is that an individual actually or apparently consented to conduct an act that would, but for consent, be wrongful. But this chapter cautions that it is important to recognize that apparent consent is not a form of consent. Another basis upon which a right to redress can be lost is where an underlying primary right is deemed forfeited though the right-holder’s insincere act, as where duty-holders are duped into committing a wrong because the “victim” seeks a valued remedy. Finally, this chapter explains that the overbroad rubric of estoppel conceals at least three other distinct bases on which the exercise of a right to redress may be varied or suspended.

This introductory chapter first offers a sketch of the history of philosophical thinking about lying and insincerity. It traces some of the themes in this literature in the works of Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, early modern casuists, David Hume, Thomas Reid, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill, through to twentieth-century philosophy. The chapter highlights some of the issues discussed in the contemporary literature, as represented in this collection of essays. It then presents an overview of the essays included in this volume. Some comments on the connections between them are offered, as well as on their relation to the historical debate.

This chapter investigates the conflict between thought and speech that is inherent in lying: the conflict of saying what you think is false. Traditionally, this is analyzed in terms of saying something and believing that it is false. But cases of unconscious or divided belief challenge these analyses. Amendments involving assent instead of belief fare no better. Attempts to save these analyses by appeal to guises or modes of presentation will also run into trouble. Alternative approaches to untruthfulness are considered. Two new kinds of case are introduced, “truth serum” and “liar serum” cases. Consideration of these cases reveals structural problems with intention- and expectation-based approaches also. The cases suggest that saying what you think is false, or being untruthful, is no less difficult and interesting a subject for analysis than lying itself. The discussion illuminates how the study of lying intertwines with issues in the nature of intentional action.

This chapter is concerned with the question, what are the conditions under which insincerity blocks testimonial knowledge and what are the conditions under which testimonial knowledge may be acquired in the face of insincere testimony? The chapter argues that when insincerity blocks testimonial knowledge, the insincerity involved is a kind of unreliability. In particular, insincere testimony—in particular, lying—is seen to involve fabrication, that is, making something up. It is argued that acquiring testimonial knowledge requires that the testimony be given on a reliable basis. Yet fabrication is not a reliable basis for testimony, and hence this explains why lying testimony typically does not yield testimonial knowledge. By contrast, the chapter shows that, in cases where listeners acquire testimonial knowledge from insincere testifiers, the testimony is given on a reliable basis.

This chapter discusses insincerity in light of the fact that many beliefs and intentions are non-transparent. First, for some mental states, one may be in such states without believing that one is. Second, for some mental states, one may believe that one is in such states without being in them. The chapter introduces the difference between deep and shallow conceptions of insincerity. On deep views, insincerity depends on attitudes that may be unconscious, while on shallow views, insincerity depends on one’s conscious mental attitudes. By considering examples involving conflict between what is said and the speaker’s beliefs about her beliefs, the chapter argues that the appropriate attitude to focus on is mental assent, which is an act of conscious judging as the result of consideration.

This chapter argues for a shallow conception of insincerity. It argues that whether an utterance is insincere depends on the speaker’s conscious attitudes toward what is communicated as well as on his or her conscious intentions in making the utterance. Various ways of speaking spontaneously and of speaking without thinking are considered. A broad characterization of insincerity for declarative utterances is set out, according to which a declarative utterance is when it is made without a conscious intention to contribute an answer to a question under discussion that corresponds to one’s conscious attitudes, while avoiding communicating false information in the process.

In 1979, China invaded Vietnam’s northern border area, then after a month unilaterally withdrew. This was the opening blow of a decade-long effort to punish Vietnam for a series of moves unacceptable to Beijing. After defeating the Americans in 1975, Communist-ruled united Vietnam allied with the Soviet Union. Vietnam invaded Cambodia to oust the pro-Chinese Khmer Rouge communist regime, ignoring China’s role as protector of Cambodia. Hanoi violated agreements with Beijing regarding the status of ethnic Chinese in Vietnam, eventually forcing many to flee the country. In the South China Sea, Hanoi asserted ownership of the Paracel and Spratly Islands—claims it had not voiced during the long struggle against the Americans, when Hanoi needed Chinese support. For Beijing, Hanoi’s policies involved insincerity, ingratitude, and duplicity. Beijing’s goal was to teach Hanoi that it could not continually trample on China’s interests.

This chapter extends the analysis of insincere language use from the last chapter to non-declarative utterances, including imperative, interrogative, and exclamative utterances. It argues that such utterances communicate information about the speaker’s attitudes. The chapter offers an account of insincerity in the non-declarative realm that is shallow. On this view, a non-declarative utterance is insincere when it is made without a conscious intention to avoid communicating information not matching the speaker’s conscious attitudes. A notion of a communicative act is defined, and the chapter argues that only such acts can be evaluated as insincere or not. A framework for understanding the semantics and pragmatics of non-declarative clause types is sketched and the chapter shows how it explains why non-declaratives cannot be used to lie.