Sincerity and promises

It seems that for a promise to be sincere, you have to intend to keep it.

But this is false. Suppose you offer to lend me a microscope upon my promise to return it to you when you ask. I know that if I make the promise, then as soon as you ask me for the microscope’s return, your request will remind me of the promise, and I will fulfill it. So, I make the promise. Given that I know I will keep it, I am being sincere. But I don’t need to clutter my mind by forming any intention to keep the promise or to return the microscope.

So perhaps for a promise to be sincere, you need to believe you will keep it.

But this, too, is false. Suppose you’re my accountability partner and I promise to stop drinking, and suppose this is a promise I have broken so many times that I believe that I won’t keep it. But I intend to keep it. And you know my track record, so there is no deception. Again, I think there is no sincerity.

But if sincerity in promising needs neither the intention to keep the promise nor the belief that one will do so, what does it need? Perhaps the disjunction: I need to believe or intend (or, best, both). But normally I prefer to avoid disjunctive accounts.

Let’s think some more and go back to the accountability partner case. If you know my track record, you won’t count on my not drinking. For instance, you aren’t going to vouch for my sobriety to others, you won’t trust me around your liquor cabinet, etc. But suppose you didn’t know my track record. You just heard my promise and counted on it, vouching for me to others, etc. In that case, if I drink, you have two grounds for resentment: that I broke my promise and that I deceived you, leading you to count on good behavior I did not actually expect.

Here is what I think is going on. Normally, when I make you a promise, I do two things:

1. I obligate myself to you to perform the action, and

2. I testify to you that I will perform the action.

And I can betray you in either or both respects: I can break my obligation and I can testify falsely.

In the accountability partner case, in the presence of shared knowledge of my track record, the testimony about future behavior that normally comes along with a promise is canceled. In that case, all I do is I obligate myself to you. I expect to break that obligation, but I have good reason to undertake the obligation, namely that the probability that I will stay sober increases (though not enough to justify belief) because I will have an additional reason—my promise to you—to do so. (I think one needs the Principle of Double Effect here. My intended effect is an increased chance of staying sober. The unintended—indeed, counterintended—but foreseen effect is my breaking a promise to you.)

That still doesn’t answer the question of what the sincerity conditions are.

Here is one suggestion. Sincerity only concerns (2), the testimony aspect. In cases where the testimony is canceled, whether explicitly or implicitly (say, in light of shared knowledge), there is no sincerity condition on promising at all. There is only the creation of an obligation.

That doesn’t sound quite right. It seems that if I make a promise to an accountability partner who knows the dismal track record of such promises, I am still being insincere if I don’t intend to keep the promise. But what if the case is really weird, so that I am more likely to keep the promise if I don’t intend to do so when making it? (E.g., maybe I know that there is a neuroscientist who is going to observe my brain and if she detects that I am intending to keep the promise at the moment of making it, she will erase my memory of the promise, while if I don’t intend to keep it, the promise will still come to mind in my moments of temptation and make it less unlikely that I will stay sober.)

Maybe what is going on is this. When the testimony to future performance is canceled, it is normally replaced by an implicit testimony to the intention of future performance (or perhaps an implicature of such an intention?). So in the special case of promises to accountability partners who expect failure, one is deceiving the other party if one lacks the intention to keep the promise. And in the contrived cases where the intention would make it less likely that one would keep the promise, one should take the further step of informing the other party that one is not even intending to keep the promise.

I like the way that this story makes the accountability partner case be different from the standard case of a promise. I also like the modularity on this story. Promises normally have two ingredients, the exercise of a normative power to create an obligation, and testimony to future actions. We already knew that the second ingredient can occur without the first—mere predictions of one’s future actions are like that. It’s rather nice, then, that the first ingredient can also occur without the second.

I don’t know if the above story can be reconciled with the promise account of assertion. If not, so much the worse for the promise account of assertion.

A puzzle about testimony

You weigh a bag of marbles on a scale that you have no information about the accuracy of, and the scale says that the bag weighs 342 grams. If you have no background information about the bag of marbles, your best estimate of the weight of the bag is 342 grams. It would be confused to say: "I should discount for the unreliability of the scale and take my best estimate to be 300 grams." For if one has no information about the scale's accuracy, one should not assume that the scale is more likely to overestimate than to underestimate by a given amount. So far so good. Now, suppose that instead of your using the scale, you give me the bag, I hold it in my hand, and say: "That feels like 340 grams." Again, your best estimate of the weight will now be 340 grams. You don't know whether I am apt to overestimate or underestimate, so it's reasonable to just go with what I said.

But now consider a different case. You have no background information about my epistemic reliability and you have no evidence regarding a proposition p, but I inform you that I have some relevant evidence and I estimate the weight of that evidence at 0.8. It seems that the same argument as before should make you estimate the weight of the evidence available to me at 0.8. But that's all the evidence available right now to either of us, so you should thus assign a credence of 0.8 to p. But the puzzle is that this is surely much too trusting. Given no information about my reliability, you would surely discount, maybe assigning a credence of 0.55 (but probably not much less). Yet, doesn't the previous argument go through? I could be overestimating the weight of the evidence. But I could also be underestimating it. By discounting the probability, you are overestimating the probability of the denial of p, and that's bad.

There is, however, a difference between the weight of evidence and the weight of marbles. The weight of marbles can be any positive real number. And if we take really seriously the claim that there is no background information about the marbles, it could be a negative number as well. So we can reasonably say that I or the scale could equally be mistaken in the upward or the downward direction. However, if we know anything about probabilities, we know that they range between 0 and 1. So my estimate of 0.8 has more possibilities of being an overestimate than of being an underestimate. It could, for instance, be too high by 0.3, with the correct estimate of the weight of my evidence being 0.5, but it couldn't be too low by 0.3 for then the correct estimate would be 1.1. We can, thus, block the puzzling argument for trust. Though that doesn't mean the conclusion of the argument is wrong.

Why faith in the testimony of others is loving: Notes towards a thoroughly ethical social epistemology

Loving someone has three aspects: the benevolent, the unitive and the appreciative. (I develop this early on in One Body.) Believing something and gaining knowledge on the testimony of another teaching involves all three aspects of love.

Appreciation: If I believe you on testimony, then I accept you as a person who speaks honestly and reasons well. It is a way of respecting your epistemic achievement. This does not mean that a failure to accept your testimony is always unappreciative. I may appreciate you, but have good reason to think that the information you have received is less complete than mine.

Union: Humans are social animals, and our sociality is partly constituted by our joint epistemic lives. To accept your testimony is to be united with you epistemically.

Benevolence: Excelling at our common life of learning from and teaching one another is a part of our flourishing. If I gain knowledge from you, you thereby flourish as my teacher. Thus by learning from you, I benefit not only myself as learner but I benefit you by making you a successful teacher.

We learn from John Paul II's philosophical anthropology that we are essentially givers and accepters of gifts. In giving, epistemically and otherwise, we are obviously benevolent, but also because it is the human nature to be givers, in grateful acceptance of a gift we benefit, unite with and affirm the giver, thereby expressing all three aspects of love.

Inferring an "is" from an "ought"

You tell me that you saw a beautiful sunset last night. I conclude that you saw a beautiful sunset last night. You are talking about Mother Teresa. I conclude that you won't say that she was a sneaky politician. You promise to bake a pie for the party tomorrow. I conclude that you will bake a pie for the party tomorrow or you will have a good reason for not doing so. I tell a graduate student to read a page of Kant for next class. I conclude that she will read a page of Kant for next class or will have a good reason for not doing so.

All of these are inferences of an "is" from an "ought". You ought to refrain from telling me you saw a beautiful sunset last night, unless of course you did see one. You ought not say that Mother Teresa was a sneaky politician, as she was not. You ought not fail to bake the promised cake, unless you have good reason. The student ought not fail to read the Kant, unless she has good reason.

All of these are of a piece. We have prima facie reason to conclude from the fact that something ought to be so that it is so. In particular, belief on testimony is a special case of the is-from-ought inference.

In a fallen world, all of these inferences are highly defeasible. But defeasible or not, they carry weight. And there is a virtue—both moral and intellectual—that is exercised in giving these inferences their due weight. We might call this virtue (natural) faith or appropriate trust. We also use the term "charity" to cover many of the cases of the exercise of this virtue: To interpret others' actions in such ways as make them not be counterinstances to the is-from-ought inference is to charitably interpret them, and we have defeasible reason to do so.

The inference may generalize outside the sphere of human behavior. A sheep ought to have four legs. Sally is a sheep. So (defeasibly) Sally has four legs.

I used to think that testimony was epistemically irreducible. I am now inclined to think it is reducible to the is-from-ought inference. Seeing it as of a piece with other is-from-ought inferences is helpful in handling testimonial-like evidence that is not quite testimony. For instance, hints are not testimony strictly speaking, but an inference from a hint is relevantly like an inference from testimony. We can say that an inference from a hint is a case of an is-from-ought inference, but a weaker one because the "ought" in the case of a hint is ceteris paribus weaker than the "ought" in the case of assertion. Likewise, inference from an endorsement of a person to the person's worthiness of the endorsement is like inference from testimony, but endorsement of a person is not the same as testimony (I can testify that a person is wonderful without endorsing the person, and I can endorse a person without any further testimony). Again, inference from endorsement is a special case of is-from-ought: one ought not endorse those who are not worthy of endorsement.

If is-from-ought is a good form of inference, the contraposition may-from-is will also be a good form of inference. If someone is doing something, we have reason to think she is permitted to do it. Of course, there are many, many defeaters.

It is an interesting question whether the is-from-ought inference is at all plausible apart from a view like theism or Plato's Platonism on which the world is ultimately explanatorily governed by values. There may be an argument for theism (or Plato's Platonism!) here.

Alibis and lies

This is an attempt at a reformulation of a line of thought from this post.

Suppose a close friend of mine is accused of a capital crime.  The case against my friend is extremely strong, indeed strong enough to convict him, except for one thing.  My friend was with me when the crime was committed, at a location far from the crime.  I am the only witness to this fact.  My innocent friend's life depends on whether I am believed when I say that he was with me at the crucial time.

Now, suppose I am the sort of person who would lie to save an innocent close friend from execution.  Then my affirming the alibi is worthless.  If, on the other hand, I am the sort of person who is known to refrain from lying even if it were to save an innocent close friend from execution, my truthful witness may save my friend.  And if I am a loose cannon, with it not known whether I would or would not lie, my witness may or may not be sufficient.

So in cases like this, there is a significant benefit from being the sort of person who is known to refrain from lying even if an innocent friend's life is at stake.

Of course, such cases are rare and extreme.  But so are cases of the sort brought up by the defenders of lying.  It is very rare that one is hiding Jews and Gestapo officers come and ask whether one is hiding any Jews.  Most of us aren't hiding any innocents from unjust law enforcement (it may be different for readers of the blog in repressive countries--my heart goes out to any such), and few unjust law enforcement officers bother to ask if one is hiding an innocent except in order to have another charge against you if you say "No" and they find you were lying after searching your home anyway.

This makes it plausible that having a character willing to lie to save an innocent life is not actually beneficial in terms of saving lives.  Or, at least, it is far from clear that it is beneficial--while the benefits of being known for unwavering honesty are significant (think of how one's letters of recommendation get treated).

Objection 1: What about another sort of case, though?  You know your friend is innocent because you know his character in ways that won't convince the court, but he has no alibi, so you make one up.  Aren't cases like that just as common as ones where you're the only witness to his innocence?

I don't know how common such cases are.  But I think people's judgment of their friends' innocence tends to be flawed when that judgment is based on character rather than on eyewitness observations.  So a willingness to make up alibis for people whom one thinks one knows to be innocent is not a good thing to have.

Objection 2: Perhaps one could have a character known to be willing to lie to save an innocent's life, except under oath.  Such a character would be good enough to save one's friend's life.

Maybe, but not always.  It might well be that it's really important to keep one's friend out of court altogether (maybe the local court is likely to be biased against him), and hence to convince the police of one's friend's innocence before the matter comes to court.  And one doesn't want one's friends to have the experience of being tried for a capital crime.

Furthermore, in practice it may be hard for third-parties to know what one would or would not be willing to do under oath.  Most of us are very rarely under oath.  People's judgments of our trustworthiness under oath are going to be based on our trustworthiness not under oath.

Besides which, Jesus tells us to behave without an oath just as we would under oath, or so I read the following:

But I say to you, do not swear at all; not by heaven, for it is God’s throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your head, for you cannot make a single hair white or black. Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.  (Matthew 5:34-37)

The promise theory of assertion

I am not claiming that this theory is correct. But it seems to generate all the right normative predictions. Observe that there is no way to reduce the illocutionary force of promises to that of assertions. To promise is not just to assert that one will do something or that one intends to do something or anything like that. But there appears to be a way to reduce the illocutionary force of assertions to that of promises.

I can promise to do all sorts of things For instance, I can promise to raise my right hand only when my left ear itches. Among the things I can promise is the making of an utterance. For instance, I can promise that I will only utter "I am bored" on Saturday afternoons. I shall use "utter" in a way that does not imply assertion: when one asserts "I am bored", one also utters it, but one can utter it without asserting it. One can utter it in denial. (A: Tell me something false. B: I am bored.) One can utter it as an example of a sentence when teaching a language. One can utter it on stage. Etc.

The basic theory is that the normative effect of asserting s is exactly the same as the normative effect of:

1. I promise to next utter only something true. s.

Here, the "s" is not an assertion, but a mere utterance, like when one uses a sentence as an example. More strongly (and some of what I say below applies to that strengthening), we can take every assertion of "s" to be contextual shorthand for something like (1), where "s" is explicitly uttered, and the promise is implicit in the tone of voice, context, etc.

If you are drawn to belief, justified belief or knowledge norms of assertion, replace "true" with "believed by me", "justifiedly believed by me" or "known by me" in (1). This will lose you some of what the theory can do for you, but it may still be a better theory than other theories of assertion.

The promise theory of assertion explains why it's typically morally wrong to assert something one doesn't believe. For if one doesn't believe that s is true, in making the promise in (1) while intending it to be followed by s, one is making a promise that one intends to break. Thus, we also get a reduction of the moral wrongness of lying to the moral wrongness of insincere promising.

Next consider retraction. Here it matters that we have "true" instead of one of the doxastic or epistemic things in (1). Observe that there are multiple kinds of cases where an apology is called for in a promise, including these:

2. I promised to A, never intending to A.
3. I promised to A, I failed to A, and I was culpable because I was not justified in believing that I was in fact Aing when I wasn't.
4. I promised to A, I failed to A, but I wasn't culpable because I justifiedly believed that I was in fact Aing when I wasn't.
5. I promised to A, and then I acted in a way that I didn't know was fulfillment of the promise.
6. I promised to A, I did A, but I shouldn't have promised or done A, because promising and doing A was bad for some other reason.

The kind of apology is different in these cases. For instance, in cases 2, 3 and 6, I offer something more like a mea culpa. In case 4, I offer something closer to an "excuse me". What I offer in case 5 depends on further details. Taking (1) to be equivalent to asserting "s", the above cases yield the following cases where apology is needed for assertion:

7. I asserted "s", not intending to assert something true. (This divides into two subtypes. On one subtype, I intended to assert something that I believed false—this correponds to intending to do something that one believes to be a breaking of the promise while making the promise. On the other subtype, I simply didn't care about truth and falsity, which is BS, and that corresponds to simply failing to intend to keep the promise one is making.)
8. I asserted "s", but "s" was false, and I was culpable because I was not justified in believing that "s" is true.
9. I asserted "s", but "s" was false, but I wasn't culpable because I was justified in believing that "s" is true.
10. I asserted "s", but I didn't know that "s" was true.
11. I asserted "s", but I shouldn't have said "s", even though "s" is true, but I shouldn't have asserted "s", because asserting "s" was bad for some other reasons. (E.g., it was the revealing of privileged information.)

Retraction on this view is a form of apology. One has at least two reasons for apologizing for not keeping a promise: one is to express an appropriate form of regret (different in the difference cases) and the other is to inform the other that the promise wasn't kept (the other could have relied on it). Exact analogues hold for assertion.

Dan Johnson points out to me that the above lets one accommodate the insights behind norms of assertion other than truth, by giving a variety of modes of assertion failure, which modes fit with the failure to act in accordance with these modified norms. I don't think one can do this if one replaces "true" in (1) with anything epistemic, so (1) with "true" is the best version.

Here now is an interesting consequence. If someone I justifiedly trust promises to do something, I have reason to believe that she will do it. The present account implies that if someone I justifiedly trust asserts something, I have reason to believe that the assertion is true. For she has promised to utter only something true, and so when I learn that she has uttered "s", I have reason to believe that "s" is true. So trust in testimony reduces to trust in promises.

The account predicts that just as there are varying strengths of promises, there will be strengths of assertion. This prediction is borne out. Further analysis is needed to see how to flesh out the parallel strengths. And we can take the colloquial form of assertion "I promise you that p" as a shorthand for a stronger version of (1).

Likewise, denial can be handled very similarly: a denial involves a promise to utter something false.

Miscellaneous thoughts on lying

1. Self-help book idea: A Year Without a Lie.

2. A number of vices in some sense require a willingness to lie. One can't really commit adultery without being willing to lie. Here the "can't" is of a restricted prudential rationality. For instance, in many cases one can't cheat on one's taxes without either lying (writing down a falsehood on a tax return) or at least being willing to lie (destroying records and not filing, while planning to lie about the destruction should one get an audit). It would probably be hard to be an unscrupulous politician without a willingness to lie.

An absolute unwillingness to lie will keep one from a number of vices. What about a merely prima facie unwillingness? An unwillingness to lie unless by lying one prevents a great evil? Well, psychologically speaking, such an unwillingness is likely to be weaker. Moreover, such a conditional unwillingness is unlikely to keep one from lying to one's spouse if one commits adultery since one is likely to think that by so lying one is preventing a great evil—especially if one has children. Similarly, it may not keep one from lying to a tax auditor, since a tax fraud conviction may result in a great evil to oneself and one's family. So there is reason to adopt an absolute unwillingness to lie in order to keep oneself from other vices.

3. There is a value in being the sort of person who can be trusted no matter what. If one is known to conscientiously follow the rule not to lie unless by lying one prevents a great evil, then before relying on one's testimony, others may have to try to figure out whether one might not think one is preventing a great evil, and this will lower the value of one's testimony.

Then there will be circumstances in which one's testimony is of no weight, and yet it is of vital importance that one's testimony have weight. Suppose, for instance, that I believe that my friend is innocent of murder. I testify to the court: "He spent the evening with me, talking about Spinoza." Suppose all the other evidence is against my friend. If I am the sort of person who lies to prevent great evils, then I am the sort of person who would provide a friend whom I believe to be innocent with a false alibi under those circumstances, because I would thereby be preventing the great evil of his being falsely convicted—indeed, his life might be stake. Therefore, for my testimony to carry the weight that it is desparately important for it to carry, I have to be believed to be the sort of person who wouldn't lie even to save one's friend from what I believe to be an unjust murder conviction.

Or, for a more common case, consider an innocent wife who is asked by a jealous husband whether she was faithful to him. If she is known to follow the rule of not lying unless lying prevents a great evil, her testimony to her innocence is of little worth, because quite possibly a great evil would be prevented by her lying if she were unfaithful. But it is crucially important that her testimony be believed, and this requires that she be known to follow the rule of not lying simpliciter.

Now, granted, such cases may be rare. But I think they are no rarer than the cases where lying is needed to prevent a great evil, and in fact they are more common. Here's a handwaving argument for this. Both kinds of cases are a species of this situation: It prevents a great evil if one's interlocutor comes to believe that p. But it seems unlikely that most species of this situation are such that in fact p is false. There are two views on the matter that one might hold. One might think that this situation occurs just as often with p false as with p true. But a more correct view of this is that true belief is somewhat more likely to be beneficial to society than false belief. If so, then a majority (though perhaps a modest one) of cases of this situation are ones where in fact p is true. (To get the desired conclusion from this, one has to either assume that that the speaker knows whether p, or, more weakly, that the speaker is more likely to be right about p than to be wrong about p.)

So it is at least as important, and likely more important, that one be believed no matter what than that one be able to lie to prevent great evils.

Therefore, it is a good thing to be such as to be believed to be unwilling to lie, no matter what. But the best way to ensure that one is believed to have that sort of character is to have that sort of character. Moreover, if one fails to have that sort of character, but pretends to do so, such a constant pretence is likely to be harmful to one's character. And it is unlikely that someone who constantly pretends to have a character other than she does is going to be the sort of person whom people believe no matter what. Therefore, there is good reason—even good consequentialist reason—to adopt an absolute unwillingness to lie.

4. The above points apply particularly strongly to Christians because it is particularly crucial that people believe our testimony about Christ. We believe, after all, that whether people have faith in Christ affects their eternal well-being. Thus, whenever we speak with someone about Christ, this is a situation where a great evil and a great good are at stake in our testimony being trusted.

Suppose that I thought it was acceptable to lie to prevent great evils. Then if I have an atheist friend who trusted me, I might well conclude that the right thing for me to do is to testify to having seen some miracle that I haven't in fact seen. (I might try to limit the extent of the lie, for instance by choosing some miracle that I read about and that I believe happened, and lying only about whether I myself had witnessed it.) But of course if I am known to be the sort of person who lies to prevent great evils, my atheist friend would have no reason to trust me. On the other hand, if I am known to be the sort of person who would not lie even to save someone from eternal damnation (not that one's words literally do that—but they may in some way contribute, because God's grace works through them), then if I tell my atheist friend that I have seen something miraculous (not that any of the miracles that I've seen are going to be that convincing to the atheist, since they're all miracles of the beauty of nature, and miracles of moral transformation in myself—I am a sinner in a bad way, but you should just think what I'd have been like without Christ!), my friend may very well believe me. And likewise if I testify to less overtly miraculous things.

The above also gives the Christian reason to believe responsibly—this may or may not imply evidentialism.

Lies, deception, testimony and faith

One of the routes to being epistemically justification that p is true is to be told by a reliable reporter that p. This is justification by testimony. On the other hand, I might be told something by you and not accept it as testimony, but instead treat the fact that you told it to me as evidence, doing a Bayesian update of my credences based on the fact that you said the thing. If I treat your saying that p in this way, my credence that p may go up and may go down (e.g., if I think you're lying so that your asserting that p makes it more likely that p is false). Moreover, there is a difference between accepting your testimony and taking your assertion of p to be evidence for the truth of p. I want to focus on this difference, and say a few things about the difference between lying and deception.

The first point I want to make is that I can only take your assertion that p is true to be testimony if either you made the assertion to me, or I stand at the end of a chain where you told it to A₁, A₁ told it to A₂, and so on, until we get to someone who told it to me. Suppose that instead I stand in no such chain. Instead, I overhear your saying that p to B. Then I cannot properly accept p as testimony, since you were not speaking to me. That you asserted p to B is evidence for p, if I think it is likely you were telling the truth to B, but it is not testimony to me. Testimony is at least a ternary relation: A testifies that p to B (where B might be an individual or a group). If I am not testified to, I cannot properly believe on testimony.

Here's one reason. It is perfectly permissible to speak in ways that your interlocutor understands but which others will misunderstand. You do have a responsibility to ensure your interlocutor will not misunderstand. If you have a foreign vegan guest whom you know to think that the English word "egg" denotes a kind of plant (eggplant, say), you are neglecting not just your hostly responsibilities but your responsibilities as a speaker in saying: "This dish is made of egg." In fact, you are lying—in speaking, you are inviting your guest to take your words as testimony to the dish being made of a kind of a plant. You are giving false witness.

When we speak we have a responsibility not to be misunderstood by an interlocutor, and the interlocutor in turn gain the right—barring defeaters—to take what she thinks you've said as true. This right is tied to the responsibility. But when I overhear your asserting p to B, you have no responsibility to ensure my understanding you—your only responsibility is to ensure that B understands. Thus you do not confer on me the right to take what I think you've said as true.

Suppose this is right. Assume that you know that George is at Mark's house, but want to mislead me. You are talking with Frank and notice that I am listening in (maybe I am behind the arras, and you hear a rustle). You tell Frank: "George is at Jennifer's house", but you do so with a wink that ensures Frank doesn't take your words as literal truth. I don't see the wink, of course, so I come to have evidence that George is at Jennifer's house. But you haven't lied to me. You haven't lied to me because you weren't speaking to me, though you expected me to hear. Your properly speakerly responsibilities were to Frank, and these you fulfilled.

Note, too, that it may be that you are not even intending that I believe George is at Jennifer's house. It could be that you are merely intending that I take myself to have evidence for George's being at Jennifer's house. (This point is based on an idea of Mark Murphy's.) And in intending this, you are intending that I believe something true, viz., that I have evidence for George's being at Jennifer's house. My believing this is likely all you need for your purposes, since whether I actually believe on the evidence or not, presumably the presence of the evidence will get me to look for George at Jennifer's house, if I want to find him.

I once read in an early 20th century moral theology textbook (Smith, I think) that someone who is tortured and says something false is no more lying than an actor on stage, because she is not really engaging in the practice of assertion, but is uttering words more like a madman (I am very loosely paraphrasing the main idea from memory). Here is one way of saying something like this in the above setting. If I am torturing you, you shouldn't expect me to take your words as testimony. Instead, you would expect me to take your words as your way of saying whatever it takes to get the pain to stop. Thus if you say something that is false, you are not offering me testimony, but simply bringing it about that I have evidence of the Bayesian, not testimonial, sort.

In summary, here are some claims that I suspect are true, though I have not given much of an argument for many, or perhaps any, of them:

• Lying is not just deceitful or misleading speech. It is speech that provides (or maybe: is intended to provide) false testimony to the person being lied to. When you are not providing testimony to me, e.g., because you are not talking to me, you are not lying to me.
• It is a speaker's responsibility not to be misunderstood by the interlocutors.
• There is a difference between being known to be a listener and being spoken to, and only someone spoken to can be lied to.
• Credences should be differently updated on testimony than on evidence.
• There is an epistemic virtue, which I will call "the doxastic aspect of faith", which is the virtue of appropriately updating on testimony.
• Presumably, demons believe many claims made by Jesus, because they have evidence that Jesus is God and that God does not lie. However, this need not be the same as even the doxastic aspect of faith, because it may be that the demons are updating on Jesus's words considered as evidence, and not as testimony directed to them. Likewise, it would be possible for a human being to come to believe that what Jesus said on some topic is true without having even the doxastic aspect of faith in Jesus.