On the nature of indifferent lies, a reply to Rutschmann and Wiegmann

Vladimir Krstić

2020

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DOI 10.1080/09515089.2020.1743255
Data confidence 70 medium
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Abstract

In their paper published in 2017 in Philosophical Psychology, Ronja Rutschmann and Alex Wiegmann introduce a novel kind of lies, the indifferent lies. According to them, these lies are not intended to deceive simply because the liars do not care whether their audience is going to believe them or not. It seems as if indifferent lies avoid the objections raised against other kinds of lies supposedly not intended to deceive. I argue that this is not correct. Indifferent lies, too, are either intended to deceive or are not lies at all, since they do not involve genuine assertions.