Group Assertions and Group Lies

Abstract

[eng] Groups, like individuals, can communicate. They can issue statements, make promises, give advice. Sometimes, in doing so, they lie and deceive. The goal of this paper is to ofer a precise characterisation of what it means for a group to make an assertion and to lie. I begin by showing that Lackey’s infuential account of group assertion is unable to distinguish assertions from other speech acts, explicit statements from implicatures, and lying from misleading. I propose an alternative view, according to which a group asserts a proposition only if it explicitly presents that proposition as true, thereby committing to its truth. This proposal is then put to work to defne group lying. While scholars typically assume that group lying requires (i) a deceptive intent and (ii) a belief in the falsity of the asserted proposition, I ofer a defnition that drops condition (i) and signifcantly broadens condition (ii).