I do not see why are you even interested in asking that sort of question if you have such a view—surely under such view you will steal if you are sure you will get away with it, just as you would e.g. try to manipulate and lie. edit: I.e. the premise seems incoherent to me. You need honesty to exist for your method to be of any value; and you need honesty not to exist for your method to be harmless and neutral. If the language is all signaling, the most your method will do is weed you out at the selection process—you have yourself already sent the wrong signal that you believe language to be all deception and signaling.
Well, there’s two different questions here… the first is what is in fact true about human communication, and the second is what’s right and wrong.
I might believe, as Xachariah does, that language is fundamentally a mechanism for manipulating the behavior of others rather than for making true statements about the world… and still endorse using language to make true statements about the world, and reject using language to manipulate the behavior of others.
Indeed, if I were in that state, I might even find it useful to assert that language is fundamentally a mechanism for making true statements about the world, if I believed that doing so would cause others to use it that way, even though such an assertion would (by my hypothetical view) be a violation of moral principles I endorse (since it would be using language to manipulate the behavior of others).
I do not see why are you even interested in asking that sort of question if you have such a view—surely under such view you will steal if you are sure you will get away with it, just as you would e.g. try to manipulate and lie. edit: I.e. the premise seems incoherent to me. You need honesty to exist for your method to be of any value; and you need honesty not to exist for your method to be harmless and neutral. If the language is all signaling, the most your method will do is weed you out at the selection process—you have yourself already sent the wrong signal that you believe language to be all deception and signaling.
Well, there’s two different questions here… the first is what is in fact true about human communication, and the second is what’s right and wrong.
I might believe, as Xachariah does, that language is fundamentally a mechanism for manipulating the behavior of others rather than for making true statements about the world… and still endorse using language to make true statements about the world, and reject using language to manipulate the behavior of others.
Indeed, if I were in that state, I might even find it useful to assert that language is fundamentally a mechanism for making true statements about the world, if I believed that doing so would cause others to use it that way, even though such an assertion would (by my hypothetical view) be a violation of moral principles I endorse (since it would be using language to manipulate the behavior of others).