Thursday, December 20, 2012

What is Jennifer Mather Saul reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Jennifer Mather Saul, author of Lying, Misleading, and What is Said: An Exploration in Philosophy of Language and in Ethics.

Her entry begins:
Sadly, being Head of Department doesn't leave me much time at all to read books. Most of the book reading I do these days is reading aloud to my 7-year-old son. He has a taste for the oldies, the really oldies, so it's been (simplified versions of) the Odyssey and Gilgamesh. Watching his reaction makes it clear there's a reason these have stood the test of time. He also has a love of Enid Blyton, a very familiar children's writer for the British, but totally unknown to Americans. As an American ex-pat mother of a child born and raised in the UK, it's a new discovery. Lots of other lefty parents...[read on]
About Lying, Misleading, and What is Said, from the publisher:
Many people (both philosophers and not) find it very natural to think that deceiving someone in a way that avoids lying--by merely misleading--is morally preferable to simply lying. Others think that this preference is deeply misguided. But all sides agree that there is a distinction. In Lying, Misleading, and What is Said, Jennifer Saul undertakes a close examination of the lying/misleading distinction. Saul begins by using this very intuitive distinction to shed new light on entrenched debates in philosophy of language over notions like what is said. Next, she tackles the puzzling but widespread moral preference for misleading over lying, and arrives at a new view regarding the moral significance of the distinction. Finally, Saul draws her conclusions together to examine a range of historically important and interesting cases, from a consideration of modern politicians to the early Jesuits.
Learn more about Lying, Misleading, and What is Said at the Oxford University Press website.

Jennifer Saul is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. She works in Philosophy of Language, Feminist Philosophy and Philosophy of Psychology. She is also the author of Simple Sentences, Substitution, and Intuitions and Feminism: Issues and Arguments.

Writers Read: Jennifer Mather Saul.

--Marshal Zeringue