Communication can be risky. Like other kinds of actions, it comes with potential costs. For instance, an utterance can be embarrassing, offensive, or downright illegal. In the face of such risks, speakers tend to act strategically and seek ‘plausible deniability’. In this paper, we propose an account of the notion of deniability at issue. On our account, deniability is an epistemic phenomenon. A speaker has deniability if she can make it epistemically irrational for her audience to reason in certain ways. To avoid predictable confusion, we distinguish deniability from a practical correlate we call ‘untouchability’. Roughly, a speaker has untouchability if she can make it practically irrational for her audience to act in certain ways. These accounts shed light on the nature of strategic speech and suggest countermeasures against strategic speech.

中文翻译：

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关于否认

沟通可能有风险。与其他类型的行动一样，它会带来潜在成本。例如，某句话可能令人尴尬、令人反感或完全违法。面对这样的风险，演讲者往往会采取战略行动并寻求“似是而非的推诿”。在本文中，我们提出了对有争议的可否认性概念的说明。在我们看来，可否认性是一种认知现象。如果一个演讲者能够使她的听众以某些方式进行推理在认知上是非理性的，那么她就具有可否认性。为了避免可预见的混淆，我们将可否认性与我们称之为“贱民”的实际关联区分开来。粗略地说，如果一个演讲者能让她的听众以某些方式行事实际上是非理性的，那么她就是不可接触的。这些叙述阐明了战略言论的本质，并提出了应对战略言论的对策。