Liar or Fooled - The Structure of Disputes About Why People Believe.

Abstract

Some disputes are not about what a person claims but about why they hold it — whether the conversionwas conviction or capture, the confession voluntary or coerced, the identity native or induced. This paperassembles the class and argues that its contested variable, the cause of the position, is underdetermined atthe grain disputes are conducted at, for every party including the holder: causal self-report arrives withouta calibrated validity signal, and the observer’s attribution is a construction from her own priors, invisibleto her as such. The pathology follows where stakes demand action. Filing the blank with a hostile verdictis the undisciplined default route from demand to action, and the blank admits two filings — liar (youknow and conceal) and fooled (you do not know, but I do). Both are gradients; a hypothesized ratchetdrives sustained standoffs toward each branch’s sealing pole, where one verdict discounts all testimonyand the other conscripts it, leaving capitulation as its single, under-scrutinized exit. Filing-selection ishypothesized to track perceived incentives. Both hypotheses receive test designs. A five-clause disciplinefollows, with a licensing theory for institutional presumptions and a derivation of the benefit-of-the-doubtprinciple. Mutual bad-faith attribution is derived at second order. Six defeaters are stated.