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Can privacy be diminished by falsehoods?

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: It is widely presumed that privacy is ‘factive’, i.e. that it cannot be diminished by accessing or disseminating falsehoods. But if this is so, what wrongs are committed in cases where others access documents of ours (letters, medical records, etc.) which contain false information? In this article, I examine various ways of explaining the wrongfulness of accessing and dissemination falsehoods (defamation; that privacy can be violated without being diminished; ‘control’ accounts of privacy; downstream revelations of truths; that falsehoods diminish ‘propositional’ or ‘attentional’ privacy). I lay out what each of these accounts misses about accessing falsehoods, about privacy, and/or about the right to privacy. I then propose two alternative ways of accounting for the intuitive wrongfulness of accessing and disseminating falsehoods: viewing them as merely ‘attempted’ privacy violations and weakening the truth condition of privacy diminishments.

Source: Episteme

DOI: 10.1017/epi.2025.13

Author: Alice Schneider

Institution: Stanford University

Language: English

Topic: Philosophical Ethics and Theory

Subfield: Philosophy

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,550