Lying, Acting, and Asserting
This chapter defends the intent-to-deceive conception of lying against the challenge posed by bald-faced lies. It argues that bald-faced lies aren’t lies, because they’re not assertions. The chapter begins by arguing that lies must be assertions. Next, it sketches a view of assertion according to which a constitutive rule of asserting is being responsive to evidence in a particular way. Then, focusing on two well-known examples of bald-faced lies, it argues that those speakers don’t assert anything; rather, they do something more like what an actor does. The argument thus removes an important objection to the intent-to-deceive tradition. It also offers a different way of thinking about lying. Defenders of bald-faced lies sometimes describe them as attempts to ‘go on record’. This chapter defends an alternate view according to which lying involves taking a kind of (epistemic) responsibility for the content of one’s utterance.