What Is Deceptive Lying?

Abstract

According to the traditional philosophical analysis of lying, you lie when you say what you believe to be false and intend your audience to believe what you say. Even though there may be lies that are not intended to deceive, the most epistemologically and ethically problematic lies are those that are intended to deceive. This chapter argues that the traditional analysis fails to capture this concept of deceptive lying. First, it does not count as lies cases where you only intend to deceive your audience about your believing what you say. Second, the traditional analysis handles inconsistently cases where you say something because you know that your audience does not trust you and will likely conclude that you believe something else. The chapter proposes two ways of modifying the traditional analysis of lying so that it handles such cases of doxastic misdirection and double bluffing correctly.

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