The distinction between lying and mere misleading is commonly tied to the distinction between saying and conversationally implicating. Many definitions of lying are based on the idea that liars say something they believe to be false, while misleaders put forward a believed-false conversational implicature. The aim of this paper is to motivate, spell out, and defend an alternative approach, on which lying and misleading differ in terms of commitment: liars, but not misleaders, commit themselves to something they believe to be false. This approach entails that lying and misleading involve speech-acts of different force. While lying requires the committal speech-act of asserting, misleading involves the non-committal speech-act of suggesting. The approach leads to a broader definition of lying that can account for lies that are told while speaking non-literally or with the help of presuppositions, and it allows for a parallel definition of misleading, which so far is lacking in the debate.
Can a question be a lie? Theorists in the debate on how to define lying tend to answer this question negatively. They hold that questions can be misleading, but that they cannot be lies. The aim of this paper is to show that ordinary speakers disagree. With the help of three experiments, we show that ordinary speakers judge certain insincere questions to be lies. These judgements are robust and remain so when the participants are given the possibility of classifying the questions as misleading or deceiving without being a lie. Judgments about insincere questions pattern with judgements participants make about declarative lies. And they contrast with judgements participants give about prototypical cases of misleading or deceptive behaviour.
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