Lying: A Gricean Account

Abstract

It is widely assumed that in order to lie, a speaker must at least assert a falsehood. I offer an analysis of lying based on the Gricean notion of communicative-intention and show how lying through assertion operates. I show that certain recently developed assertion-based accounts of lying are either problematic or at least not compelling. In defending an account of lying based on communicative-intention, I show how it is possible to lie in ways which do not involve assertion and how better to accommodate certain problematic cases than competing accounts.