The semantic commitment of liars

Abstract Many philosophers agree that the distinction between lying and misleading is detected by reliable intuitions in some prototypical cases and a diagnostic test that accords misleaders, but not liars, a kind of deniability for the disbelieved information they communicate. In this paper I take the soundness of such intuitions for granted and provide a definition of lying that explains the deniability that is detected by the diagnostic test. I argue that liars differ from misleaders in that liars intentionally misuse semantic conventions for communicating disbelieved information. What misleaders can and liars cannot deny is the semantic commitment to disbelieved information. In doing so, misleaders keep, while liars lose, the status of speakers who do their part for maintaining the semantic conventions of their language.