On commitment to untruthful implicatures

In the current debate on the lying-misleading distinction, many theorists distinguish between lying as insincere assertion and misleading through conveying an untruthful implicature. There is growing empirical evidence that average speakers count untruthful implicatures as cases of lying. What matters for them is the (degree) of commitment to an untruthful implicature. Since untruthful conversational implicatures may arise with non-assertions, and untruthful presuppositions are also judged as lying, a realistic conception of lying should aim at a definition of lying that it is able to cover these possibilities. Such a conception, which supports traditional assumptions about the semantics-pragmatics distinction, leads to a commitment-based definition of lying, as recently proposed by a number of authors.

Automated summary

In the current debate on the lying-misleading distinction, theorists differentiate between lying as insincere assertion and misleading through conveying an untruthful implicature. Growing empirical evidence suggests that average speakers consider untruthful implicatures as instances of lying, with the degree of commitment being the determining factor. A realistic understanding of lying should encompass untruthful conversational implicatures that can arise with non-assertions and untruthful presuppositions, leading to a commitment-based definition proposed by several authors.