I am starting to think that one can lie without asserting a proposition.
Let’s say that a counterintelligence agent tells an enemy spy that a new weapons technology has just been deployed, in order to dissuade the enemy from invading. The description of the technology contains nonsensical technobabble. This seems to be a lie. If it is, my argument is complete, because nonsense does not express a proposition.
But suppose we say it’s mere BS. Let’s now complicate the case. The counterintelligence agent passes to the enemy spy a fake classified document saying “We have just built a weapon that shoots three simultaneous hyperquark beams.” The spy is taken in by the BS, but also wishes to deter war. And thus the spy reports to her government: “The enemy has just built a weapon that shoots ten simultaneous hyperquark beams.” It is clear that the spy is not merely engaging in BS. The spy sure seems to be lying. But the spy is no more asserting a proposition than the counterintelligence agent did.
If we say that the counterintelligence agent is lying, then we have to allow that one can lie without even taking oneself to assert a proposition.
If we think that the counterintelligence agent is only BSing, but that in my more complicated case the enemy spy is lying to her government, then we should say that to lie one needs to take oneself to be asserting a false proposition, but one need not be actually asserting a proposition, true or false.
In either case, one can lie without asserting a proposition.
Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps what the spy does in the more complicated case is neither BS nor a lie, but engaging in a verbal deceit we don’t have a good name for.
