Lying and What is Said

Says-based definitions of lying require a notion of what is said. I argue that a con- ventions-based notion of utterance content inspired by Korta and Perry’s (in: Tso- hatzidis (ed), John Searle’s philosophy of language: Force, meaning, and thought, Cambridge University Press, 2007a) locutionary content and Devitt’s (Overlooking conventions. The trouble with linguistic pragmatism, Springer, 2021) what is said meets the desiderata for that theoretical role. In Sect. 1 I recall two received says- based definitions of lying and the notions of what is said that have been proposed for them. In Sect. 2 I recall the desiderata that a notion of content must fulfil in order to cover the role of what is said in says-based definitions of lying. In Sect. 3 I discuss the points that Korta and Perry’s locutionary content and Devitt’s what is said have in common with respect to the centrality that linguistic conventions have for the constitution of utterance contents. In Sect. 4 I argue that a conventions-based notion of utterance content meets the desiderata for the role of what is said in says-based definitions of lying and has some important advantages over the notions of what is said that have been so far proposed. In Sect. 5 I point out the impact that the debate over the definition of lying has on the semantics/pragmatics divide in philosophy of language.