A Logical Account of Lying

This paper aims at providing a formal account of lying - a dishonest attitude of human beings. We first formulate lying under propositional modal logic and present basic properties for it. We then investigate why one engages in lying and how one reasons about lying. We distinguish between offensive and defensive lies, or deductive and abductive lies, based on intention behind the act. We also study two weak forms of dishonesty, bullshit and deception, and provide their logical features in contrast to lying. We finally argue dishonesty postulates that agents should try to satisfy for both moral and self-interested reasons.