Abstract

Several eminent philosophers – including Saint Augustine, Sir Francis Bacon, and Roderick Chisholm – have done important work on what lies are and how they can be used to deceive us. It is less well known that Mark Twain also made important contributions to this area of applied epistemology. In addition to writing two notable essays on lying, he created one of the most quintessential and versatile liars in all of literature, Tom Sawyer. Episodes from the novels (and films) featuring this character provide evidence in support of Twain’s theses that lying is more common and more varied than we tend to think. Twain’s insights often anticipate the subsequent work of contemporary philosophers and are applicable to the fake news, deepfakes, and disinformation of the twenty-first-century.