ABSTRACT
Two philosophical issues arise persistently in discussions of children and lying. First, there are epistemic issues-issues of what sort of knowledge the child must possess in order to lie. Second, there are issues of moral psychologyissues of how and when children learn that it is wrong to lie, and in what they understand the wrongness of lying to consist. My argument is this: On the epistemic side, lying is a type of action that requires a rich understanding of other minds, of the connections between belief and action, and in particular, of the way mental representations can be transformed into misrepresentations. Children can lie without being able to correctly define the term lie. But they cannot lie without having solved the philosophical problem of other minds.
