Title: Plural Quantification and Perjury

Abstract:

Since the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, a prosecutor in the United States can prove perjury by virtue of one statement under oath contradicting another. The prosecutor’s knowledge of perjury need not be specific: she knows some of the statements are perjurious but there is no statement such that she knows it to be perjurious. My thesis is that the perjurer’s knowledge of his own present perjury can be equally nonspecific.  He can know some of his statements are perjurious in the same way as he can know some of his statements are inconsistent. Just as there need be no specific inconsistency, there need be no specific perjurious statement. What goes for perjury, goes for lies in general. Exportation is as invalid for telling lies as it is for selling pies. When a grocer sells you a pie through his web site, there is no specific pie he is selling you. So do not trouble your conscience with this fallacious inference:

I am telling some lie. 

Therefore, there is some lie such that I am telling it.