Did Clinton lie?

Abstract

Clinton later admitted to having an improper relationship with Monica Lewinsky. This much we needn't suppose. But suppose, along with Saul, that this relationship counts as the having of 'sexual relations' as this expression is understood by the general public and by Clinton himself.1 Given this supposition, it would seem that Clinton lied. Suppose, further, that Clinton has two names for Monica Lewinsky, and that he is careful to use them in different ways. When he speaks about Monica Lewinsky in her capacity as White House intern, and about his relations with her while she is acting in this capacity, he calls her 'Miss Lewinsky'. But when he speaks about Monica Lewinsky as a participant in their improper affairs, he calls her simply 'Monica'. Suppose also that Clinton was careful not to stand in any improper relation to Monica Lewinsky while she was carrying out her internly duties.2 Would this make any difference to the way we answer the title question? Graeme Forbes (1997, 1999) and I (1999) have defended the view call it 'Aspect-Sensitivity' that if proper names are systematically pegged in this way to different capacities, personae, or, more generally, 'aspects' of an individual, these aspects can, in certain cases, figure in the truthconditions of what is literally said (and not merely communicated) by 'simple sentences' (that is, sentences, such as (1), that lack any overtly modal, quotational, or psychological ingredients). While we agree on Aspect-Sensitivity, Forbes holds that aspects work their way into truthconditions by means of a 'logophoric' indexical hidden in logical form, and I hold instead that we sometimes 'reference-shift' so as to use proper names to speak directly about aspects of the name's normal referent.