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Self-Deception1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Béla Szabados
Béla Szabados*
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
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Extract

People do, quite naturally and not uncommonly, speak of other people as deceiving themselves, as being their own dupes. A man's child is ill and growing constantly worse. The father keeps talking optimistically about the future, keeps explaining away the evidence, and keeps pointing to what he insists are signs of improvement. We can easily imagine ourselves deciding that he has deceived himself about his son's condition. Nor is it the case that talk of self-deception is appropriate only in connection with other people. We can easily imagine the father admitting, say, after the son's death, that he has deceived himself about the child's condition. Thus the notion of self-deception obviously has application. Furthermore, ordinarily talk of self-deception is not thought to be puzzling.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , September 1974 , pp. 51 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1974

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Footnotes

1

Thanks are due to G. M. Greig, A. G. N. Flew, Kai Nielsen and Terence Penelhum for commenting on an earlier version of this paper.

References

2 It is to be noted that the force of this problem has been felt not only by ‘analytical' philosophers but also by philosophers of ‘existentialist’ persuasion. Vide Jean-Paul Sartre's graphic delineation of the problem of self-deception in his Being and Nothingness, trans. Barnes, Hazel E. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), pp. 47–50.Google Scholar

3 Demos, Raphael “Lying to Oneself,” The journal of Philosophy, LVII (1960), 588–595.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Ibid., p. 594.

5 Ibid., p. 588.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid., p. 592.

8 Such a criticism has been levelled against Demos’ account by Fingarette, Herbert in his book Self-Deception (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969). p. 15.Google Scholar

9 Demos, op. cit., p. 593.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 592.

11 Ibid.

12 Penelhum, Terence “Pleasure and Falsity,” American Philosophical Quarterly, I (1964), 88.Google Scholar

13 Canfield, John V. and Gustavson, Don F. “Self-Deception,” Analysis, XXIII (1962-63), 35.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., p. 34.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid., p. 35.

17 Fingarette, op. cit., p. 5.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., p. 34.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., p. 35.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid., p. 33.

23 Ibid., p. 47.

24 Ibid., p. 62.

25 Ibid., pp. 47–48.

26 Ibid., p. 43.

27 Ibid., p. 40.

28 Ibid.

29 lbid.,p. 62.

30 Wittgenstein, Ludwig Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe, G. E. M. (Basil Blackwell, 1953), 66,p.31e.Google Scholar

31 In the concluding remarks of his stimulating paper “Error, Faith and Self-Deception,“ Patrick Gardiner makes the attractive suggestion that self-deception comes down to no more than error with a motive. However, he immediately voices a worry: ‘What then is the distinction between self-deception and mere wishful thinking?’ I hope to have offered a proper answer to Gardiner's residual question. Gardiner's, paper is in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LXX (1969-70), 221–244.Google Scholar

32 Hamlyn, D. W. and Mounce, H. O. “Self-Deception,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume XLV (1971 ), pp. 145–172.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., pp. 45–46.

34 Ibid., p. 66.

35 Ibid., p. 67.

36 Clifford, W. K. Lectures and Essays, ed. Stephen, Leslie and Pollock, Frederick (London: Macmillan, 1879), The Ethics of Belief, pp.177–178.Google Scholar

37 It was Bishop Butler who pointed to and perceptively described this feature of self-deceit. See his Sermon, “Upon Self-Deceit” in Joseph Butler, Works, Vol. II, p. 145, ed. Gladstone, W. E. (The Clarendon Press, 1896)Google Scholar. Hamlyn and Mounce also mention and discuss this feature but not with the care and attention that it deserves.

38 Butler,op. cit., p. 145.

39 Penelhum,op. cit., p. 88.

40 The reasons for my hesitation to speak of belief in such cases are well brought out in Griffiths, A. Phillips’ essay “On Belief.” See Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LXIII (1962-63), 167–186.Google Scholar