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Defining Self-Deception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

Jennifer Radden
Jennifer Radden
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Boston
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Extract

In this paper I shall first expose a weakness shared by several philosophical discussions of self-deception: I shall show that these discussions have failed to give it a complete analysis. The apparent phenomenon of self-deception is all too familiar, and yet its adequate characterization in general terms is wanting. More exactly, I shall argue that to understand self-deception statically, as these accounts have done, has been—and must be—to fail to give a characterization of it as a state of mind, sufficient to distinguish it from other mental states not born of self-deception.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 1984 , pp. 103 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1984

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References

1 Wharton, Edith, The House of Mirth (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905).Google Scholar

2 See Demos, R., “Lying to Oneself”, Journal of Philosophy 57 (1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Canfield, J. V. and McNally, A., “Paradoxes of Self Deception”, Analysis (1960)Google Scholar; Canfield, J. V. and Gustavson, D. F., “Self-Deception”, Analysis 23 (1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Seigler, F. A., “An Analysis of Self Deception”, Nous 2 (1968)Google Scholar; Penelhum, T., “Pleasure and Falsity”, American Philosophical Quarterly 1 (1964)Google Scholar; and Factor, R. L., “Functionalist Theory of Mental Processes”, The Personalist 64 (1980)Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, Canfield, and Gustavson, , “Self-Deception”; Stanley Paluch, “Self Deception”, Inquiry 10 (1965)Google Scholar; Pugmire, D., “Strong Self Deception”, Inquiry 12 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Foss, J., “Rethinking Self-deception”, American Philosophical Quarterly 17 (1980)Google Scholar; Kipp, D., “On Self-Deception”, Philosophical Quarterly 30(1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Factor, “Functionalist Theory”.

4 For example, by Demos, “Lying”: “Self deception exists, I will say, when a person lies to himself, that is to say, persuades himself to believe what he knows is not so. In short, self deception entails that B believes both p and not-p at the same time” (588; my emphasis). Although this kind of definition features very frequently in accounts of self-deception, it has not gone uncontested. See Bach, K., “An Analysis of Self-Deception”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 41 (1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Martin, M., “Self-deception, Self Pretense and Emotional Detachment”, Mind 88 (1979)Google Scholar; and Reilly, R., “Self-deception: Resolving the Epistemological Paradox”, The Personalist 57 (1976)Google Scholar.

5 Fingarette, H., Self Deception (London: Routledge & Regan Paul, 1969).Google Scholar

6 See Sartre, J. P., Being and Nothingness, trans. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956)Google Scholar: “… I must know the truth very exactly in order to conceal it more carefully—and this not at two different moments, which at a pinch would allow us to reestablish a semblance of duality—but in the unitary structure of a single project. How then can the lie subsist if the duality which conditions it is suppressed?” (43). Also, Fingarette, Self Deception: “… when Demos says … that the self-deceiver ‘deliberately ignores’ the belief, we are once again faced with genuine self deception—but also with a paradox. For it now appears that it is just because he already appreciates the incompatibility of his beliefs that the self-deceiver ‘deliberately ignores’ the belief he abhors” (16).

7 Doubts on this issue are raised, for instance, in Rorty's, A. O. discussion. “Belief and Self Deception”, Inquiry 15 (1974)Google Scholar.

8 In a discussion which runs parallel to mine in several respects, it has been suggested that a state analysis such as that proposed by Factor, “Functionalist Theory”, fails to exclude non-self-deceived states resulting from hypnotism, drugs, sheer confusion or insanity (Martin, M., “Factor's Functionalist Account of Self-Deception”, The Personalist 60 [1979])Google Scholar. And it may be that some or all of these states likewise present difficulties for the static definition 1 am considering.

9 See, for example, Radford, C., “How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, sup. vol. 49 (1975)Google Scholar, and Kendall, A., “Fearing Fictions”, Journal of Philosophy 75 (1978)Google Scholar.

10 Pears, David, “Freud, Sartre and Self Deception”, in Wollheim, R., ed., Freud (New York: Anchor Books, 1974)Google Scholar, explores the complexities of the relationship between wishful thinking and self-deception; see also Szabados, Bela, “Wishful Thinking and Self Deception”, Analysis 33 (1972)Google Scholar, and Haight, , A Study of Self-Deception (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

11 It has even been argued by Haight, Self-Deception, that self-deception entails wishful thinking (1).

12 As a loose generalization only, this seems incontestible. Demos, “Lying”, remarks that “When we say that B has persuaded himself of something which he knows is not so, we include a moral nuance in our account, we mean that it is wrong for a person to lie to himself, and even that he knows it is wrong” (591). And I am inclined to agree that in general it is so, although that is quite compatible with the point noted by Rorty, (“Belief and Self-Deception”, Inquiry 15 [1974])Google Scholar that in individual cases, like hers of the Self-Deceived Doctor (401), self-deception may seem benign, even beneficial. For further discussion on this issue, see Szabados, B., “The Morality of Self Deception”, Dialogue 13 (1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Linehan, E., “Ignorance, Self-deception and Moral Accountability”, Journal of Value Inquiry 16 (1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Fingarette, Self Deception.

14 Demos, “Lying”.

15 Fingarette, Self Deception.

16 In one case this supposition has been asserted. Penelhum (“Pleasure and Falsity”) makes explicit his confidence in the sufficiency of a set of necessary conditions describing the state of self-deception: “Usually when we ascribe self-deception to someone we ascribe a motive to him. I do not feel prepared to say that a motive must be present … partly because the criteria I have listed seem, however oddly, to be enough to establish self-deception without it” (88). Penelhum goes on to offer the only reason for concern with the self-deceiver's motives, that such motives would help establish whether or not the self-deceived state was actually present (see 88). See, more recently, Factor, “Functionalist Theory”, who distinguishes “psychological questions about the causes” of self-deception from “the philosophic question of providing consistent criteria for the application of the concept”, and, appealing to and amending Penelhum's criteria, claims to provide the latter without reference to the former.

17 This has been noted. See, for instance, Fingarette, Self Deception, who makes a similar point in his discussion of the “self covering policy” of not spelling out an engagement: “To adopt it [the policy] is perforce, neverto make it explicit, to ‘hide’ it” (see 47–49).

18 A point similarto this is made by A. Palmer, “Characterising Self-Deception”, MindSS (1979), when he contrasts the “characterisation” which literature offers with the “description” for which analytic philosophy strives, remarking that “In their efforts after understanding human beings are not only describers and staters, they are also creators, and in that way come to understand, and lead others to understand, things which would otherwise be closed to them” (57–58). Palmer argues that all attempted descriptions of self-deception either contain contradictions which make them logically unacceptable, or reduce to related phenomena like pretending to oneself. My position, in contrast, is that even granted their contradictory quality, these descriptions offer less than the sufficient conditions they claim to.

19 See, for instance, Freud's discussion of this principle in his essay on “Formulations Regarding the Two Principles in Mental Functioning” (1911), in Freud, S., General Psychological Theory (New York: Basic Books, Macmillan, 1963)Google Scholar.

20 Sermons, , “Upon the Character of Balaam” and “Upon Self Deceit”, in Butler, Joseph, Works, vol. 2, Gladstone edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896).Google Scholar

21 Fingarette, Self Deception.

22 Rorty, “Belief”.

23 Russell, B., “Saying, Feeling and Self-Deception”, Behaviourism 6 (1978).Google Scholar

24 Szabados, “Morality”.

25 This point is also made by Haight (Self-Deception, 80) where she comments that we may deceive ourselves to flee truths which concern others as well as ourselves.

26 I am indebted to Ann Diller, Janet Farrell-Smith, Jane Martin, Beatrice Nelson, Susan Franzosa and Frank Keefe for suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.