Abstract
The aim of this paper is to provide an account of a certain variety of self-deception based on a model of self-knowledge. According to this model, one thinks that one has a belief on the basis of one’s grounds for that belief. If this model is correct, then our thoughts about which beliefs we have should be in accordance with our grounds for those beliefs. I suggest that the relevant variety of self-deception is a failure of self-knowledge wherein the subject violates this epistemic obligation. I argue that construing this type of self-deception as a failure of self-knowledge explains two important aspects of it: The tension that we observe between the subject’s speech and her actions, and our inclination to hold the subject responsible for her condition. I compare this proposal with two other approaches to self-deception in the literature; intentionalism and motivationalism. Intentionalism explains the two aspects of self-deception but it runs into the so-called ‘paradoxes’ of self-deception. Motivationalism avoids those paradoxes but it cannot explain the two aspects of self-deception.
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Notes
In what follows, I will use ‘thinking’ and ‘believing’ interchangeably. I will also talk of ‘ascribing’ and ‘attributing’ a mental state to a subject to refer to the act of believing that the subject is in that state. Thus, I will use locutions such as ‘S self-ascribes the belief that P’ and ‘S self-attributes the belief that P’ to refer to a subject’s occurrent belief that she believes that P. Hopefully this will cause no confusion.
The point that there is a tension between verbal and non-verbal behavior in self-deception is highlighted, for example, in Robert Audi (1997, p 104). The particular formulation of the conflict of self-deception offered here might be somewhat narrow: My own view is that there are cases of self-deception in which the subject behaves as if she had a certain desire even though she claims not to have it. However, the two approaches to self-deception discussed below exclude such cases. Thus, the conflict of self-deception is formulated here in terms of beliefs to ensure that we do not beg the question against those two approaches.
I am grateful to an anonymous referee for bringing this to my attention.
The intentionalist can put forward a version of intentionalism that does not require the simultaneous presence of two contradictory beliefs (Bermúdez 2000). Alternatively, the intentionalist can claim that there is nothing paradoxical about holding two inconsistent beliefs, which is possible as long as the inconsistency is not apparent to the subject (Foss 1980). The intentionalist can also postulate a division of the subject’s mind, thanks to which the two inconsistent beliefs are held in different parts of it (Pears 1984). For reasons of space, I cannot pursue these three strategies here.
First-order motivationalists may propose, for instance, that it is possible for Jack to believe that the type of cancer that runs in his family is untreatable. Accordingly, Jack might assess the risk of falsely believing that he is healthy as relatively low, which would help us account for his avoidance behavior. Second-order motivationalists, on the other hand, may propose that, even though Jack is being rational from a practical point of view, he has nonetheless behaved in an objectionable way from an epistemic point of view. (For example, Jack wanted to have a belief which he has reasons to think is false, which, one might argue, is epistemically irresponsible.) This would help us explain the intuition that Jack is blameworthy. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for suggesting these lines of response.
Notice that this use of ‘grounds’ is not meant to carry any normative connotations. Grounds, as conceived here, are states simply characterized by their causal role.
Importantly, the two sets of facts are independent of each other. For that reason, the bypass model does not commit us to the view that, when I form the belief that I believe that some proposition P is the case, that belief is justified if and only if my belief that P is justified.
See (Scott-Kakures 2002) for a more recent version of this idea.
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Acknowledgments
For comments on earlier drafts, I am very grateful to Greg O’Hair, David Pineda, Grant Stephens and an anonymous referee for this journal. This research was funded by two grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology for projects FFI2009-11347 and FFI2010-15717, as well as a grant for project CSD2009-0056 under the Consolider Ingenio scheme.
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Fernández, J. Self-deception and self-knowledge. Philos Stud 162, 379–400 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9771-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9771-9