Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

RECENT WORK ON SELF-DECEPTION

2016; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 24; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

2152-1123

Alfred R. Mele,

Free Will and Agency

RECENT philosophical work on self-deception revolves around two interrelated collections of paradoxes. One collection focuses on the state of self-deception. The other is centrally concerned with the processes that produce this state. I shall call them, respectively, the static and the dynamic paradoxes. In both cases, paradox is generated by the application of certain common assumptions about interpersonal deception to the intrapersonal variety. For example, it is frequently held that in order for one person to deceive another into believing that p, the former must know, or at least truly believe, that p is false, while the latter to believe that p is true. Thus, if self-deception is properly modeled after interpersonal deception, the self-deceiver must know or truly believe that p is while himself to believe that p is true. If, as is often claimed, this involves his simultane ously believing that p and believing that not-p, self-deception may seem to be an impossible state, and we are saddled with a static paradox. Moreover, even if this doxastic condition is a possible one, the idea that a person can get himself into it by deceiving himself into believing that p raises dis tinct problems. It may seem that any project describable as getting myself to believe what I now know to be false is bound to be self-defeating. Thus, we are faced with a dynamic paradox. The paradoxes have prompted a variety of responses. Some philosophers have argued that self-deception is in fact impossible, that the concept does not admit of instantiation. The great majority, however, have been concerned to establish and account for the possibility of self-deception. The most common approach is to argue that self-decep tion is not properly modeled strictly after interper sonal deception, while providing an alternative model. Another strategy is to embrace a strict inter personal model and make a case for its applicability to intrapersonal deception, usually by fragmenting the mind or its activities in various ways. What follows is a review of the philosophical literature since 1960 on the paradoxes of self-decep tion. Since even a few departures from the theme of paradox would result in an unmanageably lengthy essay, I must bracket many interesting and important issues-among them, the (ir)rationality of self-deception, its moral status, and the theroret ical connections between self-deception and action that manifests weakness of will. ' I start, in Section I, with the case for skepticism about the possibility of self-deception. In Sections II and III, I review attempts to explain how self-deception, conceived on a strict interpersonal model, is possible. Section IV addresses a variety of analyses of self-deception that involve modest departures from these strict models and canvasses associated attacks on the standard paradoxes. The emphasis there is on the static paradoxes, discussion of their dynamic coun terparts being reserved largely for Section V. Sec tion VI takes up Herbert Fingarette's apparently radical departure from the interpersonal models of deception, while Section VII distinguishes among three approaches to the philosophical investigation of self-deception. I conclude, in Section VIII, with a comment on a promising direction for future work on the topic.