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Self-Deception and Practical Reasoning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Robert Audi
Robert Audi*
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Lincoln, NE68588-0321, U.S.A.
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Extract

Self-deception is commonly viewed as a condition that bespeaks irrationality. This paper challenges that view. I focus specifically on the connection between self-deception and practical reasoning, an area which, despite its importance for understanding self-deception, has not been systematically explored. I examine both how self-deception influences practical reasoning and how this influence affects the rationality of actions produced by practical reasoning. But what is self-deception? There are many accounts, yet there is probably none sufficiently well known and compelling to serve as an adequate background given my purposes. Hence, I shall briefly present my own account of self-deception and, on that basis, explore its connections with practical reasoning and rational action.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 1989 , pp. 247 - 266
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1989

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References

1 For an indication of the diversity of approaches in philosophy and psychology see Alfred R. Mele, ‘Recent Work on Self-Deception,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 24 (1987), 1-18; Mike W. Martin, ed., Self-Deception and Self-Understanding (Lawrence and London: University of Kansas Press 1985); and Brian McLaughlin and Amelie O. Rorty, eds., Philosophical Perspectives on Self-Deception (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1988).

2 I have developed this account in several directions (and defended aspects of it) in ‘Self-Deception, Action, and Will,’ Erkenntnis 18 (1982), 133-58, and ‘Self-Deception, Rationalization, and Reasons for Acting,’ in McLaughlin and Rorty, 92-120. I have added ‘non-waywardly’ in (3) to rule out cases in which, e.g., wanting to have one's brain manipulated leads a neuropsychologist to produce in one beliefs of the sort specified in (1) and (2). Perhaps we would now have artifically induced self-deception; but at least normally a want that is part of the psychic economy non-waywardly explains the factors in question.

3 Unconscious belief is discussed in some detail in my papers cited in note 2. Also relevant to my conception of it is the account of believing in ‘The Concept of Believing,’ The Personalist 57 (1972), 43-62. Cf. Eddy Zemach, ‘Unconscious Mind or Conscious Minds?’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy 10 (1986), 121-49.

4 Thus, ‘conscious belief’ is misleading. 1 also doubt we need a weaker cognitive attitude than belief here; but for some reasons to think we do see Georges Rey, ‘Akrasia, Self-Deception, and the Promise of Practical Reasoning,’ in McLaughlin and Rorty, 92-120.

5 See, e.g., Michael S. Gazanniga, ‘The Social Brain,’ Psychology Today (November 1985), 29-38, for a split-brain case in which (as he seems to see it) we have two centers of belief.

6 Here and in the next few paragraphs I draw on my paper ‘A Theory of Practical Reasoning,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 19 (1982), 25-39.

7 The sense of ‘express’ does not require having the relevant propositional attitude, in part because we should allow practical reasoning that is in some way suppositional. The paper cited in note 6 defends and qualifies the suggested conception of practical reasoning.

8 Enthymemes are discussed in ‘A Theory of Practical Reasoning,’ cited above in n. 6.

9 In ‘Acting for Reasons,’ The Philosophical Review 95 (1986), 511-46, I have characterized such realization in some detail.

10 There is a problem here, however: suppose she has a second-order judgment that she should act to change her desires toward Janet. If that judgment is aligned with a want on balance, then she might perhaps instantiate weakness of will by virtue of implicitly acting against that judgment.

11 I have discussed self-deception specifically in relation to rationalization in ‘Self-Deception, Rationalization, and Reasons for Acting,’ cited above in n. 2.

12 In ‘Rationalization and Rationality,’ Synthese 65 (1986), 159-84, I consider various kinds of rationalization and their relation to justification.

13 It is very difficult to specify what it is for an action to be based on practical reasoning. A partial account is suggested in ‘Acting for Reasons,’ cited in note 8.

14 This, I take it, is one thing Donald Davidson worries about in ‘Paradoxes of Irrationality,’ in R. Wollheim and J. Hopkins, eds., Philosophical Essays on Freud (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1982), 289-305.

15 An earlier version of this paper was given in a symposium on self-deception at the 1986 meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology. I especially want to thank my commentator, Brian McLaughlin. I have also benefited from comments by Reinaldo Elugardo, Laurence Thomas, and readers for CJP, as well as from discussion with Bèla Szabados, with my co-symposiasts, Kenneth Gergen and Georges Rey and, less recently, with John King-Farlow, whose repeated attacks on stereotypes about self-deception contributed to my efforts to place it in the context of the overall rationality of the human agent.