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Who's fooling who?
the paradigm of self-deception is inter- personal deception.

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Who's fooling who?

Gadfly II
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Posted 08/22/09 - 04:54 PM: Subject: Who's fooling who?	#1
Recently, I've become intrigued by Georges Rey's contention that educated westerners who maintain a belief in god are self-deceived. The full article can be found here: http://philosophytalk.typepad.com/blog/files/MetaAtheism.pdf, and a synopsis of the argument is found here: http://brindedcow.umd.edu/236/meta-atheism.html Now, I don't want this to turn into a refutation of theism, in fact, belief in god is not at the center of my interest. The idea of self-deception is the focus of my concern here. What intrigues me is that if Prof. Rey is correct then many other kinds of beliefs (ideological, cultural, etc) are also self-deceptive. So, I'd like to ask a simple question to start: The paradigm of self-deception is modeled on inter-personal deception. Is it possible to convince oneself of a proposition that one believes is false? Is it possible? If so, how?
Dare to use your own reason. Kant

mway
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Posted 08/23/09 - 04:22 PM:	#2
I'd say yes definately, as you are ever changing and your identity changes are based on your experience. The simplest way I can think of is simply questioning your beliefs. I highly doubt your beliefs have been solidly consistent your entire life. As for self deception, I believe this to be part of the brains structure, and I would take it further in saying that even the self itself is a deception.
Lame is to Wav, as the Brain is to Reality.

Gadfly II
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Posted 08/23/09 - 05:36 PM:	#3
First, when one person persuades another to adopt a new belief and/or discard a previously held belief is not deception, nor is a person's changing their mind about previously held beliefs based on new evidence. Second, one can loosely speak of something being a deception and meaning that what is considered is false or illusory. This is not the sense of deception I mean to use in this thread. What I do mean by deception is that one person believes that p is false and succeeds in convincing another person that p is true. This paradigm is applied to the individual and requires that either a person succeeds in holding two contradictory beliefs at the same time. (p &~p) or a person believes that p is true and willfully changes their belief to not-p in spite of and not because of convincing evidence. In what way do you believe that deception is part of the way our brains are wired?
Dare to use your own reason. Kant

ciceronianus
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Posted 08/24/09 - 12:54 PM:	#4
No. If I am convinced of X, I don't think it can reasonably be maintained that I believe X is false. Certainly we can decieve ourselves, but I think we mean something different when we make such a claim.
"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."--C.S. Peirce "There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it."--Marcus Tullius Cicero "Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men."--John Dewey

Gadfly II
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Posted 08/24/09 - 01:30 PM:	#5
I agree ciceronianus. In the literature this is referred to as the static puzzle. The dynamic puzzle is more interesting, since it can be applied to many real life events: accepting the death of a loved one, the diagnosis of a serious disease, finding out our hero's or closely held beliefs have feet of clay etc. for example most citizens believe that the United States offers a person more advantages than any other other country. It seems to follow that one should back the policies as a matter of course. On the other hand most people in general do not support gratuitous torture or lying to a population to justify a private agenda. Is this a case of self-deception?
Dare to use your own reason. Kant

Warshed
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Posted 08/24/09 - 02:02 PM:	#6
Gadfly II wrote: for example most citizens believe that the United States offers a person more advantages than any other other country. It seems to follow that one should back the policies as a matter of course. On the other hand most people in general do not support gratuitous torture or lying to a population to justify a private agenda. Is this a case of self-deception? Bad example since one needn't back everything ones government does just because some of what the government does leads to higher opportunities for enrichment. I know what you are driving at however. You just need a better example. I beleive what you are talking about is "Double-Think" a la George Orwell. Where one can hold two mutually exclusive beliefs at the same time but fail to see how they are logically contradictory either directly or indirectly by establishing all their ramifications.

Gadfly II
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Posted 08/24/09 - 04:25 PM:	#7
I agree that one need not see things is such black and white terms, that fact does not detract from my example. I don't think there is a case when one is forced to be self-deceived. The example wasn't meant to be paradigmatic and it does point to the social and rhetorical concerns that Double speak is meant to address, however it is too soon to include those concerns here. My interest is solely in the individual who is faced with compelling evidence and willfully avoids assenting to the obvious conclusion. After a diagnosis of cancer, one could ask for a second or third opinion to make certain before submitting to dangerous and painful treatment. OTOH if someone simply continues to seek opinion after opinion until they get the confirmation they want, i.e. that they are healthy, such a person could be self-deceived. Similarly, a person that rejects independent reports from news agencies, and former Secretary of State and other institutions that the U.S engaged in gratuitous torture and clings to the belief that the evidence must somehow be flawed because it conflicts with a deeply held belief, that person also can be self-deceived. Edited by Gadfly II on 08/24/09 - 07:25 PM. Reason: additional info
Dare to use your own reason. Kant

Caldwell
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Posted 08/25/09 - 12:57 AM:	#8
My apologies to everyone involved, but as read down the thread, I get more confused about Gadfly's meaning of "deception". People who believe in god aren't self-deceived. They don't believe that their belief in god is false: after all, their faith in god is mostly their interpretation of what's happening with them and what's happening with the world as it relates to god's will. If a tsunami blew off everyone vacationing along the coasts, the believers would say, this is god's will and they will try to interpret what it means. Is god angry?, etc.. All my past science teachers, instructors, and professors believed in some form of divine power in the universe. You can call this a belief in god, too. I've not met a science teacher who was a complete non-believer or "faithless" in some form of non-physical existent. So, let us establish what is "self-deception" -- someone here had already said it, deception (note that this is not yet self-deception) is, when one tries to convince another of the truth of x, when he knows x is false. So, what is "self-deception"? I try to convince myself that x is true when I know it is false? How do you accomplish this feat? All I know is, when you are brainwashed to believe that x is true, and because of this you believe x is true, there is no self-deception. Maybe the brainwashers are deceiving you, but you are not deceiving yourself.

Caldwell
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Posted 08/25/09 - 01:02 AM:	#9
Gadfly II wrote: My interest is solely in the individual who is faced with compelling evidence and willfully avoids assenting to the obvious conclusion. After a diagnosis of cancer, one could ask for a second or third opinion to make certain before submitting to dangerous and painful treatment. OTOH if someone simply continues to seek opinion after opinion until they get the confirmation they want, i.e. that they are healthy, such a person could be self-deceived. Similarly, a person that rejects independent reports from news agencies, and former Secretary of State and other institutions that the U.S engaged in gratuitous torture and clings to the belief that the evidence must somehow be flawed because it conflicts with a deeply held belief, that person also can be self-deceived. Then what you're asking about is "denial", which is different from "self-deception". And here, you use an example of people who attack evidence simply because it conflicts with their deeply held belief. This is different from what you were asking in your OP.

ragus
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Posted 08/25/09 - 07:55 AM:	#10
Gadfly II wrote In what way do you believe that deception is part of the way our brains are wired? Deception is endemic in nature. An animal that freezes results in the predator acting as if there is no prey present. Deception depends on the deceived having responses that are not perfect. So it may not be about self-deception but about self-deceivers.
"A word in your ear is like an untethered goat in a field" Wittigenstein

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