Self deception

Two of the methods proposed appear at first sight to be non-arbitrary. In fact, absolute accuracy has been claimed for one of these (25), a refined two-dimensional variational procedure in which all frequencies but one are used as constraints, while this last one is used as a criterion. In fact, it is not possible to fix two unknowns from one parameter, and the method seems to this reviewer an unusually ingenious and elaborate exercise in self-deception, in which the range of possible solutions of the independent parameter method appears to contract to a point. 

London Heinemann, 1972), pp. 409-10. Gilbert believes that Churchill s advocacy of an attack by ships alone contributed to the War Council s self-deception that troops could be dispensed with Winston S. Churchill, vol. Ill, pp. 249, 311). The Russians did not propose an attack on the Dardanelles. Indeed, they were anxious lest any Balkan bloc created by an Allied victory might prejudice their claims to Constantinople see Keith Neilson, Strategy and Supply The Anglo-Russian Alliance, 1914-17 (London Allen and Unwin, 1984), pp. 57-78. 

Russell, J. Michael. 1978. "Saving, Feeling, and Self-Deception." Behaviorism 6 27-43. 

Lewis suggests two mechanisms that might explain why John did not acknowledge the fact that he was depressed self-deception and sociali2ation. The latter is spelled out as follows. 

A particularly important set of beliefs is the idea that a given substance is addictive. Once a behavioral pattern is conceptualized as an addiction, with the concomitant causal beliefs, it may change dramatically. An especially important belief is that addiction is, if not irresistible, at least very hard to resist, almost amounting to compulsive desire. Hence, to the causal beliefs about the effects of drug taking on the addict s body and socioeconomic status, we must add causa) beliefs about the effect of addiction on his will—specifically, on the ability to quit. Two opposite beliefs about this effect may have the same impact on behavior. Some addicts use their (usually self-deceptive) belief that they can quit at any time as an excuse for not quitting. Others use their (equally self-deceptive) belief that they are unable to quit as an excuse for not quitting. The belief that one is addicted may reinforce the addiction by the mechanism of dissonance reduction ... 

When philosophers refer to the problem or weakness of will and the problem of self-deception, they usually have in mind the question how these phenomena are at all possible. Davidson and Pears have pioneered in offering non-mythical answers to that question. When non-philosophers refer to these problems, they are more likely to have in mind the question how weakness of will and self-deception can be overcome. Both questions turn upon the notion of the divided self. For these paradoxical phenomena to be possible, there must be some breakdown of internal communication in the mind. To restore communication, or to prevent the defective lines from doing serious damage, some further action is required. Whether this also needs a separate, further agent is more doubtful. While it might appear that a third party is needed to prevent the subversive action of one part of the self against another, it is more plausible to identify the referee with one of the parts - but operating at a different time. I return to this issue in several later sections. 

To see the connection between impulse control and self-deception in... 

For the relation between self-deceptive and self-fulfilling beliefs see Elster (1984, pp. 48,177) and Pears (1984, pp. 33ff). 

I am not making the cynical point that a person may often be able to justify his behaviour to others by invoking norms on an ad hoc basis, exploiting the almost endless repertoire of norms to disguise the fact that he is moved by self-interest. My point is that a person must be able to live with his decisions - so he has to justify them to himself. There are constraints on the acceptable justifications. In particular, the need for consistency between the norms that are invoked in different situations may be as important as the consistency between the norm and the self-interest. Yet within these constraints a good deal of redefinition of norms is possible. My suggestion is that in addition to the head-on conflict between self-interest and social norms there is an insidious struggle that is more similar to self-deception and thus more closely related to the multiple self. 

The idea that people may select an action to make a favourable self-diagnosis is not new. The first experiment went beyond earlier treatments of the problem by demonstrating that self-deception may contribute to accepting the diagnosis implied by behaviour. The... 

We suspect that the assumed physiological mechanism of pain and heart responses may have facilitated self-deception in the first experiment. Most people believe that such responses are not under an individual s voluntary control. This widespread belief makes it very easy to deny to oneself that the action was deliberately enacted to make a cheerful diagnosis, for how does one intentionally pull the strings. That self-deception may occur more often and be more successful for actions (incorrectly) believed to be uncontrollable than controllable is an interesting question for further research. The possibility of a motivational placebo effect, in which the desire to have one s tolerance shifted produces actual changes in physiological tolerance thresholds, seems worth exploring. 

Philosophers are always struck by the paradox of self-deception. How can anyone persuade himself that p and yet all the time maintain his original belief that nof-p, as the word deception seems to require It is, however, doubtful if this paradox deserves the space that is usually assigned to it. True, it identifies one point at which self-deception cannot be quite like the deception of others, but it is not the only point of dissimilarity and some of the others are at least of equal interest. Nevertheless, it may turn out that, when we have added up all the dissimilarities, we shall find that they are outweighed by the similarities, so that the word self-deception gets away with enough of its surface connotation, though not, of course, with all of it. 

When we encounter the paradox of self-deception, it is probably better not to meet it head-on, but to ask whether it really besets all the different types of case that we readily diagnose as self-deception in real life and in literature. This would be a good question to ask even if current dissolutions of the paradox were obviously successful, because a remedy may be right without always being needed. In fact many of the common remedies in this case are desperate ones. Either self-deception is analysed in a way that eliminates belief, or, at least, puts too much emphasis on activities other than belief-formation (but that sacrifices the patient), or else the theory is that self-deception is necessarily hidden from the subject (but that is evidently not true). There is more than one reason for trying to manoeuvre on a broader front. 

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