Year: 2011
Type: dissertation
Abstract: In this thesis I take the basic idea of self-deception to be that of believing something against \ngood evidence to the contrary because you want it to be true. I then identify the central \ntheoretical problem concerning this phenomenon as being that of giving an account of the \nexplanatory connection between the desire and belief in real life cases of this sort. The two \nmain approaches to answering this question in the philosophical literature are traditionalism \nand deflationism. Traditionalists hold that the desire leads to the belief by motivating the \nsubject to intentionally acquire the belief, a belief he/she initially knows to be \nfalse/unwarranted (i.e., it motivates her to intentionally deceive herself), while deflationists \ndeny this. \nI defend a deflationary account of how self-deceivers end up with their unwarranted \nbeliefs, but one which differs from other deflationist accounts, either in substance or in \nemphasis, by trying to preserve a central role for agency and intentional action in the \nexplanation and by trying to elucidate the nature of these culpable actions and intentions. \nAccordingly, an account is developed which holds that self-deceivers end up self-deceived \nbecause of their own actions, actions motivated by the relevant desires and emotions, though \nthese actions are not done with an intention to deceive oneself. I try to show how an account \nof this sort can explain features of self-deception which any such account would be expected \nto explain, and in a better way than its rivals, including, for instance, the tension of selfdeception, \nand the fact that self-deceivers are responsible for their own self-deception, while \nalso avoiding the paradoxes that afflict other agency-focused approaches.
Author: Kevin Lynch
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: University of Warwick
OpenAlex ID: W2046179729